Italy- 1980
Director - Alfonso Brescia
Severin Films, 2008, DVD
Run Time - 1 hour, 32 minutes
I couldn't help but watch
Alfonso Brescia's Beast In Space after having my mind totally exploded by his Trilogy of Pain. I wish I could go back and watch them again for the first time and feel violated all over again. That is why these days I watch whatever other Brescia trash I come across. I no longer feel surprised, but I want to recreate that feeling of shock and awe. The last one I found entirely by accident, realizing that
Amazons vs. Supermen was a Brescia film only because the music had been recycled, and because it was such a unique flavor of terrible. I bought it because it was co-produced by the
Shaw Bros. Studio and I was hoping for some bizarre kung-fu. What I got was a godawful emotional hangover.
I kindof found this one in the same way except that I spotted Brescia's pseudonym, "Al Bradley" in the opening credits.
Beast In Space is a more "modern" spin on the French arthouse bestiality porno
La Bete (
The Beast, 1975). In Brescia's "space" version the Beast is a guy with goat legs (pants with hair glued on), ostensibly a satyr with a giant cock and a preference for human astronaut women. The rest of the plot is a barely connected mess of recycled garbage from the Trilogy, which to be perfectly honest was pretty much just recycling itself already.
This has the exact same feel as the Trilogy, foggy ethereal, and very low budget with an underlying foundation of swinger innuendo. The difference of course is that in this case, they follow through on the innuendo. There is an X rated version of
Beast In Space, but I watched the soft version. Plain old grinding is fine with me, I have a hard time with the clinical body-double penetration shots typical of this era and genre, they're gross. (Like
Thriller: A Cruel Picture) But it leaves me wondering if there are dirty versions of the Trilogy. Sleaze certainly fits the atmosphere set in those earlier films (and copied in this film), and it seems likely that the feel of the film, regardless of the plot/context should give us an indication of the film-makers true passion. Either Brescia's spaceships look like cheap nightclubs, or cheap nightclubs look like Brescia's spaceships. For all intents and purposes, they're the same thing.
Witness if you dare my intoxicated, stream of consciousness Brescia deflowering with the Trilogy of Pain. You've been warned:
Cosmos: War of the Planets
Star Odessey
War of the Robots
The DVD cover of the hardcore version.
This has the exact same feel as the Trilogy, foggy ethereal, and very low budget with an underlying foundation of swinger innuendo. The difference of course is that in this case, they follow through on the innuendo. There is an X rated version of Beast In Space, but I watched the soft version. Plain old grinding is fine with me, I have a hard time with the clinical body-double penetration shots typical of this era and genre, they're gross. (Like Thriller: A Cruel Picture) But it leaves me wondering if there are dirty versions of the Trilogy. Sleaze certainly fits the atmosphere set in those earlier films (and copied in this film), and it seems likely that the feel of the film, regardless of the plot/context should give us an indication of the film-makers true passion. Either Brescia's spaceships look like cheap nightclubs, or cheap nightclubs look like Brescia's spaceships. For all intents and purposes, they're the same thing.
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