Barbarella [DVD]

This cult film by New Wave director Roger Vadim begins with a flawlessly executed zero gravity strip-tease by the film’s feisty 41st century space adventurer, Barbarella (Jane Fonda). The adventure begins when the president of Earth contacts Barbarella for her help in locating Durand Durand (Milo O’Shea), a young scientist who has vanished with a deadly positronic ray that contains the power to “shatter the loving union of the universe”. Her mission takes an unexpected twist after her fur-lined vessel makes a forced landing on the icy planet Lythion after being rocked by a magnetic disturbance. Barbarella soon faces a number of challenging situations that result in many costume changes, and pleasurable encounters with the handsome men who assist her as she continues to track the elusive Durand Durand. With the help of the angel, Pygar (John Phillip Law), Barbarella must infiltrate the city of SoGo and battle the Black Guards and the Great Tyrant - a sadistic seductress who wants Barbarella for her own devious purposes - to recover the devastating weapon and restore peace and order to the galaxy. Based on the French science-fiction comic by Jean-Claude Forest, with dazzling and inventive costume design by Jacques Fonteray and Paco Rabanne.