His Film Review: Barbarella (1968)

Why he watched it: “Classic”?

His rating: 2 out of 5 stars

His review: Campy must have been coined for this film–maybe for this and Rocky Horror Picture Show. As a film and particularly a sci-fi fan, I’ve heard about this film for decades. Heard about its risque sexual images, its over-the-top style, and its 80s’s band-name-influencing character Duran Duran. Finally, I’ve watched. As a teen, I’m sure I’d have been titillated by the, um, fashion-frugal women throughout. After 40 years, it not longer pushed the same boundaries, but it is not without its charms.

One my favorite guilty pleasures is Flash Gordon, the 1980s film with soundtrack by Queen. I love its campy sweetness, held together by Queen’s great music. I used to play the soundtrack cassette tape over and over. Campy either works or doesn’t–you love the strangeness or you count the minutes until you escape. Typically I’ve found that camp can only hold its energy for short time and that over an entire film it goes from goofy fun to tedium.

Barbarella reaches that point for me. After strange characters, low-budget and dated special effects, and Jane Fonda’s appealing innocent main character, the weirdness hit a wall. Or more appropriate, was hit by a bunch of birds. Barbarella is being tortured for the second (third?) time–the first was really creepy dolls with metal teeth. They are replaced with birds–not nearly as creepy, and not nearly as interesting. But then, the film is temporarily saved by David Hemmings, who brings comic relief as a want-to-be revolutionary.

After his turn, though, the film hits the tedium, and thankfully ends soon afterwards. Fonda is appealing throughout, but other than Hemmings none of the others reaches line-quoting fun. At least for me watching now. My adolescent self–well, he’d probably not seen past the fashions.