Roger Vadim directs Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law and Anita Pallenberg in this sci-fi space adventure where a sexy intergalactic navigator investigates a planet full of surreal danger, physical intercourse and hateful inhabitants.

Not quite as good as I remember. The near constant costume changes of a gorgeously vapid Fonda and a production design that loves a bit of coloured, diaphanous moulded plastic are the highlights. I love the tackiness of the breathy bubblegum pop soundtrack and the shag carpet spaceship interiors. The moments of peril are ludicrously inventive; vampiric dollies, death by sparrow cage, a fatal sexual pleasure machine induced into overload. Shame nothing more is made from them… you wouldn’t call Barbarella action packed even though the foundations are there. Essentially each set piece involves Fonda bound in a kinky death trap then released after a beat of struggling.  But it does trundle along slowly with no end in sight. And when the end comes, it is abrupt. An experience that probably needed one screenwriter rather than 14. Yet the boredom of an aimless narrative isn’t what sticks in the memory a week later. All that saucy nuttiness does.

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