The Beast in Space (Alfonso Brescia, 1980)

Having mastered the messy art of procreation, and, not to mention, having learned to live with the shrill consequences that come with such an accomplishment, it only makes sense that humanity would set about destroying itself. And what better way to do so than by scouring the galaxy for rare elements that will help speed up the process. Who knows? You might just catch a glimpse of two horses fucking along the way. Two horses?!? Fucking?!? No, not again. You promised there would be no more references to horses having sex on this blog. First of all, I made no such promise. And secondly, as I've stated numerous times in the past, if the film I'm watching features two horses "getting it on," I have to at least mention it. I mean, to not do so would be dishonest. Besides, the other horse movie and this one are actually related in a strange, "this can't be happening" sort of way. You know how the former was called The Beast? Well, this cinematic gem masquerading as an intergalactic lump of esoteric filth is called The Beast in Space (La Bestia Nello Spazio), and while it does boast many of the same ingredients that were present in Walerian Borowczyk's titillating masterpiece, you should always keep in the back of your mind that this film was directed by an Italian man. In other words: Prepare to set your erections on stun. Lacking the rivers of beastly jizz of its equally equine copulating cousin, this Alfonso Brescia (the Italian man) directed epic manages to take us places Pan Borowczk's pervy mind could only dream of going. Yeah, that's right. Change into your most garish-looking bathrobe, pour yourself a tall glass of Uranus milk, and prepare to a have your mind blown like it's never been blown before. Utilizing the "hardcore insert" with the subtle grace of a poorly made sledgehammer, the space adventure, while borrowing heavily (i.e. shamelessly stealing) from a number of different science fiction sources, is able to maintain our interest by employing a cool synthesizer soundtrack, top-notch faun legs (the fur seemed so lifelike), an exhilarating raygun shootout, and, of course, a fight where two combatants swing swords made out of pure energy.
  

 
Since the majority of the interesting stuff you just mentioned takes place during the film's final third, does that mean we should bypass everything else? Tough call. I'm gonna say, no. You'll definitely want to watch the entire film, if only to hear the synthesizer-heavy, Wendy Carlos-esque music score by Marcello Giombini (a.k.a. Pluto Kennedy), as it's haunting, lush, mysterious, and beautiful. And you'll no doubt want to see Vassili Karis (Private House of the SS) get in touch with his inner Captain Kirk as Captain Larry Madison, a brawling ladies man. You gotta love a man comfortable enough with his sexuality to wear a black sequin cape in public, and, not to mention, order a bottle of "Uranus milk" without giggling. But that's exactly what Captain Larry does was when he enters a bar in the film's opening scene.
  

 
Making eye contact with a blonde woman lounging on a sofa, Captain Larry saunters over to the bar (Uranus milk ain't gonna order itself). While getting his drink, he notices a guy named Juan (Venantino Venantini) is starting to put the moves on the very same woman he spotted when he came in. He's probably thinking to himself: How dare he talk to her. I mean, didn't see me make eye contact with her? The nerve of some people. Anyway, like any sane individual with an inflated sense of self, Captain Larry beats the hell out Juan and a couple of his trade association buddies, and proceeds to sit next to the woman on the sofa. While chatting her up, he soon finds out that her name is Sondra (Sirpa Lane), a woman whose forehead is covered with an inordinate amount of make-up (green, jewel-encrusted lightning bolts).
  

 
Sealing the deal, thanks to his innate suaveness, Captain Larry, after thrashing Juan and his pals one more time for good measure, is upstairs performing peripheral cunnilingus on Sondra like a rock star. While the room they're sort of fornicating in gives off a red hue, their bodies are actually bathed in green. It's an excellent precursor to the red green dichotomy that will be the film's focal point later on. This sequence also gives us our first taste of the "hardcore insert" (a pair of breasts are being fondled that clearly do not belong to Sirpa Lane),and our first look at Sondra's dream. Running through the woods on a distant planet in a torn toga, we see Sondra being chased by a bearded man wearing an embroidered vest. After waking abruptly (no wonder, that vest was horrifying), she tells Captain Larry about her dream, and while he does a pretty good job pretending to give a shit (he even nodded a couple of time and threw in an "and then" at one point), he eventually succumbs to post-ejaculation fatigue and falls asleep, leaving Sondra to ponder the exact meaning of her nightmare.
  

  
Craving the refreshing smoothness that only a cool glass of Uranus milk can provide, Captain Larry is back at the bar trolling for space pussy. While he manages to find both, he also manages to get in another fight with Juan and his associates. After watching him bag yet another babe and beat the living snot out of Juan (though, it was a little harder this time around since his opponent wasn't drunk), I think it's safe to say that Captain Larry is the greatest fictional space commander the nation of Italy has ever produced.
       

  
While drinking, fighting, and fucking are all worthy activities for a mustachioed Italian man in his mid-thirties, a space commander is most at home when he's flying through–you guessed it–space. What I'm trying to say is: Give this man a mission! It just so happens that his superiors have ordered him to the planet Lorigon to retrieve an element called "antalium." The primary ingredient in the production of neutron weapons, the acquisition of antalium is vitally important to the Earth government; so much so, that they have even installed an "antalium detector" on Captain Larry's ship, the MK31.
  

  
Donning his grey flight suit and red space cap, Captain Larry is introduced to his crew. First off, he meets Dr. Green (Umberto Ceriani), the ship's doctor (though, he seem to do more anilingusing than actual doctoring during the mission); Frida Henkel (Marina Hedman), radar operator; Erika Grant (Maria D'Alessandro), computer operator; and Lt. Sondra Richardson (Sirpa Lane), the ship's route officer. Wait a minute. That final crew member looks an awful lot like that chick with the forehead make-up who dreams about bearded men in embroidered vests. Holy crap, it is her. The woman he performed second-rate oral sex on is standing right over there. Of course, Captain Larry doesn't react the way I'm reacting, he merely smirks and goes with the flow.
  

  
If the smirking space commander seems like the kind of guy who's used to having things go is way, that's probably because he is–you know, one of those guys. However, his trademark confidence appears to crack somewhat when he's in outer space. I guess his massive ego is no match for the vast emptiness of space. Either way, Captain Larry is not his usual self after they embark. It doesn't help that Juan shows up. Yeah, that's right, Captain Larry's nemesis from the space station bar circuit is apparently interested in acquiring antalium as well. Commanding two, or maybe just one (the other could have been a hologram), flying saucers, Juan fires a mild laser blast at the MK31 causing them to temporarily spin out of control.
  

  
Detaching a small landing craft from the ship's main module, Captian Larry assembles an away team, after deeming the planet's external environment to be acceptable for human consumption, and head out in search of antalium. A run-in with a giant robot puts a damper on their mission early on, but, as Captain Larry states, "We're here to search for antalium, and, by god, we're gonna find some." In other words, nothing, not even a giant robot, is going stop them from completing their mission.
  

  
You'll notice that Captain Larry and the members of his away team have changed their clothes. Gone are the grey jumpsuits with red caps, they're now wearing what look like green wetsuits. Well, Erika, Frieda, Sondra and Peter's bodies are sheathed green, Captain Larry, being the captain and all, gets to wear a reddish orange wetsuit. While I don't mean to imply that Captain Larry's wearing of a reddish orange outfit, as supposed to a green one, made him appear cooler than his underlings; if anything, he looked like the semi-reluctant spokesman for a new line of carrot juice-based energy drinks geared toward the leather daddy community. What I was trying to say was that this yet another attempt on Captain Larry's part to stand out from the crowd.
  

  
At any rate, after making their way though an underground passageway, the team come upon a strange-looking forest. We're all thinking it, and Sondra tries to point out what we're thinking right from the get-go, but Captain Larry dismisses her assertion that the the lay of the land is eerily similar to the forest that is at the centre of her recurring dream. While most alien landscapes that appear in science fiction movies look like they were filmed on a sound stage or in the arid wastelands located just outside Los Angeles, the birch tree forests of The Beast in Space were genuinely alien in appearance. As everyone knows, the trunk's of most trees are light brown in colour, but birch trees sport white trunks. This gives them a distinct advantage in the weirdness department. Add some smoke effects and some grainy stock footage of two horses having sex, and you have got yourself a convincing alien world on your hands.
  

  
Even though we have seen brief flashes of Sondra's dream throughout the film, the horse intercourse scene is the film's most direct allusion to the original The Beast (the film has had more in common with Star Trek: The Original Series, than Walerian Borowcyk's steamy art-house classic up until this point). Staring at the filly fucking with a trance-like intensity, the away team ponder their pounding for what seemed like an eternity. While Erika and Frieda self-massage a couple of their key erogenous zones, Sondra, Captain Larry and Peter merely stand there with their mouths on the cusp of being agape.
  

 
Previously dismissive of her woolgathering hypothesis, Captain Larry starts to wonder if there isn't something to Sondra's assertion that everything that is taking place is has already occurred in her dream when they happen upon a castle. Entering the massive structure, the team try to stick together, but ultimately, they become divided. You could blame the pleasing shape of Frieda's bum when encased in green space pants, or could just call it case of bad luck, but they end up lost in what looks the set of Barbarella. Waking up in a pillow-laden harem, Juan and Onaf (Claudo Undari), the mysterious man in the embroidered robe, treat the crew to a hardy feast. Removed of their space suits, Sondra is in white, Frieda is in blue and Erika is in pink, Onaf tells his guests that he's eight hundred years old. It's true, he doesn't look a day over forty, but the reason for his longevity has nothing to do with exercise or eating right. He's under the control of Zocor, a super-computer that lives off, you guessed it, anatalium.
 

 
Did you say that Sondra was wearing white? Yeah, I did. Interesting, she is clearly wearing white in her dream. I wonder if... I'm sorry to cut you off, but Sirpa Lane is currently standing in a birch forest in a white toga. And that could only mean one thing? That's right, it's time to get Sirpa moving. Is she about to be chased through the woods by something large and hairy with a charred toadstool swinging between its legs? Does Taija Rae look sexy in blue stockings? In other words, of course she's about to be chased through the woods; that's her modus operandi. Though, I wouldn't compare its member to a "charred toadstool," that's for sure, as it was definitely more conventionally cock-like in appearance than the phallus from The Beast. 
 

   
A giant faun with a massive erection chases Sondra through the smoky underbrush as Marcello Giombini's brilliant synth score percolates in the background. A wily veteran when it comes to running away from creatures with bulky junk, Sirpa Lane displays a churlish elan while trying to avoid the faun's thick tool. You would think that Captain Larry, Peter, Erika, and Frieda might help Sondra out ("hey, stop chasing her, you hirsute motherscratcher!"), but they're too busy fornicating in the woods to give a shit. Well, they're sort of fornicating. You see, while it was obvious that Umberto Ceriani's face was all up in Marina Hedman's ass crack business, the rest of their fornicating was realized via "hardcore inserts."
 

  
With its thrilling ship-to-ship space battles, monster cocks (i.e. a dildo that has spent way too long sitting in the window of an abandoned sex shop), red-eyed robots, dream sequences that revolve around birch trees, grainy horse porn, peripheral anilingus, close-up shots of hairy faun legs, and Uranus milk, The Beast in Space seems to have it all. The key words there being "seems." What this flick needs a laser pistol shootout and a fight with electronic swords. And you know what? Just as I was beginning to lose hope that these two things wouldn't be included, they're both sprung upon us with a playful zeal. While they appear briefly during the cave exploration sequence and also show up as waiters in the harem scene, Zocor's Golden Men, so-called because they have gold skin, don't really make the presence felt until their instructed to stop the visitors from messing with their master's supply of anatalium.
   

  
You haven't lived until you have seen Maria D'Alessandro mow down Golden Men with a raygun. Zapping them with a passive grace, D'Alessandro's Greta calmly dispatches the members of this robotic army of Edgar Winter look-alikes, while, at the same time, looking fabulous. In closing, if you want to reenact the birch tree forest scene from The Beast in Space with me, meet me outside the Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research on any given Tuesday at around 10pm, I'll be the one wielding the giant dildo
 

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The Beast (Walerian Borowczyk, 1975)

The flaps resting on either side of its gaping maw pulsate with a quivering brand of anticipation. Awaiting the inevitable incursion of the shaft-like delivery system bobbing and weaving on the outskirts of its much sought after cranny, it prepares to receive a bountiful dollop of its sticky cargo. After it's finished discharging its seminal consignment all over the walls and floor of its spacious housing, it licks the fortuitous spillage off its besmirched hindquarters. Providing much needed protein (humping is hard work), and, at the same time, thoroughly cleaning the affected area, this impromptu tongue bath proves once and for all that there is in fact post-coital charity in the animal kingdom. I think I better mention—you know, before I go any further—that I'm talking about two horses copulating. In the misogynistic milieu that is human erotica, you never see a man clean up the mess he has made with his mouth or any other part of his body (he just sits there with this self-satisfied smirk on his face as his disease scurries in-between the creases of his victim's justifiably wrinkled brow), but things are different in the equine universe. Even though I didn't really want to watch horses "get it on," I'm glad I was able to learn something new about procreation. And it's not like I'm going out of my way to talk about the mating habits of horses, The Beast (La Bête) gives the viewer little choice in the matter. While it may sound like the kind of scene you might find languishing in exploitative trash like, Emanuelle in America (the movie where a woman famously gives a horse a handjob for no apparent reason), those familiar with the work of Walerian Borowczyk (Immoral Tales) know that he's not the type of director to go galloping haphazardly into the emasculating realm of horse porn. If two horses are seen fucking in the film's opening scene, there's bound to be a logical explanation. What I plan on doing for next couple of paragraphs is to try to understand what the film was attempting to say about human sexually, while, in the same breath, making, what I'm sure will be, a number of astute observations.

When the great Bonnie Pointer sings about there being a beast inside her in "The Beast In Me," she's speaking metaphorically. However, in this film, based on the novel "Lokis" by Prosper Mérimée, the beasts are all too real. Manifesting itself in two separate spheres of existence: one lives in modern day France, and takes shape in the form of a hirsute horse breeder with low self-esteem named Mathurin de l'Esperance (Pierre Benedetti), and the other as a monster with an enormous charred toadstool masquerading as a penis protruding from the centre of its beastly groin during the corset days of Marie Antoinette. Both, it turns out, are about to invade the personal space of Lucy Broadhurst (Lisbeth Hummel), a woman who loves nature, amateur photography, art, and the firm support that only a lively pair of pantyhose can provide. Dreaming of one, engaged to be married to the other, Lucy has no idea what she's gotten her cute little butt into when her Rolls-Royce limousine eventually arrives at the de l'Esperance estate.

Opening with the shot of a bearded man with a cast on his left hand, the aforementioned Mathurin de l'Esperance is tending to his horses. The film doesn't spare us from the sight of a black stallion struggling to mount a black mare, and why should it? There's something inherently funny about watching monkeys, dogs, and turtles trying to fuck, but there's nothing funny about horses when they "get busy." Whereas most animals thrust in a comical fashion, a horse approaches thrusting from a scholarly point-of-view. Gripping the mare's mane with its teeth, the stallion listens for the distinct smacking sound of its beckoning horse vagina, and readies his appropriately massive horse penis. As I've already stated, I found this sequence to be quite fascinating. It not only changed the way I view animal sexuality, it managed to calm my nerves with its Cries and Whispers-style method of depicting a world where horse cum is a valued commodity.

Blackmail and martial tomfoolery is in the air at the de l'Esperance residence, as Pierre de l'Esperance (Guy Tréjan), father of Mathurin, lays the groundwork for his son to marry Lucy Broadhurst, an aristocrat with a rose petal receptive blonde vagina. Scheming with his reluctant brother-in-law Duc Rammendelo De Balo (Marcel Dalio), Pierre invites a priest (Roland Armontel), along with two pansexual choir boys, Théodore (Anna Baldaccini) and Modeste (Thierry Bourdon), to perform a baptism (a ritual that involves getting your head dampened by a man wearing a white baptismal robe) on his adult son. The idea is to purify Mathurin before his bride shows up, and, of course, appease the church; who apparently frown upon marriages that involve people who are unbaptized.

Spiritual cleanliness is one thing, but what about Mathurin's unkempt appearance? This problem is solved with a quick makeover. Removing his hay-ridden clothing and giving him a shave, Pierre tries his best to clean up his slovenly son. Unfortunately, Pierre was unable to remove the unwieldy cast on his left hand (it hasn't healed yet) or to curb his feelings of low self-worth (he thinks he's ugly and unworthy of a woman like Lucy). But as far as makeovers go, I've seen worse. Judging by the frantic nature in which Pierre went about preparing his son, there must be a lot of money at stake. And it's obvious there is [a lot of money at stake] when we see the type of car Lucy and her Aunt Virginia (Elisabeth Kaza) are riding in as they mindlessly drive around the French countryside (their chauffeur has never been to France before) in search of the de l'Esperance estate.

As she's waiting for the chauffeur to remove an impasse in the road, Lucy decides take this opportunity to frolic in the surrounding forest. Grabbing her leopard print fur coat, Lucy proceeds to snap pictures with her camera. While she was lining up shots of things in natural world that peaked her interest, I couldn't help but notice that Lisbeth Hummel had the exact same eyes as me. Staring into her into her eyes was a strange phenomenon for me, as I rarely ever see my eyes represented in movies. Anyway, my identical eye twin displays her playful side as she runs through the dank undergrowth. Taking yet another wrong turn, they somehow end up at the de l'Esperance horse stables, where Lucy takes a quick picture of a horse cock just as it was about to enter a dark passageway. The stuffy Aunt Virginia chides Lucy for snapping this pic, but nothing can curtail the innate curiosity of the grey-eyed beauty. Just for the record: I loved the way Lucy would say, "Aunt Virginia," as every time she said it I would feel a slight twinge in the area where my pants usually dwell.

Finally arriving at their palatial destination, Lucy and Aunt Virginia are greeted by Duc Rammendelo De Balo, and invited into the sitting room (in a moment of accidental cuteness, the de l'Esperance's cat tries to rub its scent on the brim of Virginia's hat). With Pierre still "bathing his son," it's up to De Balo, an elderly gentlemen who gets around with the help of a wheelchair, to entertain their guests. This is when we learn a little more about the de l'Esperance family, particularly, the legend of Romilda de l'Esperance (Sirpa Lane), a woman whose claw mark-covered corset hangs proudly in a glass display case (the family's pride and joy).

Meanwhile, up in one of the bedrooms, Pierre's daughter, Clarisse de l'Esperance (Pascale Rivault), is busy fooling around with Ifany (Hassane Fall), the butler. And when I say, "fooling around," I mean they were trying to fornicate. Since Pierre is stressing out over the appearance of his socially awkward son (you would be "socially awkward," too, if you had to watch horses fuck all day), he's depending on Ifany to carry out menial tasks. Which means, every time Ifany was about to penetrate Clarisse's red badge of cuntly delights, Pierre would call for him.

Now, you would think Ifany would be the one getting his testicles all in a twist over these constant interruptions. Well, you would be wrong. Frustrated over the fact that she's being perpetually denied cock, Clarisse decides instead to grind her genitals against the wooden bed frame in an erotic manner. I know what your thinking, and you're right, she could get a splinter. But painful pussy splinters be damned, Clarisse wants satisfaction, and she wants it now. I'll admit, I lost track after while of how many times Ifany and Clarisse were interrupted. Nevertheless, I do know that Clarisse grinds against her bed frame twice; once while some children (a girl and a boy) were hiding in a closet. Children? Yeah, I have no idea whose children they were. I think they were brought over as props–you know, in order to make the de l'Esperance's seem like a normal family, and what's more normal than children?

What's not normal is the sheer amount of bestiality porn Lucy keeps coming across as she pokes around the house. Of course, it's not lying around in plain sight. But given Lucy's curious nature, she is literally finding it everywhere. Behind paintings, inside books that are clearly not marked "donkey with angel wings fucks muscular man in the ass," the place is rife with the stuff. Oddly turned on by the taboo bounty, Lucy grabs the photos she took in the forest (including the one she snapped at the horse stable), lines them up on her bed, lifts up her pleated skirt, pulls down her black panties and taupe pantyhose simultaneously, and proceeds to jab at her moist undercarriage with the fingers on her right hand.

To no one's surprise, the sight of her husband-to-be screaming, "I chew like a squirrel," over and over again at the dinner table has caused Lucy to wonder if this was all a mistake; I mean, talk about a terrible first impression. Doing what most women would do in this situation, Lucy puts on a silky, gossamer robe, admire the way it clings to her body, and goes to bed. Suddenly, we're transported to a lush field of grass containing one sheep and one lamb. The reason the air over the field is filled with harpsichord music is because Romilda de l'Esperance, the woman whose portrait and corset are proudly displayed in the de l'Esperance sitting room, is playing one in a nearby building. Wearing a blonde wig and a blue gown (one with splashes of white here and there), Romilda runs into to woods when she discovers that the smaller of the two lambs has wandered off. It would seem, to quote to popular nursery rhyme, that "Little Bo Peep has lost of her sheep"–well, at least one of them, anyway.

I won't lie. This is what I've been waiting for. The reason I endured the horse sex, the bed frame gratification, and the implied pedophilia (the priest was a little too chummy with those choir boys), was to see the gorgeous Sirpa Lane employ her first-rate gasp face in a wooded setting. And does she deliver the gasping goods. Realizing that she is not alone (the sound of something growling is a dead giveaway), Romilda flees when she sees this hairy creature lurking behind a tree. Clawing at her body, Romilda struggles to remain clothed. The beast is tearing away her frilly garments (the branches of the trees along the way are littered with her clothing), as it chases her through the woods. Luckily, it takes awhile for the beast to remove everything (her ensemble contains many layers). Eventually reduced to nothing but a corset, one blue shoe, a pair of white socks, and her wig, Romilda decides to climb a tree.

Nursing a scrape on her left thigh (which is a marvel of Finnish engineering), Romilda looses her balance and finds herself dangling from one of the tree's branches. The sight of her legs flailing gets the beast excited (the loosened drawstring of her corset starts to slap against her anus with every panicked kick). With the beast's face lapping up the nonexistent contents of her rarefied clit, and her sock-covered feet slamming against his fully erect charred toadstool penis (her other shoe falls off as a result of this untoward cock kicking), Romilda has been inadvertently placed in a situation that is beyond her control. As she tires, her foot-banging slowly morphs into a foot-job, which causes Romilda's sock-covered feet to resemble the horse vagina we saw during the film's opening scene the longer she dangles.

After it ejects a veritable deluge of gooey liquid all over her sock-covered feet (the sock on her right foot is dirtier than the sock on her left foot since it's been shoeless for a longer period of time), Romilda finally falls the ground (loosing her wig in the process). As the beast is rubbing her wig against his charred toadstool, Romilda makes a run for it. You don't have to admire the athleticism the ethereal Sirpa Lane displays as she runs scantily clad through the woods, but it wouldn't hurt if you did. Sadly, or, happily, depending on your outlook on life, the beast catches up with her and causes her to twitch with tongue-exposing ecstasy as he proceeds to plow into her with a mere pittance of the contents connected to his scorched crotch.

A hauntingly undignified, yet, at the same time, strangely elegant, examination of sexuality, Walerian Borowczyk's farcical fairy tale will leave you fully enriched. Sure, you might not be able to look at horses, bed frames, men with beards, corsets, socks, toadstools (charred or otherwise), or rose petals the same way ever again. But then again, looking at stuff is so overrated. The perfect film for deviants who want to feel as if they're watching a work of art–as supposed to an insipid pile of worthless trash–The Beast is pompous erotica at its finest. Oh, and remember kids, bestiality etchings mostly come out at night...mostly.

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