They don't make them like they used to...

After something like 23 hours awake I have just finished watching Barbarella for the first time.

Let me give you some history. I am a fan of B Sci-Fi. I have been since I was a kid. I would search out the best of the worst I could find looking for cheesy monsters and (often) some seriously awful acting. Rubber suits would do in a pinch but what I wanted was every movie I could get my hands on with the wonderful art of claymation (or stop-motion animation for the "correct" term I suppose).

Fortunately I was a child of the 80's and I had a wealth of campy claymation to choose from.

Some notable examples are The Thing, a 1982 remake the 1951 film The Thing From Outer Space. It features a team of scientists in the Antarctic doing research. They find something in the ice and hilarious horror ensues. Notably the sets and acting are pretty good but the claymation is premo. The first season of the X-files features an episode named "ice" with a similar story which I choose to think of as an homage.
Another great classic of the stop-motion animation horror genre, and a personal favorite is Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor(1990). To quote the Wikipedia article for this film.

"By limiting cast and location costs, production was able to concentrate efforts on effects,"

You have my personal guarantee that it is a lost classic.

So back to Barbarella. As I got older I lost my taste for cheesy movies, I just couldn't get into them the way I used to. Maybe it was the rise of CGI which just doesn't have the same heart or maybe I just got too much of a good thing and needed a break. Lately I've been looking for them again, rewatching the old favorites.

And then I stumbled accross Barbarella and it changed EVERYTHING.

The sets, the visuals, the sheer audacity of imagination. The truly horrendous score. It was intoxicating.

Here was a whole world of camp and imagination that you just don't get in today's "everything looks like the same gothic set" era movies. It reminded me of how much I loved Zardoz(1974) but always thought that it was a unique and beautiful alien alone in the world.

But no!!! It has family; parents, siblings, second-cousins twice removed, a whole new genre to be explored!!

I have a quest now, a raison d'etre! I must seek out and find these rare jewels, collect them and catogorize them.

And maybe someday I will find that most priceless of artifacts the 60's psychadelic flick with my wonderful claymation monsters there too, to terrorize the gogo-booted heroines and sling thong clad men.

Ah heaven, I aspire to thee!