Beast in Space (1980) User Reviews

Certainly Is Something ...

[Steve_Nyland · 4/10 · 30 April 2008]

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

In Space, no one can hear you knock on out

[Bezenby · 3/10 · 3 March 2019]

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.

I'm sure Buck Rogers was never like this

[Red-Barracuda · 5/10 · 26 June 2012]

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.

Crazy space sex trash oddity

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 23 October 2015]

BEAST IN SPACE is probably the most bizarre science fiction movie I've ever watched. Italian trash director Alfonso Brescia is known among cult circles for his work on a wacky quintet of ultra low budget sci fi offerings in the late '70s, purely designed to cash in on the success of STAR WARS, and this is the last one of that series. Not content with reworking the same themes as in the other films, Brescia also decides to rip off an erotic drama called THE BEAST, about a woman in love with a monster, and this tells virtually the same story while relocating to another planet.

The two halves of the film sit at odds with one another. On the one hand we get the usual cardboard sets, silly looking costumes and poor actors pretending they're piloting a spaceship, avoiding asteroids and going after a guy who's clearly supposed to be Han Solo. Once they land on a planet, they're once more pursued by a huge, rubbishy looking cardboard computer and they also find themselves up against an army of blond-haired androids who appear to be left over from the Brescia-directed peplum film CONQUEROR OF ATLANTIS.

Thrown into the mix are a series of fairly explicit sex scenes that were spiced up with hardcore inserts for foreign markets; it's this XXX-rated latter version that's recently surfaced on DVD. No doubt to Brescia's delight, the actual star of THE BEAST, Sirpa Lane, was paid enough to appear in this as well. Supporting her is Greek leading man Vassili Karis, who had already starred in a couple of these sci fi yarns like COSMOS: WAR OF THE PLANETS, although he must have wondered what he'd got himself into when he saw the sex stuff in this one. The guy wearing the pan outfit is a hoot especially as the edge of the hairy legs he's wearing is visible throughout.

Anyway, this is trashy stuff in the extreme, worthy only because it's a complete oddity even given the varied, anything-goes standards of Italian exploitation cinema.

If you came for the Sirpa Lane space orgy, run far, far away

[selfdestructo · 3/10 · 12 April 2023]

I must say, this movie intrigued me more than any other I've seen in a long time. I'm a huge fan of Walerian Borowczyk's The Beast from 1975. The Beast In Space was created 5 years later, as an "unofficial" exploitation sci-fi sequel, from Italy, complete with the same chick from the original!

Sirpa Lane has a recurring dream where she is chased through the woods by an aroused half-man, half-beast, and on her trek to the planet Lorigon (to retrieve a material to manufacture weaponry), her dream comes to fruition, and she is raped by the beast... which may or may not be a dream(?). Also, I was hoping to never again in my life witness horses mating in a movie (or variations on the subject), but, yep, you got horses f'ing in this too.

The star of the movie (er, besides Lane) has a 10-minute interview on the Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray, where he repeatedly expresses exactly how horrendous this movie is, also, that he doesn't even remember making it. Yeah, I'd block this one out of my memory, too.

So for about the first 15-20 minutes, the lecherous captain of the hapless crew on the search for a resource called Antalium, is in some space bar, gets into repeated brawls, all the while hitting on anything with a pulse. And bedding them. What follows is ~45 minutes of... talking?! Plus bad spaceship sets, and worse uniforms. MAN does this get boring.

The plot thickens at the 60-minute mark, where a giant box with flashing lights that controls the planet they've landed on, forces (nearly) everyone in the crew, and their hosts, to "get it on." Enter a few non-erotic hardcore inserts by people outside this production.

So, the crew come out of their computer-induced haze... with a pill(?). The bad guy steals the sought-after resource, which sends the giant cardboard box into self-destruct mode... as in, destruction of the whole planet(?). There's a mad rush by the crew to get to their spaceship, and escape the planet as quickly as possible... yet they all had time to change from their shiny planetary uniforms, back into their mission uniforms(?).

Oh, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the army of robotic Dutch Boys they had to battle on the way out. This movie felt like an eternity to go through, to ultimately come out empty-handed. Not that I'm adverse to a negative conclusion (I prefer them!), but I don't know if there's ANYTHING to enjoy in this flick.

Ok, 3 stars for the ladies' foxy catsuits they wear on the planet Lorigon. Yep, I'm that easy.

Run away!

barbarella

[RResende · 31 August 2011]

This is yet another trash film. I think it's worth noting that, at least to me, trash designates merely films with incredibly low production values. Often these films also press hard on the exaggeration of sex and/or blood. Not violence though. Mostly, and this film is no exception, these films work as parodies of other serious films. Not fully intentional as parodies, but as ways to capitalize on the success of other films. That's why here we have cardboard light sabers, 3 years after the original Star Wars came out.

I come to films like this once in a while, first for the sheer fun of sharing its makers self- referential passion, enjoying the consented flaws as much as i appreciate the good things.

But also, i come here to enjoy interesting concepts and sometimes subtle layering that often come up in pieces like this film. Usually, the disgrace of every aspect of filmmaking, from sets to acting, from blocking to framing, ruins the experience. But still, you can often find interesting things to consider, on the narrative level. Such is the case with this film.

Check how this is built. A crew with the mission to go to a distant planet to collect some precious material. One of the elements (the sex star) of the crew has been dreaming about a place she doesn't know, where she is repeatedly raped (in the dream) by a beast, half human half goat (with a human penis). In the meantime she screws the leader of the mission. On the planet, interesting stuff happens. The planet is controlled by a machine, with power to enable sexual fantasies on its inhabitants, basically placing the crew under the illusion of consented sex with each other. This is made by the computer to enable its avatar, the half man half goat beast, to reach the girl and make her live the dream she'd been having. A final battle happens, the computer is destroyed, they leave the planet.

What works fine for me is how we get buried deeper in the layers of the story. We supposedly start in the real universe of those characters. Sex between both of them makes her reveal her (sex) dream and we submerge one level below the reality of the world of film. The distant planet is itself the descent into a different buried world. The dreams induced by the computer, the initial illusion that we have that those are not dreams, that takes us to a different level. And the final doubt on whether the "real" rape was real or yet another computer induced illusion, that's interesting.

Sex surrounds everything of course, as the producers need it in order to sell the film. So the premises are clear about what you'll see here. But how it is done can be appreciated, despite the trashy feel of the whole thing.

My opinion: 2/5

http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

Beastly space.

[morrison-dylan-fan · 4/10 · 25 November 2015]

With Christmas coming up,I started looking round for DVDs that I could sell.Whilst looking round for films,I spotted a DVD that my dad gave to me as a birthday present (not sure what that says about me!) With having recently seen Sirpa Lane be a "love goddess",I felt that it was the perfect time to see her go to space!

The plot:

Planning to make neutron bombs,the leaders of earth decide to send Starship captain Larry Madison and his crew to outer space in search of an element called Antallum,which is to the main ingredient in the bombs. Discovering that a planet called Lorigon is rich in Antallum,Madison and the crew travel to the planet.Reaching the planet,the crew run into a robot who will cause each of them to tap into their primal beast in space.

View on the film:

Before I get to the movie,I have to mention that whilst they give the movie clear subtitles,Shameless give the film a raw transfer,with the soundtrack being hollow and the image being rather burnt.

For his trip to space,co-writer/(along with Aldo Crudo)director Alfonso Brescia plops the movie down on a space hopper,as disco lights jump across the screen as a very low budget robot stomps around.Along with his disco steps, Brescia pushes the sex-Fi into a very strange direction,which go from the cute naked human cast being joined by stock footage of horses having sex to a half human/half animal having sex with anything that moves.

Kicking their tantalising space mission off with delightfully silly fights and mysterious dream sequences,the writers sadly let everything the movie offers float away.Landing on the planet,the writers hold back from fight scenes until the end,and replace the mysterious dreams with orgies,which whilst shot perfectly fine,sink the movie in a dull,dry ditch,as the beast dies in space.

Captain Madison boldly goes where plenty of men have been before.

[BA_Harrison · 6/10 · 9 February 2014]

This cheesy slice of Italian B-movie schlock has all the production value and style of a trashy 80s sci-fi series rapidly approaching cancellation (think Buck Rogers in the 25th Century at the end of its second season), with cheap and nasty costumes, crappy set design, terrible special effects, two-dimensional comic-book heroes, dastardly villains and attractive women in sexy but impractical outfits. But where the titillation in a programme like Buck Rogers always ended with just a tantalising glimpse of cleavage or thigh, Beast in Space goes much further, punctuating its silly space fantasy action with bouts of porn, starting off soft-core, but eventually progressing to the harder stuff.

The risible plot sees Vassili Karis as starship captain Larry Madison, who leads a mission to the remote planet Lorigon where there reputedly exists a sizable deposit of the rare element Antalium. Once on the planet, Madison and his crew (three of whom are sexy blonde women) explore a castle where they are welcomed by the planet's ruler Onaph (Claudio Undari), who takes a keen interest in the female crew-members, particularly the insatiable Lt. Sondra Richardson (Sirpa Lane).

In the relaxing atmosphere of Onaph's castle, the crew begin to enjoy themselves, perhaps a little too much: after witnessing two horses mating in a stable, they begin to get fruity with each other and give in to their desires, participating in an orgiastic display of wanton carnal lust (phew!). Even Onaph joins in on the fun, revealing himself to be a well-endowed faun like creature and pursuing Sondra through the woods with the intent of getting busy. It's not long before the woods are alive with the sound of humping.

However, all is not as it seems: In reality, Onaph is the physical manifestation of a powerful supercomputer named Zocor, which protects its Antalium supply by controlling the minds of anyone who should visit the planet. Luckily, roguish merchant Juan Cardoso (Venantino Venantini), who is also after the valuable mineral, is immune to Zocor's mind control thanks to special tablets that cancel out the computer's hypnotic effect; after dosing up Madison and his crew (who actually seem grateful to be released from their endless ecstasy), Juan joins forces with them to destroy Zocor and steal its Antalium.

As a big fan of both garish disco-era sci-fi and exploitative Italian trash cinema, I found Beast in Space a rather enjoyable way to pass the time, the nutzoid script, naff set design, dreadful acting, gratuitous nookie, and blatant steals from Star Wars (check out the dreadful laser swords wielded by Zocor's golden robot guards) being just the sort of nonsense I look for in my Z-grade entertainment. Obviously, this kind of thing doesn't qualify for a ridiculously high rating, but I certainly had enough fun for it to warrant a 6/10.

A prime piece of deliciously lurid Italian sci-fi soft-core schlock

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 15 August 2011]

In the future the struggle for space superiority has forced humanity to search the cosmos for a rare element called Antallum that is a key ingredient for the construction of neutron bombs. Stud muffin on wheels starship captain Larry Madison (dashing Vassilli Karis) and his crew are assigned to retrieve Antallum from the remote planet Lorigon. However, Madison and his crew fall under the control of a powerful computer that incites everyone to shed their inhibitions and engage in wild'n'wanton fornication. For example, the luscious Lt. Sondra Richardson (ravishing Sirpa Lane) gets intimate with beast-man ruler Onaf (hirsute hulk Robert Hundar), a creepy, yet enticing figure who has been haunting Sondra's dreams. Director Alfonso Brescia, who also co-wrote the positively bonkers and barely coherent script with Aldo Crudo, treats the daft premise with ludicrous seriousness, thereby ensuring that this mind-boggling oddity is an absolute hoot from start to finish: The clumsily staged action set pieces, tacky costumes, chintzy sets, lousy (far from) special effects, and the absurd explosive climax all add immensely to the infectiously campy charm of this delectably dippy cheesefest. Moreover, the generous serving of yummy female nudity and sizzling semi-pornographic sex scenes are every bit as hot and spicy as they ought to be. Silvio Fraschetti's gaudy cinematography gives this picture an appropriately garish look. Pluto Kennedy's groovy synthesizer score hits the get-down funky-throbbing spot something sweet. A complete trashy treat.

Why couldn't THIS film have gotten lost in space?

[JasonDanielBaker · 19 August 2011]

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.

good

[robertofuiano · 10/10 · 12 November 2009]

Good movie, very 70s, you can not expect much from a film like this,, Sirpa Lane is an actress of erotic films, a nice body but nothing exceptional savant to a pornographic actress from the body disappears, but the '70s were characterized a small breasts and a simple eroticism. Not demand a lot from these films are light years away from the movies today, the world has changed incredibly. The plot is simple and the actors not extraordinary. And the brunette actress has a single body, has one breast slightly bigger. Be satisfied. Papaya also is not great but at least these films have a certain charm ... Download them again but then again who knows what you pretend not to them.