As Good As It Gets

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

With Christmas coming up,I started looking round for DVDs that I could sell.Whilst looking round for films,I spotted a DVD that my dad gave to me as a birthday present (not sure what that says about me!) With having recently seen Sirpa Lane be a "love goddess",I felt that it was the perfect time to see her go to space!The plot:Planning to make neutron bombs,the leaders of earth decide to send Starship captain Larry Madison and his crew to outer space in search of an element called Antallum,which is to the main ingredient in the bombs. Discovering that a planet called Lorigon is rich in Antallum,Madison and the crew travel to the planet.Reaching the planet,the crew run into a robot who will cause each of them to tap into their primal beast in space.View on the film:Before I get to the movie,I have to mention that whilst they give the movie clear subtitles,Shameless give the film a raw transfer,with the soundtrack being hollow and the image being rather burnt.For his trip to space,co-writer/(along with Aldo Crudo)director Alfonso Brescia plops the movie down on a space hopper,as disco lights jump across the screen as a very low budget robot stomps around.Along with his disco steps, Brescia pushes the sex-Fi into a very strange direction,which go from the cute naked human cast being joined by stock footage of horses having sex to a half human/half animal having sex with anything that moves.Kicking their tantalising space mission off with delightfully silly fights and mysterious dream sequences,the writers sadly let everything the movie offers float away.Landing on the planet,the writers hold back from fight scenes until the end,and replace the mysterious dreams with orgies,which whilst shot perfectly fine,sink the movie in a dull,dry ditch,as the beast dies in space.

This is yet another trash film. I think it's worth noting that, at least to me, trash designates merely films with incredibly low production values. Often these films also press hard on the exaggeration of sex and/or blood. Not violence though. Mostly, and this film is no exception, these films work as parodies of other serious films. Not fully intentional as parodies, but as ways to capitalize on the success of other films. That's why here we have cardboard light sabers, 3 years after the original Star Wars came out.I come to films like this once in a while, first for the sheer fun of sharing its makers self- referential passion, enjoying the consented flaws as much as i appreciate the good things. But also, i come here to enjoy interesting concepts and sometimes subtle layering that often come up in pieces like this film. Usually, the disgrace of every aspect of filmmaking, from sets to acting, from blocking to framing, ruins the experience. But still, you can often find interesting things to consider, on the narrative level. Such is the case with this film.Check how this is built. A crew with the mission to go to a distant planet to collect some precious material. One of the elements (the sex star) of the crew has been dreaming about a place she doesn't know, where she is repeatedly raped (in the dream) by a beast, half human half goat (with a human penis). In the meantime she screws the leader of the mission. On the planet, interesting stuff happens. The planet is controlled by a machine, with power to enable sexual fantasies on its inhabitants, basically placing the crew under the illusion of consented sex with each other. This is made by the computer to enable its avatar, the half man half goat beast, to reach the girl and make her live the dream she'd been having. A final battle happens, the computer is destroyed, they leave the planet.What works fine for me is how we get buried deeper in the layers of the story. We supposedly start in the real universe of those characters. Sex between both of them makes her reveal her (sex) dream and we submerge one level below the reality of the world of film. The distant planet is itself the descent into a different buried world. The dreams induced by the computer, the initial illusion that we have that those are not dreams, that takes us to a different level. And the final doubt on whether the "real" rape was real or yet another computer induced illusion, that's interesting. Sex surrounds everything of course, as the producers need it in order to sell the film. So the premises are clear about what you'll see here. But how it is done can be appreciated, despite the trashy feel of the whole thing.My opinion: 2/5http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

Good movie, very 70s, you can not expect much from a film like this,, Sirpa Lane is an actress of erotic films, a nice body but nothing exceptional savant to a pornographic actress from the body disappears, but the '70s were characterized a small breasts and a simple eroticism. Not demand a lot from these films are light years away from the movies today, the world has changed incredibly. The plot is simple and the actors not extraordinary. And the brunette actress has a single body, has one breast slightly bigger. Be satisfied. Papaya also is not great but at least these films have a certain charm ... Download them again but then again who knows what you pretend not to them.

Wow. Thanks to Severin Films & Ryko Distribution, fans of schlock Italian B grade genre cinema can finally get to revel in the supreme awfulness that is Alfonso Brescia's BEAST IN SPACE, the "adults only" capstone on his Italian STAR WARS ripoff epics: BATTLE OF THE STARS, COSMOS - BATTLE OF THE PLANETS, WAR OF THE ROBOTS and last but not least STAR ODYSSEY. And while they aren't particularly "good" movies they have a certain special something about them that fans of this kind of junk will feed on like a fat guy at Wendy's.The premise behind the quintuplet of films is simple: Take the look of STAR WARS, cheapen it down to the production design standards of community theater, come up with four or five scripts that make provisions for recycling the same sets, costumes, props, actors, and special effects sequences (usually consisting of poorly made models being swung across a star field with odd sound effects), get Marcello Giombini to compose a couple hours of seemingly random yet listenable synthesizer music and audio washes, then edit the results together into segments of about 90 minutes, each with it's own title so that audiences know which installment they are watching. Presto.BEAST IN SPACE can be properly referred to as the porno one, and does indeed exist in both standard and full-blown XXX versions that literally does go where no man has gone before. Even FLESH GORDON looks sophisticated compared to this lovable mess which exists not so much to be "enjoyed" as to be marveled at. You sort of wonder what the heck they were thinking, as the film apparently has no specific intended audience: Since the emphasis often revolves around space couples having space sex in their space beds the film is removed from the kind of juvenile dreck that excused the other four films from the "series". You can't just plop the kids down in front of this and let the laser beams and disco space costumes wile away a rainy afternoon. But since the production design is so schlocky and minimalist, grown-ups used to a higher layer of gloss on their disco era science fiction craptaculars will find the results laughable at best.So that leaves us with the porn, which manages to be even less erotic than such contemporaneous Italian excesses as "Emanuelle in America" or everybody's favorite, PORNO HOLOCAUST, which were at least sick enough to engender a bad laugh every once in a while, and which are about the only things that BEAST IN SPACE can be accurately compared to. Other than it's namesake of course, Walerian Borowczyk's THE BEAST, which apparently was part of the inspiration for the film since we are likewise treated to extended sequences that feature horses copulating. Gee.Just how such a spectacle is worked into an ultra low budget Italian STAR WARS ripoff is just something you'll have to figure out for yourself -- I am more interested in the "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" era disco space fashions, the clunky production design, the absolutely meaningless plotting and over-use of blended color schemes. These films exist as sort of visceral experiences to be witnessed rather than discreet stories to be digested, and if anything can be said about the new DVD versions is that they look spectacular. ALL of the Alfonso Brescia STAR WARS ripoffs deserve this kind of treatment, and it is perhaps a sad testament to the state of today's DVD industry that the only one some reputable company thought worthy of restoring to it's anamorphic glory is the one with the tits.If anything here is yet another culmination of the Italian B grade genre cinema years when they pulled out all the stops of pretending to be anything but sex films and went straight for the gutter. The results will be amusingly refreshing to any fan of European cult cinema, though the non initiated might want to think about trying these out as a rental first. Bring your own towel.4/10