There’s nothing quite like Barbarella (opens in a new tab)! A French/Italian co-production, this kitsch sci-fi adventure is one of the downright silliest films ever committed to celluloid and was unquestionably the defining role for Jane Fonda (opens in a new tab), who plays the titular ‘astronavigator’. Based on the landmark ‘adult’ comic by Frenchman Jean-Claude Forest (opens in a new tab), the film was helmed by Roger Vadim (opens in a new tab), the French director, screenwriter (and occasional actor), who was also Fonda’s husband at the time of production. Vadim would spend most of his life dating or being married to several of the most beautiful women in film, including Brigitte Bardot (opens in a new tab), Annette Stroyberg (opens in a new tab) and Catherine Deneuve (opens in a new tab).

You don’t watch Barbarella for the plot, especially since there’s not much of one to speak of, but the film is set in the 41st century and sees our heroine dispatched from an Earth without war and violence (only love) in search of the missing scientist Durand Durand (Milo O’Shea (opens in a new tab)) who has apparently built a weapon called the Positronic Ray that threatens peace across the galaxy. After crash-landing on an icy planet, Barbarella is kidnapped by a pair of strange girls who subject her to an attack by evil dolls. She’s rescued by ‘The Catchman’ Mark Hand (Ugo Tognazzi (opens in a new tab)) who she rewards with sex before he points her in the direction of Sogo City, the realm of The Great Tyrant (Anita Pallenberg (opens in a new tab)).

The story and script may be nonsense but the film is never less than gorgeous to look at, with brilliant production and costume design throughout, whilst the music by Charles Fox is also memorable. The film also features several other cult actors, including Marcel Marceau (opens in a new tab), John Phillip Law (opens in a new tab) and David Hemmings (opens in a new tab) (Suspiria). 

This poster is for the 1977 re-release of the film which saw the film edited to achieve a PG rating and re-released with the subtitle of ‘Queen of the Galaxy’, which was done to capitalise on the success of Star Wars. The original 1968 one sheet (opens in a new tab) had been painted by Robert McGinnis (opens in a new tab) and for this release the distributors turned to Boris Vallejo (opens in a new tab), a Peruvian painter who emigrated to the US in 1964 and was acclaimed primarily as a fantasy and erotica artist. Vallejo started out painting paperback covers for the likes of Tarzan and Conan the Barbarian and this work would lead to him being commissioned by various studios to paint the posters for films including Knightriders, Q (the Winged Serpent) and two posters for the National Lampoon series.

Vallejo continues to paint alongside his wife Julie Bell, also a fantasy artist, and the pair’s official website (opens in a new tab) features extensive galleries of work (opens in a new tab). See the other posters I’ve collected by Vallejo.

Note that this is the international one sheet because it was printed without the PG-rating box seen on the US version (opens in a new tab).