The Beast in Space

Written and directed by prolific Italian sleaze merchant Alfonso Brecia (who occasionally went under the pseudonym Al Bradley), The Beast in Space was apparently designed as a loose sequel to Walerian Borowczyk's 1975 notorious art-house 'erotic' film The Beast, once again starring European starlet Sirpa Lane in the lead role.

Unlike Borowczyk's film, this one is set in the future where a group of astronauts are flying around the Galaxy in search of a precious mineral. Sirpa Lane stars as Lt Sondra Richardson who, in an early scene, is hanging out in a bar with Capt Larry Madison, the manly sort of intergalactic explorer who enjoys hard drinking and fighting to prove his masculinity and Vassili Karis takes on this role with relish. It isn't long before Larry and Sondra end up in bed together and she confides in him that she is suffering a series of recurring nightmares but, Madison being the typical man, would rather sleep than listen to her pour out her soul to him.

The Beast in Space is a real oddity of a movie as half of it is either in space or in a variety of intergalactic locations and the other half, when the crew of an exploration vessel land on a strange planet that reminds Sondra of her nightmare (only the sky isn't red and the trees don't have tentacles) turns into a good 30 to 40 minutes of sex scenes including one in which the titular beast reveals himself and, with an obvious foam latex penis, rapes Sondra. The first half is so camp that it makes Flash Gordon or Forbidden Planet look like serious meditations on the human race's future along the lines of 2001: A Space Odyssey whereas the rest is straight out of the Eurotrash sex manual!

I've no idea what Aldo Crudo and Alfonso Brecia were smoking when they wrote this, but it must've been something extremely potent as the film shifts gears drastically between scenes (and occasionally even during scenes). Anyone who imagines that your hard drinking space captain will decide that his tipple of choice will be Uranus Milk, that the most priced mineral in the entire universe will be Antalium (which, let's face it, is a better title for a prized mineral than Unobtanium, the driving force behind James Cameron's record-breaking film Avatar) and that in the distant future people will land on a possibly hostile planet dressed as Tictacs either had one hell of an imagination or a substance abuse problem.


The Beast in Space is a terrific piece of nonsense, a film that makes you wonder how it was even financed, let alone cast, shot, edited and released. There is a great bit when the scouting party land on Lorigon in order to find out where the deposits of Antalium are, when they stumble across a couple of horses going at it which seems to arouse the female members of the crew! This footage is an obvious insert and isn't even in the right aspect ratio, causing the equine lovers to be stretched and distorted.

As with many low budget science-fiction B-movies, you need to take just about everything with an extremely large pinch of salt, forgiving every continuity error, crime against fashion and bizarre piece of dialogue. This movie is full of them and somehow, don't ask me how, they just seem to add to its charm. The rational part of me, but part of me that has an MA in International Film knows that this film is absolute tosh with numerous aspects that are wrong, badly made and acted with the sort of skill that you would find in a primary school nativity play but the other part of me, the part that has a soft spot for 'so bad they're good' movies had a whale of a time watching this. I didn't care that, when Capt Madison and the rest of the scouting party landed on Lorigon which appeared to be as full of life is in the middle of the Sahara desert but, after a few minutes' walk, they found themselves in the middle of a forest that is teeming with life. Instead of hating the utterly ridiculous costumes (Elena De Cupis, please take a bow), I thought they were hilarious and a marker of inspired genius on Brescia's part.


This film has been kicked around as the censors had a (pardon the pun) hard job with the scene in which the beast makes his appearance with obvious fur trousers and shoes that were made to look like hooves and, as for the enormous foam latex erection, I really don't see what the problem was as it is to fake to cause anyone serious problems as it isn't exactly the most realistic prosthetic you will ever see. It is to Shameless' credit that they have rebuilt the film into its most complete version that the BBFC would allow on general release in the UK, drawing on various sources to move away from the 'softcore' version and into a cut that more resembles the XXX version that is available elsewhere.

I really should have hated every minute of this film as it is so badly made, so woefully acted and so utterly cheap that it really goes against every ounce of common sense and taste in my body but, as with so many films like this, it is unintentionally hilarious and has a charm that has eluded other filmmakers for their entire careers. Although The Beast in Space is a unapologetically dreadful piece of Eurotrash schlock, any film that starred Sirpa Lane and Marina Hedman, both of whom spend a great deal of time in a state of undress and features as many spectacularly awful costumes as this one does with the cast managing to keep straight faces whilst saying utterly ridiculous dialogue gets a thumbs up in my book.

The Disc

Extra Features
Not a great deal as most of the time and effort went into rebuilding the film to its most complete version permissible on these shores. What you do have in terms of supplementary material is the theatrical trailer, trailers for all of Shameless' other releases and a hilarious 30 second feature called The Beast in Space Redux which uses split screen to compare a couple of scenes from the softcore version to this one.


The Picture
The film gets off to an inauspicious start when the opening few minutes are covered in white spots and the overall picture quality is fairly soft and blurry. As this is a rebuilt film, with scenes from various different sources, the quality varies throughout the running time and there are some scenes that look fairly awful with some aliasing, softness and detritus on the screen whereas others look extremely colourful, sharp and with good contrast levels. Whoever was responsible for the set design, costumes and other aspects of the art department must look back on this and just think 'Wow! I can't believe I got paid for doing that!'

The Beast in Space is fairly typical for a science-fiction B-movie in the costumes and visual effects departments as both are extremely laughable and, when it comes to the scenes involving spacecraft, are utterly unconvincing. Somehow these just add to the charm as, let's face it, this isn't exactly 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars or Silent Running.


The Sound
Presented with the original Italian 2.0 Mono soundtrack, the dialogue comes across clearly enough although this won't be too much of an issue to those of us who don't speak Italian fluently and will be relying on the optional English subtitles. Fortunately, these are well written and error-free making the film easy to follow but you do look at the actors and notice when the dubbing isn't exactly spot-on as there is a distinct lack of synchronisation between the words and the mouth moving.

The score is nothing to write home about and neither are the sound effects which are meant to convey a sense of realism when it comes to the scenes involving spacecraft enough space. You have to feel for Marcello Giombini as he was basically asked to do two scores for one film with one set of music for the science-fiction parts and another composition for the Euro erotica sections so he must have felt like a schizophrenic by the time he had finished.


Final Thoughts
The Beast in Space is nonsense from start to finish and is an extremely cheap, badly made and only acted movie. It is also extremely enjoyable due to the amount of kitsch, cheese and utterly ridiculous costumes and dialogue on show. If you have, as I do, a soft spot for cheap science-fiction B-movies and don't mind the odd sex scene thrown in for good measure then this will be right up your street. It's rubbish, that much I admit, but it is enjoyable rubbish and surely that isn't a crime. As Shameless releases go, it is up there with the best of them as far as enjoyment is concerned and it is fantastic to see a version this complete released in the UK.