‘The ones with the flat chests have these strange appendages…’
Three alien women are forced to land on Earth due to their malfunctioning spaceship. They kidnap the four individuals who witness their landing and take them into space. Complications arise when it turns out that three of them are men, a species with which the aliens are unfamiliar…
Lame British Science Fiction sex comedy from low-budget director Norman J Warren, whose next foray into outer space turned out to be the somewhat infamous ‘lnseminoid’/’Horror Planet’ (1981). Luckily, we’re spared any gory alien glove puppets here, our extra-terrestrials coming in the much more acceptable form of leather clad Skipper (Kate Ferguson), pretty navigator Cosia (Glory Annen) and quirky engineer Partha (Ava Cadell). They’ve been running freight across the galaxy but have come a cropper, due to Cadell’s rather cavalier attitude towards repair and maintenance. Meanwhile bespectacled square Oliver (Barry Stokes) is trying hard to get it on with whiny fiancée Prudence (Lynne Ross), but she’s more interested in carpet samples and wallpaper patterns. Along with these two live wires, our sexy space aliens hoover up Jack-the-Lad dog walker Cliff (Michael Rowlett) and seven stone weakling Willy (Tony Maiden). lnevitably, hilarity and hi-jinks follow.
Except they don’t. The main thrust (ooo-err) of the plot finds the space babes carrying out in-depth biological investigations (ooo-err again) into these strange, flat-chested beings they’ve acquired and, yes, of course that means sex. In typical repressed British fashion, none of the action is strong enough to take the film into porno territory, proceedings being just slightly naughtier than the later ‘Carry On’ films, with a bit more nudity of the bare breasted variety. Indeed, the film has little else to offer than that, with predictable one-note characters, a joke free script and cheap sets that look like they’ve been rejected by the local school disco and were probably left over from another film anyway. Sure, it’s not as big a disaster as ‘Zeta One’ (1969), the UK’s previous stab at the genre, but it’s simply stuck on the launching pad with little more than the basic technical expertise to get the film in the can.
The cast deserve some credit for putting in a brave innings, but fame and fortune in the thespian arena was not forthcoming. This is Rowlett’s only film credit and Maiden appeared just once more, eventually jumping from a tall building to his death in 2004. Stokes and Annen, who both appeared in Warren’s earlier science fiction project ‘Prey’ (1977) and give the strongest performances here, carried on for a few years before quitting in the mid-1980s. Ferguson’s career followed a very similar trajectory. The one exception to this roster of disappointment is Cadell, but her path to fame and fortune was not as an actor. Appropriately enough, she became a Hollywood sex therapist, going on to found the Lovelogy University and make numerous appearances on U.S. Network Television.
‘It’s not what you think, I buy it for the Sports coverage…’
One curious aspect of this enterprise is the SFX. The spaceship model shots look like they were produced on ten times the budget of the rest of the project put together. Which obviously means they’re from a different source entirely. Commentators have speculated that these are leftovers from Gerry Anderson’s ‘Space: 1999’ TV show and that may well be the case, but I’m inclined to believe they may originate from another Anderson project.
After the first series of those TV adventures had wrapped, Anderson launched a pilot for another show, presumably in case the former was not renewed. ‘Into Infinity’ (aka ‘Day After Tomorrow’) (1975) featured Nick Tate (Eagle Pilot Alan Carter from ‘Space: 1999’) taking his wife and kids on an interstellar mission on the orders of Brian Blessed, who had also dropped into Moonbase Alpha for tea and biscuits on one occasion. Now I could be wrong, because it’s been a few decades(!), but the space babes transportation looks a lot like Tate’s family vehicle to me.
A very cheap and cheerful UK sex comedy that doesn’t raise many laughs but may have raised something else with a certain demographic.
Mark David Welsh 