Space Girls in Beverly Hills

Viewed until it proved too much for me at the Festival du Film, Cannes 2010

Bad in every respect, Space Girls in Beverly Hills is the absolute nadir of ego-driven, no talent film making. All concerned are clearly having a great time but it should be illegal to inflict such suffering on a paying audience! Isn't there something in the US constitution or legal code about cruel and unusual punishment being forbidden? At best, at the very best, the film looks like a cheap and tacky piece of porn - but with all the sex edited out. If so, maybe the makers should put it back in and give us something worth watching. Except... the actors, both male and female, reek of skank and one of the reasons I baled out was the fear that sooner or later they might indeed show some skin. Burning books is wrong, burning films, if this one's at the top of the bonfire, would be a very good thing.

OK, with a title like "Space Girls in Beverly Hills" and starring Julie Strain (who actually had a small part), low budget, and most of the actresses look like porno stars, I didn't expect much.

But it was interesting, even though the story went in several confusing directions at once. The girls actually sing a few songs, and weren't bad. Surprisingly, no nudity though. I think this might be the only film where Julie Strain kept her clothes on.

After an intergalactic war has killed all of the males on the planet Vanisia, three young women by the names of "Katanna" (Donna Spangler), "Rayan" (Allie Moss) and "Silica" (Brittan) are sent to Earth to find suitable men to bring back with them. Meanwhile, back on Earth, an extremely rich but socially inept playboy named "Baron Von Benson" (Tim Colceri) and his best friend "Steve Patise" (George Thomas) are on the prowl for women and as it so happens one particular female by the name of "Elaine Cashbender" (Jill Noel) becomes quite interested. The problem is that she is also only interested in Baron's money and secretly despises him. So when these three young women from Vanisia are invited by Baron to stay in his mansion for a few days Elaine decides to do everything in her power to get them to leave. What Elaine doesn't know, however, is that this may be more difficult than she ever imagined. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was one of the worst movies I have ever seen as it suffered from amateur camera work, a weak script and extremely bad acting. As a matter of fact, other than the presence of an attractive actress like Allie Moss, there really wasn't anything good about this film at all-and even that wasn't enough to consider changing my overall evaluation. Again, this was an awful film and I cannot in good conscience recommend it to anybody.

It is possible to make good low budget movies, and this one almost succeeds. An important factor for this is that they got the plot of this science fiction sex comedy right. It's not perfect, but it definitely is good enough:

For decades, the women on Vanisia have been living without a single man. Finally they are desperate enough to send a man-crazy delegation of three on a hunt through space.

Meanwhile in Beverly Hills, awkward aging would-be playboy Baron Von Benson has no luck with women. His expectations totally unrealistic, and the only women who humor him are those hoping to exploit him.

When the spaceship crashes outside Von Benson's house, everything seems to move towards the obvious solution, complicated only by a meddling space agency hunting for the aliens and a scheming woman. But there is a little surprise at the end that makes this film even more obviously a male wish fulfillment fantasy.

The film's main problem is the acting. I have a relatively high tolerance for bad acting, but here it is often so cheesy that even I found it jarring. Low budget films often seem to recruit professional models who are keen on getting non-nude roles for their main roles. Occasionally this works very well, but here it doesn't.

Fortunately, someone had the brilliant idea of framing the main story as a tale told by the future queen of Venisia to her children. This domestic setting is so fake and campy that it lowered my expectations to the point that I was just happy the acting wasn't as bad as I expected, and in fact I felt it could be explained as depicting imperfections in the trashy queen's interpretation. A bold move which for me definitely worked.

Consequently, I rate this film 5 out of 10 stars, which for a low-budget amateur movie such as this is a really respectable rating. A professional director such as Roger Corman who knows how to deal with extreme budget restrictions could potentially have done much better. For an example of what I have in mind, consider J.F. Lawton's Cannibal Girls (1989), which manages to be an outstanding film despite some similarities and what seem to have been similar restrictions.