We have talked in the past about
my dislike (okay, let’s call it “hatred”) of shaky cam filmmaking
techniques. Don’t worry; we’re not going
to rehash that old saw today. Today’s
peccadillo is psychedelia in cinema. In
the 1960s, the youth culture was fed up with just about everything; war,
consumerism, and all of the inequities of their parents’ society (real or
perceived). In the cause of opening up
their minds, there was a growing trend in the use of psychedelic drugs. These drugs can create a non sequiturial
experience, and people felt that, via their various trips, they were being told
the secrets to all of life and the universe (though I’m sure other people just
relished the opportunity to escape from reality). This experience, however, does not (in my
opinion) usually make for good cinema.
The typical “trip” scene in a film from the late 60s on would consist of
smash cuts to any variety of visual (the less coherent, the better), shots that
look like the inside of a lava lamp, shots bled out with swirling colored
lighting gels, shots of naked (they’re more likely than not covered in body
paintings that make jailhouse tattoos look like the work of Goya but naked,
nevertheless) hippies dancing and grooving out to the sitar-heavy score, and so
on. It all irritates the living hell out
of me. These scenes are ugly, vapid, and
most ironic of all, clichéd (and I’m sure they have felt that way even from the
very first). I’m sure I’m being
irrational about this to some extent, but it takes two to tango, as they
say. Some people get a headache from
strobe lights. I get a headache from
head trip scenes.
Secret Agent James (Robin Hawdon)
comes home to his hip, attic pad only to find sexy secretary Ann (Yutte Stensgaard)
cooking up a little coq au vin. After a bit
of necking, Ann decides to grill Agent Word (as in “James’ Word is his Bond,”
get it?) about his last mission in Scotland.
She decides to play strip poker for the information (yes, really), but eventually
she winds up just banging him, after which James is more than happy to start
giving up the goods (one wonders how he’d hold up under adverse
conditions). It seems Major Bourdon (James Robertson
Justice) has been at war with the nation (Planet? Island?
Dimension?) of Angvia for some time, and he wants to conquer the
civilization, which is populated entirely by women and led by the titular Zeta
(Dawn Addams). ‘Nuff said.
Michael Cort’s Zeta One (aka The Love
Factor) was produced under the auspices of Tony Tenser’s Tigon British Film
Productions banner. Generally speaking
(and I am no expert, though I know of at least one book in regards to the
subject – Beasts In The Cellar by
John Hamilton – though I can’t attest to its quality), the studio produced
cheap Horror and Sexploitation films (though I believe there were one or two
more serious films to come out of the company) to compete with the classier
(and better-produced) output of Hammer Films.
Of Tigon’s total body of work, I would think that film fans are most
familiar with Michael Reeves’ great Witchfinder
General, and rightfully so.
Sexploitation Comedies like this one (Zeta One, not Witchfinder
General) are the type of affairs which play it fast and loose with whatever
trends are popular at the moment, and they are generally pretty sloppy in
execution. This movie is no
exception. The opening twenty-plus
minutes of the film, which should either draw us into some type of story or, at
the absolute minimum, do something to titillate the viewer (the old “Boobs Or
Blood Every Ten Minutes” tenet) does neither.
Instead, we get a little bit of teasing and one of the longest card game
scenes I’ve ever witnessed (minus the tension of, say, Martin Campbell’s Casino Royale). Worse than that, once the strip poker game
does start to actually get interesting, the editing suddenly switches to a lame
montage style and drops the viewer back off at square one, exhausted and
exasperated. We have learned next to
nothing, and it feels distinctly like our time has been wasted, despite what
female flesh is on display.
The rest of the film plays out as
a flashback, but even the framing device of the film is hamfisted and
sloppy. James and Ann spend minutes
doling out exposition, rather than setting up the story quickly and allowing
the rest of the film to play out of its own volition. The editing of the remainder of Zeta One is just as horrid. Outside of the basic concept, the scenes
don’t connect together in any coherent way (and not that this endorses the
psychedelic angle; it’s simply poor filmmaking and extremely irritating). Scenes happen (a few are even sort of
intriguing), but they don’t advance anything in the film. They just take up time and move on (kind of
like a feature length version of The
Benny Hill Show, without the sophistication). The key question that has to be asked then
is, “does it matter in this context?” Isn’t
a film like this better off not making one whit of sense? Wouldn’t having something like a plot just
get in the way of checking out nekkid chicks?
Isn’t asking for more from a film like this just being a bit
snobby? Perhaps. But I’ve seen hardcore porn that had more of
a story than this movie, for good or ill, and better made porn, at that.
The big draw to the film, of
course, is the very concept of Angvia. A
place populated entirely by women is something straight out of the early pulps,
and for us comic book fans, we’re familiar with it from Wonder Woman’s Themyscira/Paradise
Island (Zeta even looks similar to that comics’ Hippolyta), and let’s not
forget the fabled Amazonian culture of warrior women. The Sapphic connotations are self-evident,
and William Moulton Marston’s penchant for bondage in the early Wonder Woman
books is hinted at in the Angvian warriors’ “uniforms,” which consist largely
of purple lengths of rope and pasties.
Of course, on the opposite side are Bourdon and his male cronies (one of
whom is named Swyne and played by skinny nebbish Charles Hawtrey). The two factions are opposites in almost
every way (aside from the obvious). The
men are crude and warlike (Bourdon even has an “interrogation room,”
essentially a dungeon where women are tortured and, I assume, killed). The women are peaceful and quasi-aristocratic
but can still handle themselves in a fight.
The men rely on mechanical weapons.
The women can kill by channeling some inner power. Of course, the one thing the women cannot do
without men is get pregnant and perpetuate their race. To be surrounded by beautiful women who just
want to have sex is the big carnal fantasy of a good many men (or at least of a
good many adolescent boys). And even
though some animal vestige hangs onto this fantasy beyond puberty, it doesn’t
make the thought any less ridiculous when depicted onscreen.
MVT: It’s crass and
nigh-Neolithic and probably contradictory to almost everything I’ve just
written here, but the best thing in Zeta
One is the birds. And I don’t mean
the kind with feathers.
Make Or Break: The opening
of this film is a major Break. It is
dull and silly and overlong, and it sets the viewer up for tedium and tits (in
equal measure, I grant you). And if you
haven’t a problem with putting up with the one just to get to the other, then
good for you. You’re a better man than I
am (apologies to Kipling).
Score: 4.5/10
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