La bestia nello spazio

La bestia nello spazio is a strange, often ridiculous entry in the Italian exploitation wave of the late 1970s and early 80s, mixing pulp sci-fi aesthetics with softcore eroticism in a way that's either bizarrely hypnotic or hopelessly clumsy, depending on your tolerance for cinematic junk food. Director Alfonso Brescia (working under the alias Al Bradley) assembles a colorful mess that tries to mimic the sleek spectacle of Star Wars, but ends up feeling more like a bootleg space opera taped over late-night cable erotica. The atmosphere is thick with fog machines, flashing control panels, and synth-heavy background music, but the overall vibe is more lounge act than interstellar odyssey.

Visually, the film operates on a low-budget wavelength, relying heavily on recycled sets, rudimentary miniatures, and stock footage that gives the entire production a charmingly amateur quality. The cinematography, while rarely innovative, leans into soft-focus filters and saturated lighting, especially during the more risqué sequences. There's a strange beauty to the way Brescia lights faces and silhouettes against starscapes and neon interiors, though it's often undercut by clunky editing and abrupt tonal shifts. The pacing stutters at times, particularly in the second act, where long stretches of pseudo-scientific banter stall any narrative momentum.

As for the performances, Sirpa Lane emerges as the unlikely anchor of the film. She manages to convey a certain wide-eyed sincerity amidst all the absurdity, and her ability to commit fully to the role-however underwritten-lends the character a surprising vulnerability. Her performance carries a soft magnetism that elevates scenes that would otherwise be weighed down by wooden dialogue or clunky exposition. The rest of the cast leans into the camp, with varying levels of effectiveness. Vassili Karis delivers his lines like a space-faring soap opera lead, while the supporting crew seems unsure whether to play it straight or laugh along with the audience.

What gives the film its odd charm is not technical polish or narrative coherence, but a sense of earnest indulgence. It is unabashedly trashy, occasionally unintentionally funny, and wholly a product of its time. While it never quite works as serious sci-fi or effective erotica, it exists in a weird cinematic limbo that makes it hard to forget. There's a cheap, fever-dream quality to it all, like watching someone try to reenact Barbarella from memory after a long night at the disco.

Wow. Thanks to Severin Films & Ryko Distribution, fans of schlock Italian B grade genre cinema can finally get to revel in the supreme awfulness that is Alfonso Brescia's BEAST IN SPACE, the "adults only" capstone on his Italian STAR WARS ripoff epics: BATTLE OF THE STARS, COSMOS - BATTLE OF THE PLANETS, WAR OF THE ROBOTS and last but not least STAR ODYSSEY. And while they aren't particularly "good" movies they have a certain special something about them that fans of this kind of junk will feed on like a fat guy at Wendy's.

The premise behind the quintuplet of films is simple: Take the look of STAR WARS, cheapen it down to the production design standards of community theater, come up with four or five scripts that make provisions for recycling the same sets, costumes, props, actors, and special effects sequences (usually consisting of poorly made models being swung across a star field with odd sound effects), get Marcello Giombini to compose a couple hours of seemingly random yet listenable synthesizer music and audio washes, then edit the results together into segments of about 90 minutes, each with it's own title so that audiences know which installment they are watching. Presto.

BEAST IN SPACE can be properly referred to as the porno one, and does indeed exist in both standard and full-blown XXX versions that literally does go where no man has gone before. Even FLESH GORDON looks sophisticated compared to this lovable mess which exists not so much to be "enjoyed" as to be marveled at. You sort of wonder what the heck they were thinking, as the film apparently has no specific intended audience: Since the emphasis often revolves around space couples having space sex in their space beds the film is removed from the kind of juvenile dreck that excused the other four films from the "series". You can't just plop the kids down in front of this and let the laser beams and disco space costumes wile away a rainy afternoon. But since the production design is so schlocky and minimalist, grown-ups used to a higher layer of gloss on their disco era science fiction craptaculars will find the results laughable at best.

So that leaves us with the porn, which manages to be even less erotic than such contemporaneous Italian excesses as "Emanuelle in America" or everybody's favorite, PORNO HOLOCAUST, which were at least sick enough to engender a bad laugh every once in a while, and which are about the only things that BEAST IN SPACE can be accurately compared to. Other than it's namesake of course, Walerian Borowczyk's THE BEAST, which apparently was part of the inspiration for the film since we are likewise treated to extended sequences that feature horses copulating. Gee.

Just how such a spectacle is worked into an ultra low budget Italian STAR WARS ripoff is just something you'll have to figure out for yourself -- I am more interested in the "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" era disco space fashions, the clunky production design, the absolutely meaningless plotting and over-use of blended color schemes. These films exist as sort of visceral experiences to be witnessed rather than discreet stories to be digested, and if anything can be said about the new DVD versions is that they look spectacular. ALL of the Alfonso Brescia STAR WARS ripoffs deserve this kind of treatment, and it is perhaps a sad testament to the state of today's DVD industry that the only one some reputable company thought worthy of restoring to it's anamorphic glory is the one with the tits.

If anything here is yet another culmination of the Italian B grade genre cinema years when they pulled out all the stops of pretending to be anything but sex films and went straight for the gutter. The results will be amusingly refreshing to any fan of European cult cinema, though the non initiated might want to think about trying these out as a rental first. Bring your own towel.

4/10

Alfonso Breschia goes back to his garden shed, break out the old costumes, blonde wigs, a crappy robots to give us his fourth sci-fi epic, only this time he's trying to keep you awake by loading the thing full of sex. And it's still rubbish.

It's true what they say - in space, no one can hear you knock one out. In a galaxy no one cares about, a space captain in a bar hits up on Sirpa Lane. She's all up for it, but first he has to fend off plucky space pirate Venatino Venantini. The captain (or whatever he is) also discovers that Venantini knows a planet where there's this rare element that people will pay a fortune for. That's the plot!

The captain and Sirpa get it on and Sirpa has a strange dream that she's being chased through a forest by a crappy robot. Eventually a crew gets together and they all head off for this planet in the usual terrible, poundland version of special effects. What you'll also notice is that although Breschia has upped the boob quotient, he's totally forgotten to include any action! Nice move, Breschia!

This lot eventually do get to this planet, and of course they find it deserted (although we the audience are horrified to find that those bloody Brian Jones-like androids are lurking about in the background, ready to bore us to death). Sirpa (who is carrying a metal detector!) goes all dizzy and heads off on her own. I'm blanking on what happens next even though I watched this last night.

Basically there's a hirsute fellow in charge of the planet and says there's this giant robot that used to be in charge who kept this rare element to himself, but why go on about the plot. There's a protracted sex scene where everyone (except Venantini) gets it on and I was rather startled to find that the Russian dubbed version I was watching on Youtube (due to the English subtitled one on there being censored) had hardcore inserts in it. I did get a laugh from how ridiculous the hairy guy looked when it was revealed he was a goat-legged fellow with a foot long slag hammer. I'm not sure why Sirpa was dreaming about it though.

Due to all this crap being interspersed with what looked like footage from War of the Robots and Cosmo: War of the Planets, a whole lot of nothing going on throughout and endless shots of people wriggling against each other, this is even worse than Breschia's other sci-fi films. No wonder there are so many second hand copies of it on sale throughout Glasgow. I wonder what possessed Shameless Screen Entertainment to release this crap.

A starship captain is sent on a mission to a distant planet to find a rare element called Antalium. He is accompanied by a team that includes a disproportionately high number of sexy women. When there they encounter Onaph, the planet's overlord, and his servants, all of whom resemble Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones. It seems that the planets true ruler though is a giant ancient computer.

But mostly it's about people having sex.

The Beast in Space is directed by Alfonso Brescia who seems to have been a bit of a specialist in cheap Star Wars clones, such as War of the Robots (of which I am sure it shares some footage, specifically the scenes of the Brian Joneses fighting with laser swords). This one is another in this genre, except it is a porn version. George Lucas certainly never went here before. It stars vixen Sirpa Lane, who also starred in Joe D'Amato's ultra-trashy Love Goddess of the Cannibals. This one is quite good fun for the most part but it does do that thing that most of these sexploitation films from the era do and that is that it features seemingly endless soft-core fumbles that get tedious quite quick. Bizarrely, you actually want more of the actual plot. Having said all that, this one really goes into hyper-drive with the scene where Onaph reveals himself to be a space-satyr with an enormous erect penis. He then engages in an animalistic sex scene with Shirpa Lane. It's certainly memorable and it's what ultimately sets the film apart from others of its genre.

Relatively young and uncontrollably horny space fleet commander Captain Larry Madison (Karis) takes a break from seducing bar-girls and getting into drunken fistfights with rivals to actually do his job i.e. a space mission.

On the mission to an unknown world he particularly notices amongst his new crew is one Lt. Sondra Richardson (Sirpa Lane), (a woman who looks like Radha Mitchell with a hangover). He enjoyed a brief tryst with her after a bar pick-up and didn't call. Now things are awkward especially since they have to work together on a potentially dangerous mission.

In real space missions, crews train together for years and form bonds of professional trust which limit the possibility of one of them running into a casual encounter and having to get past personal stuff that has no place on a mission.

They are seldom captained by guys who get into drunken bar fights and use their status to pick up women or staffed with female crew who bed down with a potential crew-mate. But the crew seen here just meets and takes off together right after making introductions.

The captain's unprofessional adventures in bars have not only caught up with him as it relates to his work colleague. No sooner are they off into the cosmos than a ship with some of the guys he beat up in a bar attack the vessel and damage it to the point where it has to go on a unscheduled emergency detour to an uncharted planet.

On the planet they are hosted by a seemingly benevolent raconteur (Hundar) who treats them to a sumptuous dining experience after which they engage in frottage then full on coitus.

Low-budget sci-fi from around the same time like the infamous Inseminoid (1981) are similarly hastily assembled malignant crossbreeds of the respective Star Trek and Alien franchises.

You get the typical depiction of computerized instrumentation that the screen gave audiences of the time. Metallic boxes with lots of flashing lights and phony levers and gauges and instruments that look like they are doing something but are in fact just flashing on and off. The sets were less important than the acting.

But the inexplicable pornographic tangent this particular title goes on, while not unexpected given the opening scenes, does start rather abruptly and without much subtlety or proper pacing by showing the crew watching a couple of horses having sex and then begin touching themselves. Quite frankly it was more than the tackiness of it all that made me feel slightly nauseous.

I can only wonder if the actors knew they were going to be in a production with a pornographic tangent. The cast assembled here has people who were, in several notable cases, generally known for soft-core sex films even though this looks like, for the most part just typical b-movie sci-fi.