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Released by: Vinegar Syndrome
Released on: January 31st, 2023.
Director: Alfonso Brescia (as Al Bradley)
Cast: Sirpa Lane, Vassilli Karis, Lucio Rosato, Robert Hundar, Venantino Venantini
Year: 1981
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The Beast In Space – Movie Review:
Finnish sexpot Sirpa Lane rose to some cult prominence in 1975 when Walerian Borowczyk cast her as the female lead in his truly odd arthouse-sexploitation Sasquatch smut-fest, The Beast. Unfortunately, her career never really took off after that. She appeared in Nazi Love Camp 27 and Papaya: Love Goddess Of The Cannibals but she never really hit the big time and in 1999 she passed away from AIDS. It's quite sad when you consider that influential French director Roger Vadim, who cast her in Charlotte in 1974, considered her the 'next Bardot.' Regardless, in 1980 she starred in Alfonso Brescia's 'unofficial sequel' (read: knock off) to Borowczyk's classic La Bete, the ultra-campy and uber trashy The Beast In Space.
Captain Larry (hairy Vassili Karis of Scalps) of the Star Fleet hits the local watering hole and strikes up a talk with a strange blonde woman named Sondra (Lane). Sadly, a cantankerous merchant named Juan Cardaoso had eyes for her first and the pair gets into a brawl with Larry emerging the victor. He takes Sondra home and has sex with her. The next day is told that a vial he swiped from Juan contained a rare and valuable space mineral.
The Star Fleet powers that be set Captain Larry up with a top notch crew and a cool space ship and send them off to some strange planet to find more of that mineral. Guess who is in Larry's crew? Sondra! Oh, and Sondra has a recurring dream where she runs through the woods in a white dress and is ravaged by a hairy guy in a fancy shirt. They arrive on the planet and after watching a pair of space horses fuck (causing the ladies to rub their mounds and suck their fingers) they soon meet up with the hairy guy Sondra's dream. He tells them that the planet is controlled by a giant super robot and that this robot has the only known amounts left of the space mineral that they need.
Juan Cardoso and Captain Larry strike up some friendly competition with one another. Before you know it, Larry and his brave, horny crew are blasting strange sounding lasers at guys covered in gold body paint and guys are running around with lightsabers in an attempt to get the space mineral and make it back home safe and sound. The whole thing is fucking bonkers.
Note that both a soft and a XXX version of this movie exist, and Vinegar Syndrome, by way of their Peek-A-Rama line of adult films, has put out the XXX version. So what about this variant of Alfonso 'Al Bradley' Brescia's unofficial sequel to Walerian Borowczyk's The Beast? The differences between this version and the unrated version would seem to lay completely in the sex scenes. Whereas the standard version, previously released on DVD only from Severin Films back in 2008, plays it safe and avoids and penetration shots, the XXX is, well, a XXX version. As such, it doesn't shy away from a little of the old in and out like its more conservative sibling. It should be noted, however, that the hardcore material contained in this version of the film is shot with other actors - it's painfully obvious that the humpy bits in the movie use other performers than those we see in the standard cut.
The XXX insertions don't really help the picture much, though they do add a little more sleaze to an already remarkably sleazy film. They're not particularly erotic and work more because of their curiosity value rather than for their artistic merits. The sex scenes all look to have been done with the same male and female performer, which adds some comedic value to scenes where the various couples who get it on in the film all appear to have identical bodies!
The Beast In Space – Blu-ray Review:
The Beast In Space debuts on Blu-ray in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer taken from a new 2k scan of the original 16mm negative and framed at 1.85.1 widescreen. This is a pretty gritty, grainy looking movie, and it’s soft in comparison to a lot of other movies, but a quick look at the screen caps below compared to the screen caps here show a pretty substantial uptick in detail in pretty much every scene. Colors are handled well and look quite nice and we get good black levels as well. There aren’t any issues with mpeg compression artifacts and the consistent, albeit natural, grain that is present in every frame shows that there aren’t any issues with overzealous noise reduction.
The Italian language 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono track, which comes with optional English subtitles, sounds fine, aside from some audible sibilance in a few scenes. The score, which is appropriately bizarre, sounds pretty solid and the sound effects have a bit of minor punch to them. The levels are balanced well-enough.
As far as extras go, Space Amnesia is an interview with actor Vassili Karis running ten minutes. He speaks here about how he knew the director and what he was like, and he questions why he made this movie in the first place. He doesn't remember much about the making of the movie but he's pretty blunt about the fact that he thinks the movie itself is horrible and that he made low budget sci-fi movies because he wanted the money. This piece is pretty funny, even if we don't learn much about the movie from it.
Up next is Space Lover, an interview with actor Lucio Rosato that clocks in at twenty-three minutes. He gives us plenty of background info and details on how he got into acting, noting some of the more interesting aspects of his early career. He talks about making movies in Italy and in New York City, doing live theater and then eventually to his appearance in The Beast In Space. He talks about the influence of the Borowcyzk film, some of the locations, shooting the sex scenes, how much fun he had during the shoot and some of the sets that were built for the movie. He also talks about the costumes in the movie, what the director was like to work with, how the XXX inserts were added afterwards and how the main cast didn't participate in the hardcore scenes, how Marina went on to an actual porno movie career after this film, how Sirpa Lane was to work with as well as what Venantino Venantini was like and not getting paid very much to make this movie.
Lastly, we get Space Oddity, a nine minute interview with Venantino Venantini shot in 2017 where he talks about working with Brescia, describing him as one of a kind, how he was a good director, getting the movie made despite having a low budget and some of the crew not really understanding how to make the effects work. He also talks about the sex scenes in the movie, shooting on location and in a studio depending on the scene, working with Sirpa Lane, his work as a painter, living in New York City for a while and more.
Menus and chapter selection options are also included, but no trailer for the film is found on the disc.
This release also comes packaged with some very cool reversible cover art. The first 4,000 copies ordered directly from Vinegar Syndrome’s website will also include a very slick, embossed, limited edition slipcover designed by Earl Kessler Jr. that is quite nice.
The Beast In Space - The Final Word:
Deliriously trashy and way too unintentionally hilarious, The Best In Space is about as erotic as a dead cat but that said, it's also astonishingly funny for all the wrong reasons. If you've ever wondered what it'd be like if Borowczyk's The Beast met Cozzi's Starcrash, this film is for you, and the Blu-ray release from Vinegar Syndrome is a pretty solid way to experience it, with a nice presentation and a few pretty interesting interviews included in the extra features section.