Zeta One

Surely one of the most tatty, inept, and certainly most bonkers productions from a British studio since 'Fire Maidens From Outer Space' over a dozen years previously, it seems Zeta One was originally planned on a considerably more ambitious scale, only to soon run into financial trouble.

John Hamilton, Tony Tenser's indispensable chronicler, reveals that construction work on the studio had still not been completed during shooting. James Robertson Justice didn't have a proper dressing room and understandably was not pleased. Not in the best of health following a stroke the year before, he made sure he was out of the mess at the first opportunity. Anyhow he's completely wrong, and not in any good way, as the sadistic Major Bourdon. They'd have done better to have cast the amazonian Nita Lorraine, the 'Angvian' failing to keep a straight face in the fight scene (and briefly memorable wielding a whip in 'Curse Of The Crimson Altar') as Zeta's adversary, or to take it to a further stage of silliness, Rita Webb, who puts in an appearance as a bus conductor with Charles Hawtrey in a scene that misses a chance to be funnier.

Robin Hawdon's James Word, so called apparently so they could use a hilarious tag-line on the lines of 'His Word is our Bond' and whose main activity seems to be confined to between the sheets, only function is to attempt to make sense of what passes for the narrative. Mission impossible. One flashback confusingly ends with him in bed with one of the Angvians before switching to him in the same bed with Yutte Stensgaard, as part of the framing device. A typically inane scene toward the end sees him drive up to a field, go through a hedge and then wander around, then back to the car for some waterproofs. And that's it. Meanwhile Dawn Addams' Zeta remains a peripheral figure throughout.

At least Zeta can boast Johnny Hawksworth's jazzy, driving opening score, and the costume department made delightful use of their minuscule budget on the wigs and outfits, if that is the word, of Zeta's followers: Valerie Leon, for one, can rarely have looked more alluring. Anyhow, once the deadly tedious opening sequence was out of the way, it was more fun than the laboured attempts at humour of Joe Losey's infinitely more prestigious 'swinging sixties' spoof, Modesty Blaise, which I also watched recently.

A race of topped, average-breasted women from the planet Angvia, in another dimension, come to earth to kidnap women to repopulate their planet.

There were a few things I liked about about this film. One was that the spy was named James Word, who I assume was named so because his "word is his bond". Or something along those lines. The joke names (such as Angvia being an obvious anagram for vagina) are not very deep.

The other was that the elevator seems to be an inspiration for Marvin the Paranoid Android in Douglas Adams' books. Adams was 17 when the film first came out, and being a British science fiction film, he may have seen it. Someone might know this... I do not. But I found the similarity striking enough.

Most of the time, when you watch a film, you think about the film itself, the narrative, the people in it, the cinematography etc. In this case, you spend half the time wondering what the film-makers were trying to do. It really is worth emphasising what a weirdie this one is. Weird in a bad way.

It is incredibly disjointed. The stars remain completely separated. James Robertson Justice and Charles Hawtrey are in one lot of scenes. Robin Hawdon sans moustache and Yutte Stensgaard are in another lot. RH avec moustache is in a third lot, and Dawn Addams appears in a fourth. There is no overlap between these. The opening twenty minutes with the charisma-free Hawdon & dear old Yutte playing strip poker are so excruciatingly dull that you wonder how many people lasted the course in the days before fast forward buttons. Or maybe pause buttons.

Of course the story is intended to be quirky, and the makers were obviously going for a Barbarella-type vibe. OK, but this one is downright strange. Some of the odd bits include: a completely unmotivated dialogue between James Word and a grumpy lift; the bizarre incident of James Word's moustache, revealed as false in the opening scene; overdubs of Major Bourdon's added dialogue, which sound nothing like James Robertson Justice, but passably like Basil Brush; James Word being fed an aphrodisiac diet of oysters and what appears to be Mackeson Stout; the British secret service employing an American boss and a Scandinavian secretary; the mystery of why Charles Hawtrey's bottom is bitten by one of his own dogs.

Other commentators have unpicked the relationships between the various bits of the film - it looks like the Justice/Hawtrey scenes were shot first, and then the Hawdon/moustache scenes shot to make sense of them, and then the Hawdon/no moustache scenes shot to make sense of them. Stensgaard's lines about what rubbish it all is are clearly a tongue-in-cheek admission of the blindingly obvious. Naturally, the whole thing is a thin excuse for some girlie nudity (and that also is laid on thicker in the scenes shot later, as if they realised that nudity would be the film's only saving grace). The basic idea of topless aliens invading Earth is a very amusing one. But given the cast there really is no excuse for making such an awful picture.

The nadir of the film is the jokey kidnap-and-torture sequence about half way through. Not erotic, just a gigantic lapse of taste, unredeemed by the reappearance of the kidnapped girl towards the end. That is the problem with this film in its most egregious aspect - it is just not likable enough.

It's another cold snowy winter day here so I once again took advantage of our Amazon Prime subscription and picked a flick. This time I watched a film from 1969 called 'zeta one' (aka 'The Love Factor'). It's a British made secret agent film...sort of... maybe it's more a sex-ploitation film. I can best describe it as a cross between the over the top spy films like 'Our Man Flint' and the recent Austin Powers films. Also a touch of James Bond. There is a 'Barbarella' sci fi element to it too. There's a race of alien women with advanced technology who want us for mating purposes or something. I'm not really sure. Like so many other B-movie female aliens they only seem to have women in their society. Women who like to dress as male fantasies. Even their warrior women dress in pasties and G strings. Evidently it's their favorite combat gear no matter how impractical and uncomfortable it must be. Yes, this is one of those movies. It's loaded with 60s era nudity, mini skirts, boots and even a psychedelic trip or two. It reminds me of the Austin Powers movies because it seems more an exaggerated spoof of the 60s then what it really is, a real 60s film. I lived through that time as a young teen so I know a little. It even had 'Laugh-in Style' girls dancing topless in body paint. It's more 60s then I ever remember the 60s as being, it you can understand that. It's like what people now seem to imagine those days to be who weren't there.

Anyway, it's a funny film if you're in the right frame of mind. There is one agent who looks like a British version of Barney Fife in round glasses. Their version of M here is more into 'S & M'. Yes, it's a strangely entertaining flick that bad movie fans should enjoy.

Well I liked it!

If you're a fan of Yutte Stensgaard (cor!) it's a goodie - she appears throughout.

A good cast in a strange mixture of Doctor/Carry On/Spy spoof (watch for the Harry Palmer lookalike!) & Sci-fi, containing much female pulchritude!

There's Rita Webb as a bus conductress, & watch out for Carol Hawkins - Sharon Eversleigh from 'Please Sir'.

The woodland finale, inexplicably, reminded me of The Avengers.

And did I mention Yutte? Cor! :D