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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Starlets as Alien Women in Zeta One', 10 Feb 2003
By A Customer
Kicking off the sporadic genre of British comedies that dressed up softcore nudity with sci-fi trimmings, 1969's Zeta One was itself based on a photo-magazine which obsessed on models scantily dressed in futuristic clothes. As a movie, Zeta One isn't exactly successful. At its best the film contains recreations of kinky photo-shoot themes like catfights and underwear clad dollies in a torture chamber, as well as eccentric scenes featuring alien women disguised in identical black wigs and ass-high Carnaby Street dresses. Generally though the movie is a poorly paced affair bogged down by the tiresome exploits of an ersatz- James Bond (Robin Hawdon) who spends the film's unforgivably static first half playing strip-poker, drinking and making goo-goo eyes at his secretary. Eventually Hawdon narrates flashbacks of some 'very extraordinary business' concerning the Angvians, a strange race of women from outer space who kidnap pretty girls then brainwash them with kaleidoscope-like effects. One such abductee, stripper Edwina Strain ('please call me Ted') gets bustled into a car by Angvian women in broad daylight then is treated to a guided tour of their lair- which resembles the set of a Children's programme- and includes such delights as the 'the contemplation room', 'the self revelation room' and not forgetting 'the static time area'. Incredulously in the middle of this up pops Charles Hawtrey-in a paycheque role between Carry On films- as Swyne an effeminate representative of a sinister organisation out to put an end to the Angvian's capers. Hawtrey's Carry On persona dictates his wimpy character as he follows Angvian women around London only for it all to end in farce when he gets on the wrong side of an irate Bus clippie.
Understandably Hawdon struggles to make much sense out these events-lets face it who wouldn't- and indeed when he relates the tall tale to his secretary as pillow talk she tells him 'oh you're making this rubbish up'. An almost asleep James Robertson Justice plays the film's villain Major Bourdon, a fat creep who enjoys capturing and chasing alien women around his Scottish estate. At pretty much the end of both his career and life, Robertson Justice was so apathetic about appearing in the film that at one stage director Michael Cort had to paste Bourdon's dialogue to the actor's knees. Cheekily, during the scene in question Cort inserts leery shots of a girl's thighs to 'explain' why Robertson Justice spends so much of the scene looking down to read his lines. Despite a memorable publicity campaign based around girls in space-age bikinis- one of whom ended up on the cover of Cinema X magazine- the film opened at provincial British cinemas over the Christmas season of 1970 then pretty much disappeared without a trace. These days Zeta One has achieved some novelty status on account of many of its female cast members later finding success as Cleavage Queens in Hammer Horror movies. Significantly none of these actresses have fond memories of the production, Yutte Stensgaard claimed she felt exploited by her spivvy father-in-law manager who didn't tell her about her nude scenes until she turned up on set, Valerie Leon's sole memory of the film was that Cort was as strange as his only directing job suggests while the late Imogen Hassall once joked someone must have been looking out for her the day she turned down the opportunity to play an 'Angvian girl'. Zeta One is true to its saucy photo-magazine origins in one sense- its better to experience the film through its stills rather than sit though it as a whole. The film's awkward structure that always keeps Hawdon one step behind the main plotline, lends suspicion that his scenes were ghost directed by a Tigon hack in an attempt to make the original directors vision more 'commercial'- a situation that occurred with the same year's Tigon horror opus The Haunted House of Horror/ Horror House. Pure speculation I admit, but Hawdon's character does come across as an afterthought, rarely interacting with the rest of the characters, and at one backing off from a fight between alien women and men in deerstalker hats because...he's forgotten to bring his Wellington boots! Moving with the times, 1970's variations on the theme like The Sexplorer and Outer Touch ... both required there 'starlets as alien women' to do something a little bit more provocative than run around the British countryside freezing their backsides off while pretending to fire invisible rays from their hands.
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