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Dom Robinson reviews
Queen of the Galaxy
Paramount
- Cert:
- Cat.no: PHE 8041
- Running time: 94 minutes
- Year: 1968
- Pressing: 2000
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 19 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Mono)
- Languages: 3 languages available
- Subtitles: 11 languages available
- Widescreen: 2.35:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras : Scene index, Theatrical Trailer
Director:
- Roger Vadim
(Barbarella)
Producer:
- Dino DeLaurentis
Screenplay:
- Terry Southern
Cast:
- Barbarella: Jane Fonda
Pygar: John Phillip Law
The Great Tyrant: Anita Pallenberg
Concierge / Duran Duran: Milo O’Shea
Professor Ping: Marcel Marceau
President of Earth: Claude Dauphin
Dildano: David Hemmings
Mark Hand: Ugo Tognazzi
Barbarella,the Queen of the Galaxy, was a shlock sci-fi antidote to the plethora of Bond filmsbut with a female lead.
We’re on the planet Lythion in the year 40,000 and the five-star, double-rated astronavigatrix(Jane Fonda) is placed on a mission by Earth’s president to find scientistDuran Duran (Milo O’Shea whose gone AWOL.
You may get some idea of how weird this film is, with its psychedlic colours and free loveattitudes, if I say that in the first half-hour her spaceship crash-lands, a group of bizarrechildren – that wouldn’t look out of place in a Chris Cunningham video for Aphex Twin -kidnap her and set deadly toy dolls on her, eating at her flesh and making her pass out.
She’s rescued by Mark Hand (Ugo Tognazzi) who expects sex in return, to which sheoffers him a special pill to replace the bump ‘n’ grind of the normal, now-outdated, method.After this she meets up with blind angel Pygar (John Phillip Law) and the man whosaved him, Professor Ping (Marcel Marceau).
The space-age supervixen is pitted against The Great Tyrant (Anita Pallenberg) andat one point Duran Duran gives Barbarella a thrill by playing Beethoven’s Ode ToJoy on his huge organ while she’s trapped inside (!)
The picture is presented in an anamorphic 2.35:1 ratio with no artifacts, but plenty ofscratches on the print – a shame no-one sought to remaster it.The average bitrate is a high 7.79Mb/s, often peaking over 9Mb/s.
The sound is merely mono for all of the English, Spanish and German dialogue.Weird noises from the sixties and crappy tunes sound okay in mono, but nothing special.
Extras : Chapters :Just 19 chapters for the 94-minute film. A fair amount, but then I never say no tomore. Languages/Subtitles :Mono in English, German and Spanish. Subtitles are available inEnglish (and hard of hearing), German, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Finnish,Dutch, Turkish, and Spanish. And there’s more… :But it’s just a 3-minute theatrical trailer and that’s it. Menu :A basic static and silent menu with a shot of the front cover and the usualoptions.
Overall, I found Barbarella to be incredibly boring and almost put me to sleep.There’s so many different ideas captured within, none of which are really brought tofruition and things just didn’t gel together for me whatsoever.
Add to this just a trailer and it makes you wonder if we’ll ever get a fair shout in theextras department from Paramount.
“See Barbarella do her thing…”, beckons the trailer.
No thanks.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.