Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity

The Cleavage Of Zaroff

Slave Girls From
Beyond Infinity
USA 1987
Directed by Ken Dixon
88 Films DVD Region 2

It seems strange to me that a prestige label like 88 Films, no less, would release this movie in an open matte 4:3 aspect ratio but, at least I know I’m gaining picture in that method of transfer, rather than losing the sides. As a result of this decision, I made a mental note to be kind if I saw any camera booms entering the shots from the top, because that can often occur in open matte transfers, when extra picture information the film maker didn’t expect you to be able to see makes its way into the frame.

I don’t know what it was that drew me to watch Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity... maybe a sense of curiosity about Buzz Lightyear’s famous catch phrase. Possibly the prospect of seeing a finely crafted science fiction epic to stimulate my brain with its twisty, philosophical bent. Or maybe it was the vaguely ridiculous title coupled with cover art of scantily clad ladies with huge, photogenic features wielding unfeasibly large guns and being menaced by strange aliens and robots... all hovering above the strap line, “Big Movie. Big Production. Big Girls.” But mostly it was probably the ridiculously cheap asking price when I ordered it from Amazon four years ago (something which has since inflated to a figure close to the Infinity mentioned in the title, due to its out of print status).

We start off with a title sequence with some actually quite wonderful music composed by someone called Carl Dante. Nice music which is totally and deliberately reminiscent of Basil Poledouris’ amazing score for Conan The Barbarian, for sure, due to it’s orchestration. It even contains a little hint of Jerry Goldsmith’s klingon battle music from Star Trek The Motion Picture in it too and I have to wonder if those composers’ music was used as a temp track to rough cut the picture with.

The film continues quite strongly, it has to be said, with a prologue where a top heavy, scantily clad young vixen is being chased through a jungle by a not unimpressive, given the budget, alien monster with a gun wired to its arm. It closes in on the girl but, just before it kills her due to its ‘non-cleavage appreciating alien ways’, a man shoots it with his miniature laser crossbow and the woman is saved... or is she? Probably not as we can probably conclude from what this guy gets up to later in the film.

Meanwhile, on a starship, two chained slave girls called Daria (played by Elizabeth Kaitan) and Tisa (played by Cindy Beal)... who have absolutely no back story at all, I should point out... break loose from their chains through brute force and then, in the words of one, “reverse the polarity of their cuffs.” Hmm... where have I heard something like that before? They overpower their dumb guards and somehow manage to steal a smaller spaceship from inside the larger spaceship, winning their freedom. Their celebrations are short lived though, due to there being no inhabited planets nearby. Well, none, that is, apart from the ‘planetoid’ that pops up on some kind of beacon. They go to investigate and crash their ship on said planetoid. Then they find a castle with their new host Zed (played by Don Scribner), his two lethal robot servants and his other two guests... brother and sister Rik and Shala, played by Carl Horner and Brinke Stevens. However, after sneaking about in the castle after dark (plus some hot softcore sex action between Daria and Rick), Zed’s sinister secret is out and after Rik is killed on a hunt, the three women are released into the surrounding jungle and its ‘phantom zone’ filled with various zombies, giant spider webs (no spiders though) and the big alien wielding the gun from the start of the picture.

It turns out, you see, that Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity is actually a cleavaged up, busty remake of The Most Dangerous Game (aka The Hounds Of Zaroff)... a film which has been remade many times over the years, most recently as The Hunt (reviewed here). And, actually it’s not a terribly made film but the writing is very bizarre. In that it’s kind of rubbish and elabourate and unnatural sounding while, at the same time, you get a sense that it’s supposed to be this bad and that’s all just part of the writer’s plan. Which actually makes the film a lot of fun in the ‘so bad it’s good’ stakes, it has to be said. So yeah, a typical dialogue exchange might be, when Daria burns her hand getting them out of their cell on the slave ship at the start of the movie and, when Tisa asks if she’s alright, she quips back... “A little well done, perhaps.” And the villain is a little too much like he’s a schoolboy philosopher in some respects, coming out with lines like... “I’ve always found the female of the species to be the greatest challenge... far more crafty and cunning than their male counterparts.”

Also, although the special effects look quite low tech in some ways, they’re actually not too terrible either although, there are a few technical flaws in the movie. Such as when one of the gals hits an alien over the head with a big stick. For some reason not made very clear in any way, shape of form, this causes the alien to just explode out of existence... however, when he does this, an entire wall wobbles like you’re watching a movie equivalent of an old BBC episode of Blake’s 7. So, yeah, that’s not so good. And there are other things in the movie that don’t really make sense... like when Tisa goes back to look for a map dropped on the jungle floor because her cleavage wasn’t quite adequate to hold it in her bikini top by itself (should have given it to Daria). When she backtracks to look for the map, she is looking all around her cautiously without even once looking at the ground where, you know, you might think a dropped map may be located (she finds it eventually).

And, yeah, that’s mostly everything I want to say about this movie. Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity isn’t exactly high art but it’s an entertaining enough diversion for what it is and maybe that’s enough for a Saturday night. Probably better as a collective ‘movie night in with friends and booze’ experience, I suspect. The UK version of the film from 88 Films is probably the best version to get in terms of the DVD as the American disc is apparently similarly presented in an open matte transfer.

However, the UK disc wins out, kinda, by having an accompanying feature included called... hmm, okay... Famous T&A. This is literally a collection of badly cropped 4:3 clips of various actresses such as Ornella Muti, Ursula Andress, Brigitte Bardot and various others, in examples of their nude scenes. Starting off with Sybil Danning doing a reverse strip into a costume, she hosts the entire thing dressed as a Roman Gladiatrix and reading ridiculously written lines about the various actresses bodies over the course of the hour and a quarter. And I do mean reading. You can see she’s reading from cards in certain scenes for sure. Now, I would normally be up for something this rubbish and pseudo-sexy but, honestly, the 4:3 aspect ratio on this was a real turn off for me. If I want to watch various stars taking their clothes off, then I want to be seeing them properly framed in the correct aspect ratio, thank you very much. I mention this bonus film in passing here purely because I know some people will have some nostalgia for this kind of bosomy showcase, which may remind them of the old celebrity episode of Electric Blue from the 1980s. Ultimately though, it’s not worth purchasing the disc for this special feature alone... although I could understand why you may be tempted.