Barbarella (1968) on Netflix

PG19681h 38mAdventure Comedy Fantasy

Earth's president sends Barbarella to the Tau Ceti system to find Durand Durand, who built the positronic ray. She crash-lands on the sixteenth planet and the Catchman Mark Hand rescues her.

Netflix3.0/5
IMDb5.9/1041,273 votes
Rotten Tomatoes75%

Trailer

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Plot summary

Space adventurer Barbarella serves the United Earth government, and the planet's president gives her a mission in the Tau Ceti planetary system. She must bring back Durand Durand, the inventor of a laser-powered weapon called the positronic ray, which Earth's leaders worry could cause mass destruction. Her ship crashes on Tau Ceti's sixteenth planet, and two children knock her out and carry her to a ruined spaceship, where they bind her and attack her with mechanical dolls that have razor-sharp teeth. Mark Hand, a Catchman who patrols the ice searching for straying children, rescues her and tells her Durand has gone to Sogo. He offers to carry her to her ship aboard his ice boat, and asks her to sleep with him; on Earth, people take pills instead of touching, but she agrees.

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Barbarella (1968)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

For the scene of Barbarella attacked by hummingbirds, budgerigars were used because it was illegal to ship hummingbirds overseas; film critic Roger Ebert wrote that the fan used to blow them at Fonda left the birds losing control over natural body functions, and after two weeks she got a fever and was hospitalized.
For the scenes involving the Excessive Pleasure Machine, Fonda and Milo O'Shea were not told about the explosions, since the prop was rigged with flares and smoke bombs and Vadim wanted them to look natural; Fonda was frightened to death and O'Shea was convinced she was really being electrocuted.
Several actresses were approached before Jane Fonda was cast as Barbarella: Brigitte Bardot, who was not interested in a sexualized role, Virna Lisi, who turned it down for the same reason, and Sophia Loren, who was pregnant.
English new wave band Duran Duran took their name from the film's antagonist, later released the 1984 concert film Arena (An Absurd Notion) with Milo O'Shea reprising his role from Barbarella, and drew on the film again for their 1997 song "Electric Barbarella".
Charles B. Griffith said he did uncredited work on the script, that the production team hired fourteen other writers after Southern before they got to him, and that he added the concept that violence had not existed for thousands of years, making Barbarella very clumsy all through the picture.
Barbarella received a "condemned" rating from the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures, which called it a "sick, heavy-handed fantasy with nudity and graphic representations of sadism" and criticized the Production Code Administration for approving it.
The musical duo Matmos and the British lighting company Mathmos both took their name from the evil lake of sentient lava under the city of Sogo in the film.