Tuesday, November 12, 2019

SPACE THING (1968) ***


A neglected wife chastises her husband for reading too many sci-fi magazines before bed until he finally puts the books down and gives it to her good.  After she falls asleep, he grabs a magazine and imagines himself as the captain of a spaceship.  He winds up adrift in space and is taken in by an alien vessel populated mostly by sexy women.  They promptly throw him in the brig, but by using visibility pills, he spies on them to study their lovemaking habits.  Eventually, he gets in on the action himself.

The opening scene with the husband and wife goes on forever, but it’s not without its charms.  In fact, it takes such a long time for the opening credits to pop up that it makes me think this scene was added to the picture in post-production to pad out the running time.  (It would be only an hour long without this sequence.)  The credits sequence is very ‘60s as the titles are nothing more than nude women posing with the (fake) names of the cast and crew painted onto their naked frames.  

The direction by Byron (She Freak) Mabe is just inept enough to border on brilliance.  His use of jump cuts and continuity errors, along with the awkward line readings by the cast, and the snazzy sets and funny costumes makes for an entertaining romp.  What’s most important is that despite the technical limitations of the production, he still manages to deliver some steamy softcore action.  The highlight comes when Captain Mother (Cara Peters) makes like an out of this world dominatrix and whips a naughty crew member (Merci Montello) for having sex with a man.  

Once the crew lands on a mysterious planet, the fun begins to dry up.  That’s mostly due to the fact that a lot of precious screen time is spent on them endlessly wandering around and scoping out the planet’s surface.  The ending, unfortunately, sucks too.  Luckily, there’s still enough steamy sex scenes in the third act (including a great lesbian oil massage scene) to make it all worthwhile.  As a bonus, all of them take place outdoors in broad daylight, which adds to the fun.  Even though it gets spottier as it goes along, Space Thing gives you enough sexy sci-fi silliness to keep you engaged.  

AKA:  Erotic Space Thing.  AKA:  Erotic Space Women.

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