Film

Barbarella

Name: Barbarella
Genre: Science Fiction, Adventure, Comedy
Released: 1968
Cast: Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, Anita Pallenberg, Marcel Marceau, Claude Dauphin

Space opera
Action
Light-hearted

Barbarella is less a story than a Vadim-directed daydream: Jane Fonda drifts through velvet space in various states of undress, meeting angels, killer dolls, and orgasm machines. It's soft-porn science fiction dressed as camp comedy — gorgeous to look at, thin as tissue paper as narrative. Watch it with friends and a drink, for the design and the shrug of sixties permissiveness, not for plot.

TMDb rating

3.0

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy giddy, gaudy camp where the production design is the punchline and the plot is mostly an excuse to wander from one lurid set piece to the next.

Skip it if you want a tight, coherent plot or sharp satire; the jokes are sporadic, the sexual innuendo is blunt, and its loose, episodic wandering can feel like a long wait.

What it asks of you: Roughly ninety-eight minutes of loose, dreamy wobble: let the visuals carry you while logic takes a back seat, and expect a pace that drifts rather than drives.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Flash Gordon1980

Same gleeful commitment to trashy spectacle over sense — rocket ships, spandex, Queen's soundtrack blaring over pure widescreen camp.

But The acting is deliberately cardboard and the plot barely holds; you need to want earnestness played completely straight.

The Fifth Element1997

Luc Besson's sexy, colour-mad space opera shares the same appetite for outrageous costumes and a heroine who's more icon than character.

But Slicker and more expensive than Barbarella's homemade weirdness — some of that lo-fi charm gets traded for CGI polish.

Danger: Diabolik1968

Mario Bava's pop-art crime caper shares Barbarella's year, its psychedelic sets, and its total indifference to plausibility — pure comic-strip pleasure.

But It's a heist thriller rather than science fiction, and the English dub can feel stiff to modern ears.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Barbarella

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Aeon Flux1991

Same DNA — a sexualised, near-wordless heroine drifting through surreal missions — but rendered as underground MTV animation rather than studio spectacle, decades before its glossy live-action remake.

This wordless, hyper-stylised animated series follows a leather-clad heroine through erotic, violent, absurdist missions — Barbarella's fixation on body and idea pushed into avant-garde animation.

But It's cryptic and often plotless by design; anyone wanting clear storytelling will find it maddening.

Modesty Blaise1966

A comic-strip spy sent up in the same mod, tongue-in-cheek register — gorgeous sets, ludicrous plotting, style triumphing over sense.

But Even sillier and more scattershot than Barbarella; you need real patience for pure nonsense.

Casino Royale1967

An all-star spy spoof with the same delirious, anything-goes energy and disregard for coherent story — sixties excess running at full throttle.

But Overlong and overstuffed with competing subplots; the jokes land unevenly across more than two hours.

Zardoz1974

Sean Connery in a red nappy, floating stone heads, and metaphysical nonsense delivered with total sincerity — camp sci-fi's other landmark oddity.

But It takes itself far more seriously than Barbarella, which makes its absurdity land as bafflement rather than fun.

Flesh Gordon1974

A direct, gleefully horny descendant — softcore parody of pulp space opera that wears its silliness and its nudity with equal pride.

But Cheaper, cruder, and more explicit than Barbarella, with noticeably thinner wit.

Galaxina1980

A cult curio starring Dorothy Stratten as a sultry android navigating space camp — Barbarella's low-budget, disco-era cousin.

But Notoriously rough production and uneven pacing; its cult reputation outpaces its actual craft.

Mars Attacks!1996

Tim Burton's gleeful, garish alien-invasion comedy shares Barbarella's love of kitsch design and refusal to take science fiction seriously.

But It's a sprawling ensemble comedy rather than a single-heroine adventure, so the tone is broader and less sexy.

Alphaville1965

Made just three years earlier in France, it's the serious mirror image: the same '60s European fascination with sci-fi as a canvas for ideas about freedom and machines, played entirely straight.

Godard's black-and-white noir imagines a computer-run future Paris wrestling with the same era's anxieties about technology and sex, but as cool, philosophical menace instead of camp.

But It's austere, talky, and demands patience — nothing like Barbarella's pulpy sensory overload.

Queen of Outer Space1958

The same pulp-sci-fi, women-as-spectacle template Barbarella was consciously satirising, performed here with a completely straight face a full decade earlier.

A decade before Barbarella, this cheerfully sexist B-movie already had women in space rescuing and being rescued in equally scant future-couture and painted rocket sets.

But It's a genuinely bad movie made without irony — the fun is entirely at its expense, not with it.