aka THE LOVE FACTOR
I warn you that this summary will not make much sense. This film wants to be three things: a James Bond spoof, a sci-fi movie, and soft-core porn, but it doesn't really work on any of those levels. It's very bad, almost amateurish at times, but for that reason, it's sort of fun to watch if you're in an MST3K mood. Secret agent James Word (Robin Hawdon), in a very mod zippered black shirt and thin mustache, arrives home after a mission to find a sexy blonde woman named Ann (Yutte Stensgaard) waiting for him. She claims to have been sent by his bosses to debrief him, though he's not sure she's being upfront. They play an excruciatingly long game of strip poker, eventually climb into bed (where he is, I assume, literally debriefed) and he tells her about his last mission: tracking down a gang of often-naked, often-large breasted women from the planet Angvia (get it?) who need to kidnap Earth women to keep the population growing. Another man (James Robertson Justice, who seems quite embarrassed to be present) and his thugs (including the fey Charles Hawtrey, a famous British comedian known for his appearances in the "Carry On" film series) are also following these women, as is some handsome guy in glasses who vanishes from the film after his two short scenes. After this situation is set up, things stop making narrative sense. Justice and his men torture a nude woman, we watch a couple of strippers at work, and 50s starlet Dawn Addams plays Zeta, the head of the Angvians who gives orders from a vaguely defined, colorful room (which reminded me of the setting from ZARDOZ where Sean Connery is tortured, or whatever happens to him). In the exciting finale, a horde of women wearing only string bikini bottoms and dark purple pasties run around a park zapping men unconscious with bizarre arm movements. The movie ends (I think, but I'm not sure) with Ann turning out to be an Angvian, and she enlists James to be a stud to all the Angvian women. Lying in Arabian Nights pleasure in a satin bathrobe, surrounded by buxom women, he looks happy but plumb tuckered out in the final fade.
This film is based on a Barbarella-like SF serial that ran in something called Zeta Magazine; it's difficult to find much information about this, though cover images from the magazine do come up in Google searches. My theory about what happened: Tigon, a short-lived British studio mostly known for low budget horror movies, put this into production as a spy spoof with a sci-fi angle. But the spy comedy, which was a popular niche genre in the mid-60s, was probably dying on the vine by 1969, so they turned it into a sex farce, or at least threw in a lot of tits. At least once, we see full frontal female nudity as well, though of course, the male never gets naked—though he is shirtless on occasion. I also believe that the ridiculously long—almost 20 minutes—opening, in which Hawdon and Stensgaard do work up a little physical chemistry, came about because the producers realized that their film, after editing, came out to barely an hour, so they padded it out with the poker game, pushing the balance of the movie toward sex rather than spy or SF. Still, there are some pleasures to be had here, even if the viewer is not an admirer of the female form: it's pop-art colorful; there are a few chuckles, particularly in the scene with a mean-spirited talking elevator; it has a wild theme song; I loved the set for the "self-revelation room," even though it consists solely of aluminum foil with psychedelic colors projected on it. I must admit the reason I watched this was that I had just seen
WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH and had enjoyed seeing the handsome Robin Hawdon prancing around in a loincloth. He's not quite as appealing here, and soon he left the business to write plays and novels. Can I recommend this? Not really, because today, teens, frat boys and dirty old men have lots of arousing options other than a low-budget titty movie from the 60s. But I'm not sorry I watched it. [Netflix streaming]
I warn you that this summary will not make much sense. This film wants to be three things: a James Bond spoof, a sci-fi movie, and soft-core porn, but it doesn't really work on any of those levels. It's very bad, almost amateurish at times, but for that reason, it's sort of fun to watch if you're in an MST3K mood. Secret agent James Word (Robin Hawdon), in a very mod zippered black shirt and thin mustache, arrives home after a mission to find a sexy blonde woman named Ann (Yutte Stensgaard) waiting for him. She claims to have been sent by his bosses to debrief him, though he's not sure she's being upfront. They play an excruciatingly long game of strip poker, eventually climb into bed (where he is, I assume, literally debriefed) and he tells her about his last mission: tracking down a gang of often-naked, often-large breasted women from the planet Angvia (get it?) who need to kidnap Earth women to keep the population growing. Another man (James Robertson Justice, who seems quite embarrassed to be present) and his thugs (including the fey Charles Hawtrey, a famous British comedian known for his appearances in the "Carry On" film series) are also following these women, as is some handsome guy in glasses who vanishes from the film after his two short scenes. After this situation is set up, things stop making narrative sense. Justice and his men torture a nude woman, we watch a couple of strippers at work, and 50s starlet Dawn Addams plays Zeta, the head of the Angvians who gives orders from a vaguely defined, colorful room (which reminded me of the setting from ZARDOZ where Sean Connery is tortured, or whatever happens to him). In the exciting finale, a horde of women wearing only string bikini bottoms and dark purple pasties run around a park zapping men unconscious with bizarre arm movements. The movie ends (I think, but I'm not sure) with Ann turning out to be an Angvian, and she enlists James to be a stud to all the Angvian women. Lying in Arabian Nights pleasure in a satin bathrobe, surrounded by buxom women, he looks happy but plumb tuckered out in the final fade.
This film is based on a Barbarella-like SF serial that ran in something called Zeta Magazine; it's difficult to find much information about this, though cover images from the magazine do come up in Google searches. My theory about what happened: Tigon, a short-lived British studio mostly known for low budget horror movies, put this into production as a spy spoof with a sci-fi angle. But the spy comedy, which was a popular niche genre in the mid-60s, was probably dying on the vine by 1969, so they turned it into a sex farce, or at least threw in a lot of tits. At least once, we see full frontal female nudity as well, though of course, the male never gets naked—though he is shirtless on occasion. I also believe that the ridiculously long—almost 20 minutes—opening, in which Hawdon and Stensgaard do work up a little physical chemistry, came about because the producers realized that their film, after editing, came out to barely an hour, so they padded it out with the poker game, pushing the balance of the movie toward sex rather than spy or SF. Still, there are some pleasures to be had here, even if the viewer is not an admirer of the female form: it's pop-art colorful; there are a few chuckles, particularly in the scene with a mean-spirited talking elevator; it has a wild theme song; I loved the set for the "self-revelation room," even though it consists solely of aluminum foil with psychedelic colors projected on it. I must admit the reason I watched this was that I had just seen WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH and had enjoyed seeing the handsome Robin Hawdon prancing around in a loincloth. He's not quite as appealing here, and soon he left the business to write plays and novels. Can I recommend this? Not really, because today, teens, frat boys and dirty old men have lots of arousing options other than a low-budget titty movie from the 60s. But I'm not sorry I watched it. [Netflix streaming]
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