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The Beast In Space (La Bestia
Nello Spazio) is shamefully awful, as crappy as low-budget
Eurotrash can get.
Destitute production
values and a lame story give the silly Italian pop sci-fi flicks
of the 1960s (such as Antonio Margheriti's Wild,
Wild Planet) a new luster in comparison... Space Fleet
captain and all-around chick magnet Larry Madison (Vassili Karis)
stops by his favorite watering hole for a stiff snort of Uranus
Milk, trolling for a hookup. He immediately hits it off with
a shapely blonde in ridiculous disco eye makeup named Sondra
(tragic Finnish sex star Sirpa Lane), but this causes a scuffle
with drunken tradesman/pirate/mercenary-type Juan Cardosa (Venantino
Venantini), who also has his eye on the lady. Manly, mustachioed
Larry thrashes Cardosa and his pals, winning the blonde's favor
and scooping up a small vial Cardosa dropped during the fight.
The couple go upstairs to shag (cue dull sex scene), after which
Sondra tells Larry of her terrible recurring dream — chased
through a forest, she's caught and raped by some kind of hybrid
human-animal creature.
Larry
sympathizes, but hey, he already got his nut and that's all
that matters. Returning to duty, he has the contents of the
vial he swiped analyzed
by Space Fleet scientists. The little
silver pellets turn out to be pure Antalium — the most prized
metal (element?) in the known universe, a source of incredible
power. (The small
amount Larry acquired can "supply a whole army.")
Police questioning of Cardosa's associates reveals that the
sample came from distant Lorigon, an unexplored planet at the
edge of the galaxy. Thus Captain Larry is ordered to take command
of spacecruiser XM31 and head for Lorigon at once. He's surprised
and pleased to discover Sondra among the small crew he's been
assigned for the mission.
After a series of
close calls, including a battle (lasting all of three seconds)
with Cardosa's ship, the XM31 achieves orbit around Lorigon.
A landing module carries Larry and five of the crew members,
among them Sondra, to the planet's surface, where they have
a brief encounter with a giant robot. (Implied rather than shown,
probably because there wasn't any money for an effects shot.)
Later they venture out with an Antalium detector, which leads
them deep into a foggy forest. (Curious, considering that Lorigon's
terrain when they landed was as barren and rocky as the moon...)
In one of the film's major "WTF?" moments, the expedition
stumbles upon a pair of copulating horses — footage lifted from
another movie — whose equine 'eroticism' causes the female crew
members to suddenly get all horny and fondle themselves. Man!
Are these Space Fleet babes hard up, or what? (Of course,
nobody bothers to mention that it's a tad strange finding earth
animals on such a distant planet.) After wandering around for
awhile to pad the running time, Capt. Larry and company encounter
the towering, bearded Onaph (Claudio Undari)
in his cardboard palace. Onaph explains that all of Lorigon
is controlled by a sentient, Antalium-powered supercomputer
called Zocor; it'd be best for everyone to avoid the God-Machine's
wrath by feasting and orgying the days away. Not that they'll
have any choice — Zocor can manipulate their minds, turning
them into pleasure puppets. Sondra, attracted to Onaph, realizes
that their host is the satyr-like man-beast of her dream. Meanwhile,
Juan Cardosa, also a "guest" of Onaph but less affected
by Zocor's mind control, seems to be up to something...
Now I appreciate you
patience, dear reader, with the lengthy plot details above.
I certainly won't be expending as many keystrokes critiquing
the film! I'm just too weary at this point to think of different
and sundry ways of saying, "it's shite."
The movie has been
likened to "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century Meets
Walerian Borowczyk's The
Beast", and I can't imagine a better description...
only it's even worse than you'd assume. A poorly made 'erotic'
science fiction film with an idiotic story, pitiful FX and boring,
ridiculous sex scenes can't have much going for it other than
cheesy, unintentional laughs; sadly, The
Beast In Space is too limp and lethargic to provide more
than minimal chuckles. (Zocor's clumsy, easily-killed guards
are good for a few yuks, dressed as they are in silver lamé
uniforms and Edgar Winter wigs.) I have a very high tolerance
for schlock yet it took me two sittings to get through this
thing. Ultimately, what can one say about a movie that inspires
acute embarrassment in the viewer on behalf of the actors and
filmmakers? Someone's got to feel shame for this atrocity;
apparently director Alfonso Brescia (alias "Al Bradley")
and cohorts have left this up to us, the audience.
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Severin's
presentation of The Beast In Space
doesn't match the high quality of the company's previous DVDs
but this is apparently the fault of the original source print.
Purchased at a Rome bankruptcy auction, it was hardly in pristine
condition, and the movie
itself was quite shoddily
lensed and assembled to begin with. It's a mixed bag of plusses
and minuses, really —
video quality
fluctuates noticeably throughout. Most scenes are relatively sharp
while others look extremely hazy; print damage is negligible,
fortunately, but heavy grain is omnipresent. The 1.85:1 transfer
is anamorphically enhanced. A decent Italian mono audio track
is accentuated by excellent (optional) English subtitles. If it
seems at times that the dialog is out of sync with the picture,
it isn't the fault of the disc —
like everything else in this film, even the looping was poorly
done.
For
extras Severin includes the Italian trailer and a 16-minute interview
featurette with veteran actor Venantino Venantini (Emanuelle
And The White Slave Trade, Final Justice).
Collared at a recent gallery exhibition of his art on canvas (attended
by the likes of Franco Nero and Barbara Bouchet), elderly actor-turned-painter
Venantini looks back fondly, if sketchily, at his half-century
career working in Italian and American films. He touches on The
Beast In Space specifically, seeming to recall a much better
movie than the one I watched!
In tandem with the release of this "Unrated
Version", Severin has also issued the infamous porno cut
of TBIS. It's almost exactly the
same as the version of the film reviewed here, only with the inclusion
of a few minutes of hardcore fallatio/penetration footage during
the final half-hour featuring poorly matched, painfully conspicuous
body doubles. Onaph's ginormous (obviously plastic) schlong is
revealed in all its dubious glory, acting like some kind of poontang
divining rod when he's chasing Sondra through the woods.
5/05/08 |
