Product Details

• Actors: Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, Anita Pallenberg, Milo O'Shea, Marcel Marceau
• Directors: Roger Vadim
• Writers: Roger Vadim, Brian Degas, Claude Brulé, Clement Biddle Wood, Jean-Claude Forest
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Widescreen
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
• Dubbed: English, French
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: Paramount
• DVD Release Date: June 22, 1999
• Run Time: 98 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (200 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00000IREA
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #31,636 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Jane Fonda's memorable, zero-gravity striptease during the opening credits of this 1968 Roger Vadim movie is the closest the film comes to a liberated marriage of wit and sex. Based on a French comic strip, the story concerns the adventures of a 41st-century woman, who pretty much gets it on with whomever asks. The sci-fi sets were pretty interesting at the time, though they look rather anachronistic now. Appreciated today mostly as a camp classic, the movie is actually more trying than anything else. --Tom Keogh

Product Description

In the far future, a highly sexual woman is tasked with finding and stopping the evil Durand-Durand. Along the way she encounters various unusual people.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

158 of 168 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An ANGEL is LOVE! August 13, 2003

By Brett D. Cullum VINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

You want classic Sci Fi with visionary special effects and mind-bending themes? Check out STAR WARS or 2001! You want a zero gravity striptease, costumes that fall off at a moment's notice, and a space craft with wall to wall shag carpeting traveling through a lava lamp? BARBARELLA fits the bill! This is the widescreen DVD version with no edits. Although I have heard rumors of a more racy cut somewhere out there, this is not the PG rerelease from the 70s. See the movie Jane Fonda wants you to forget! Too bad because she's sexy, funny, and beautiful here. Groove to the soundtrack of Phil Spector rip-offs, watch in awe as she seduces ... well... everyone in the film (incuding a female tyrant with a horn!). But still, it's pretty tame and innocent fun. I watch this when I want to be in a good mood. It's silly, fluffy fun! A pink bunny if you will.

58 of 63 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Barbarella Psychadella June 22, 2001

By "kidjones"

Format:DVD

This film, along with other stunning classics such as "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," are sure proof that the age of really, really bad yet good films is behind us. Set in the 41st Century, the hypersexual Barbarella goes in search of the evil renegade scientist Duran Duran and manages to stumble across what must be the grooviest planet this side of "Vegas in Space." In her quest to find Duran Duran ("Pardon me, but do you know Duran Duran?"), Barbarella manages to shag half the planet and pique the prurient interest of the evil, yet uber-sensual bisexual queen ("hello, my pretty, pretty"). After demolishing the amazing Orgasmatron and getting herself locked into the queen's funky chamber of dreams, Barbarella saves the day with a bubble of goodness and some help from her blind angel friend Pygor. The unbelievably bad acting in this film is very well counterbalanced by the fabulous Pucciesque fun fur sets and amazing special effects (i.e. Everytime Barbarella has an orgasm her hair instantaneously perms itself!) It's impossible, given our current climate of cynicism, to produce good quality camp like this today. All attempts to reproduce a movie this overwhelmingly bad would just have to fail. Yet, I cannot recommend this film highly enough - run, do not walk, to see it.

43 of 47 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars BARBARELLA PSYCHEDELLA..... October 12, 2002

By Mark Norvell

Format:DVD

Roger Vadim's sexy sci-fi opus starring his then wife Jane Fonda as the outer space adventuress Barbarella opens with the now famous strip-tease scene over the opening credits. Fonda peels out of her space suit accompanied by the sexy sixties pop theme song. She is totally nude but discretely covered here and there by her arm or a letter from the credits. You can still see her breasts anyway. Based on a notorious French comic strip character, this futuristic saga is more of a fetishistic ode by Vadim to Fonda's kittenish sexuality. Through all of her sexual escapades throughout the film, he focuses (like he did with Bardot) on her beauty and body whether nude or clad in skimpy "futuristic" costumes. What stuns me is this got a "PG" on DVD. It's too raunchy for a "PG". Parents should be cautioned before letting their kids see this. Although, older boys will find it a turn on like their fathers did---but it's very campy and a lot of the humor will be lost on today's generation. Still, it's a nice time capsule for what the sixties had going on and Fonda is beautiful.

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars From a Galaxy Far, Far Away August 7, 2008

By B. Wells

Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase

I can remember standing in a long line to get in to see this movie back in 1968, the year it was originally released. I was 12 years old, and my dad had dropped off me and my best friend, thinking that we were going to watch another juvenille sci-fi extravaganza, for which I had developed an extreme fondness. It was the dead of winter and there was snow falling, but we perservered, having heard that we would have the opportunity to see Jane Fonda buck naked, and, above all else, we wanted to be the first in our school to lay claim to that dubious achievement. However, the lady in the ticket booth had other ideas. Although we were 12 years old, we looked no older than 9 or 10, which didn't matter anyway, since we needed to be 16 to get into the movie. So, we didn't see "Barbarella", or Jane Fonda's flaunted nudity, and my father had to immediately turn around and make an 18 mile drive back to pick us up in falling snow, with my mom lecturing him, loudly, all the way home about "parental responsibility" and "pornography". And so it was that, 40 years later, give or take, I decided to order "Barbarella" from Amazon and find out what the fuss was all about and why I couldn't get into see this movie back when it first came out.

Well, for starters, there is nudity, for sure, but it's often fleeting and almost demure. There are breasts, a glimpse of buttocks, and...wait...was that what it looked like? Hard to tell and, at this stage, even harder to care. Jane looks good in the title role and she's funny; "Barbarella" may have been the last time that she was allowed to demonstrate any comic ability in a film for almost a decade. Sure, she was sensational in "Klute", perfection in "Julia" and "Coming Home", but she was a lot more fun in "Barbarella"....

There's not much plot worth writing about. Barbarella is a sort of agent for the planet Earth, who drifts through the universe correcting wrongs and fighting evildoers. She travels in an outrageous spaceship driven by a computer that talks to her (not unlike HAL in "2001"). The always watchable David Hemmings is on hand as handsome Dildano, with whom she engages in a literal hand-to-hand sex ritual; hirsute Ugo Tognazzi engages her the old-fashioned way, leaving her sated and singing. And John Phillip Law is both blind and blonde as the angel Pygar, who manages to offend the Black Queen (Anita Pallenberg) by rebuffing her sexual advances, proclaiming, "An angel doesn't make love, an angel is love."

It's all very silly and tastefully lewd, on a sophomoric, 60's-era, "Tonight Show" level (and don't get me wrong, I loved Johnny Carson and my dad was the "Tonight Show's" biggest fan). Despite the presence of some very big names of the time, it doesn't add up to much, and a certain degree of tedium creeps in after awhile. Still, the acting is tongue-in-cheek, the sets are wacky and colorful, and there is a sexy innocence about the whole enterprise that strikes me as being very much in context with the times; in that respect, though worlds apart, Antonioni's "Blow Up" has some of that same carefree attitude. Director Roger Vadim (Fonda's then-husband) seems to embrace the spirit of the '60's without ever imbuing his film with much substance.

The quality of this DVD seems variable, for some strange reason. There are scenes where the colors are beautiful and vibrant, and suddenly the scene is transformed into a muddy murk, before the vibrancy just as suddenly returns. It doesn't really interfere with the enjoyment of the film; "Barbarella" is much too slight to be affected by minor color distortions.

Was it worth waiting 40 years to see? For me, the answer is yes, but mainly as a curiosity piece more than anything. It's not great cinema by any means, but it holds a nostalgic place in my mind of a time that is so radically different from the world we're currently living in, as to seem almost inconceivable. "Barbarella" is my own proof that 1968 did, indeed, exist, that it wasn't a beautiful fable where people still had audacious dreams and the courage to pursue their beliefs. Read more ›

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars If you like Batman the Movie you'll love this. September 15, 2002

By A Customer

Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase

Batmania swept America and Hollywood stars like Shelly Winters and Tallulah Bankhead were crawling all over each other to be part of the craze.Dino De Laurentiis and/or Roger Vadim picked up the rights to the French Comic book Barbarella for Vadim's wife, Jane Fonda and rode the wave.It worked "Henry's Little Girl Jane" as Life Magazine put it, made the cover as Barbarella.Unlike Batman , Barbarella wasn't marketed to kids.It's as much French Farce as it is a Camp Classic.Unlike Flesh Gordon it had no intentions of crossing the line to become a "porno" film with FX.All the "bad" stuff that makes it good, mentioned in other reviews, was intentional. The audience is let in on the joke from the start. The opening lyric of the title song refers to an American Comic Book heroine "You're a wonder Wonder Woman" and then proceeds to rhyme Barbarella with Psychedela in the chorus.Jane's performance clearly shows she's in on the joke.The death traps are very "Batman".Sure it's heavily influenced by the Sixties Pop Culture but, it in turn influenced American Pop Culture for years. The character Vampirella, and the band Duran Duran didn't come by those names by coincidence.It's certainly more fondly remembered and in demand than Vadim/Fonda's "The Game Is Over".Check out how many people even bothered to review that one.This one merits repeat viewings because it's fun.