Planet of the Babes

Senor Sock is nowhere to be found.Overview: The best way to start a porno movie is with a long science fiction voice over that makes very little sense. The second best way to start a porno movie is with a bunch of guys walking around a hillside in Southern California for five minutes. There exists a third way that trumps both, a way so advanced that I believed it was theory. That is, until I saw "Planet of the Babes" and its jaw-dropping fusion of long nonsensical voice over followed by five minutes of three guys in space suits walking around on rocks slowly. Let's start with the voice over that is offered up by Captain Tyler as played by the inimitable Steven St. Croix. He's that one male porn star that looks like Talk Soup's John Henson only he's simultaneously more muscular and fatter.

Well, that finishes my last science report until…we land. Right now our ship is in cruise control, or, uh, safely in the hands of the computer guidance system and the rest of the crew is already in a cyrogenic[sic] sleep, which, I'll be joining them soon. We've been on our mission for six months now. Six months in deep space. By earth-time that is. See, according to Dr. Gabor's Theory of Time, if our ship is moving at the speed of light then civilization on earth has actually aged nearly 500 years since we lifted off, but physically - our bodies - we've barely aged.

Where's the Benny Hill theme when you actually need it?After some horrible CGI asteroids and spaceships zoom around and the voice over ends we are treated to a protracted discussion between the three spaceship crewmen about their ship crashing into a lake. The conversation has the tempo of an experimental jazz piece played with hammers and glass bottles and the line delivery here makes it seems like they each filmed their lines on separate days and completely alone. Hell, the camerawork is so unfocused with an almost arrogant disregard for effective lighting that the actors probably did film themselves by setting the camera up on a rock or cactus and then looking to the right and delivering their lines to thin air. Eventually the conversation draws to a close and Captain Tyler and his two intrepid spacenauts begin wandering around a desert hillside.

The trio of futuremen do the logical thing and strip naked as soon as they see a drainage ditch to splash around in, leaving their future suits hanging on bushes. Let's take stock of the situation. Their ship crashed into a pond, they're on an unknown planet in an unknown time, and the first thing they do when they see a puddle of brackish water is strip naked and splash around like tattooed syphilis addled children. One thing leads to another and someone robs the astromen of their astromen suits, leaving them to wander some more - naked of course - and happen upon a colony of primitive humans. The humans they find don't speak English or wear any clothes, but they have at least discovered saline implants, makeup, labia piercing, and tattoos; the fundamentals of early human civilization.

Hellllllooooooo Dollllllllllllyyyy.The astronauts are superior space beings and quickly assert their dominance by growling at the savage men and humping the savage women. The first of these humpings I have selected as the first scene to review. The sex party is ruined by the sudden appearance of men in coveralls wearing gorilla masks and wielding toy assault rifles. These gorilla men silently shoot several of the human savages and all of the astronauts except for Captain Tyler, who is wounded in the chase. It should be noted that the chase is incredibly incoherent and frequently shows people being killed and then cuts to the same person who was just killed being chased again by the gorillas. I guess this is the director's attempt to draw attention to the surreal aspects of the plot. Either that or he was completely apathetic to continuity and just wanted to pad the film out an additional five minutes by repeatedly showing the same chase footage. I'll let you make the call on that one.

Tyler and the surviving savages are taken to the cages of the ape people where they are interrogated by a woman in the most hideous ape costume I've ever seen. Let me explain how hideous it is by way of explaining my unearthly fear for Carol Channing. Carol Channing is a Broadway singer and TV actress probably best known for her rendition of "Hello, Dolly!" and she has somehow managed to build a career on singing that one fucking song. In addition to sustaining the remnants of her career, Channing has continued to wear the same harlequin-like facial makeup she has worn her entire life. This goddamn horror ape in this movie looks like the hideous freak offspring of Carol Channing and a monkey, assuming that Channing's makeup was an inheritable genetic trait.

Free at last from ape tyrrany!More humpings take place in ape captivity, and this second scene in which two savages make sweet, sweet love has been selected as my second choice of scenes to review. There is also a fairly rudimentary lesbian scene between two savage women in captivity and other than dubious cuts to a fat guy jacking off it's probably the film's most genuinely erotic sequence. Finally Captain Tyler gets a chance to get his swerve on and he quickly closes escrow with savage seductress Asia Carrera. Their scene is not particularly remarkable but is at least wholly devoid of anything really disgusting.

Tyler - who is called Fancy Boots by the apes because of his sneakers - is brought before some sort of ape council because he shows signs of intelligence. The ape council is not ready to accept the idea that Fancy Boots is an intellectual equal, but the Channing ape and her ape boyfriend facilitate Fancy Boots' escape from their holding cell. Crammed in the midst of all this lunacy there is also a very mediocre sequence in which an apparently lobotomized astronaut has sex with one of the savage women. The guy is frighteningly hairy, but you know what they say; the camera adds ten pounds of hair when you're covered with flies and humping a woman on the muddy floor of a bamboo cage.

The film ends, much like all things end in life, with Tyler kissing the Channing ape and then walking off into the bushes with Asia Carrera.