Colibel
Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.
Jenna Walter
The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
Leofwine_draca
The British production company Tigon, which enjoyed success from the mid '60s to the mid '70s, has a lot to answer for. As well as acclaimed classics like Reeves' WITCHFINDER GENERAL and Polanski's REPULSION, they released a glut of B-movies in the horror and exploitation genres most of which are must-sees for the British cult fan. ZETA ONE is one of their sexploitation efforts and generally an appalling movie, only to be watched for nostalgic purposes. The story is plot less drivel, lurching from one scene to the next with no continuity, and the lame sci-fi additions to the story simply consist of supposedly alien women (the only alien thing about them is their dress sense!), who stand in a darkened room with silly-looking sets and lighting and spout nonsensical drivel about alien invasions which never happen. It's hideously dated of course, whether in the garish attire or in sequences in which people float around in dark rooms with lava-lamp footage superimposed over the top.The paucity of the budget is very much in evidence in the first twenty minutes of the movie, which consists of two characters sitting in a flat, flirting a lot and finally engaging in a silly, never-ending game of strip poker which will test the patience of even the most hardened bad-movie lover. After this timewasting footage finally grinds to a halt, we get lots of interconnected characters like a secret society of sadists; aliens kidnapping earth women and the "hero" of the piece, a wannabe James Bond spy who spends all of his screen time bedding naked women (I don't know why they bother - he's pretty repulsive). The fact that his moustache appears and disappears throughout the film suggests some kind of post-production problems and tampering with footage.After endless scenes of naked and half-naked women wandering around aimlessly, the finale arrives, an action sequence set in the woods in which loads of alien women (dressed in VERY skimpy clothing) arrive and zap the male bad guys. Well, I say zap, but really all they do is stretch out their arms and the men fall down dead, with an appropriate sound effect superimposed over the action. It's so cheap that this scene is laughably incredible. All of the female cast (aside from Dawn Addams, wasted as the alien queen) lose their clothing for various silly reasons, and the camera is always on hand to capture them crawling through air vents or being stripped in a makeshift torture chamber! Robin Hawdon is the spy, and I think it's pretty fair to say that he's a very bad actor indeed - perhaps one of the worst I've seen! Amateurish at all times and totally incompetent...it comes as no surprise that he was never heard of again. Two 'big names' have been drafted in to give the film some kind of status. The first is James Robertson Justice who sleepwalks through his performance and picks up the cheque at the end, and the second is the inimitable Charles Hawtrey who has some of the funniest sequences in the film and is a delight as ever - in fact he's one of the main reasons to watch and he makes an effort too. Don't you just love the man? Most of the female cast are unknown and can't act (for obvious reasons), but B-stars Valerie Leon and Yutte Stensgaard are a welcome sight amongst the rest of the heaving naked female flesh. Sometimes fun, mainly dull, this inexplicable offering is for those fans who are VERY forgiving for their movie's lackings - I don't think anyone would claim that this is a good film at all.
MARIO GAUCI
I believe I first became aware of this sci-fi/sexploitationer via the biography for actress Valerie Leon included among the extras on the Anchor Bay DVD of Hammer's superior BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB (1971); incidentally, the film under review was made by rival company Tigon.To begin with, the script was apparently inspired by a comic strip (such cinematic adaptations were all the rage at the time – no doubt, the makers were encouraged by the success of BARBARELLA [1968]). Still, even reading through the cast list, I knew not to raise my 'artistic' hopes too highly – given that it featured both James Robertson-Justice and Charles Hawtrey, stalwarts of (respectively) the popular "Doctor" and "Carry On" comedy franchises…who actually turn out to be the villains of the piece!! The narrative drew heavily on another then-current fad i.e. espionage – in fact, the hero is a stud-like albeit laid-back secret agent who naturally proves irresistible to the alien women (actually, an alternate moniker for the film) the titular figure (played by veteran Dawn Addams) sends his way in order to derail his investigation into the abduction of several earth girls.That said, the plot is barely there and becomes especially confusing – not to say silly – during the latter stages; for what it's worth, the film culminates in a chase wherein the otherworldly gals kill virtually all of their male pursuers simply by pointing their fingers at them (accompanied by the incongruous noise of gunshots)!! Needless to say, ZETA ONE's raison d'etre and prime asset is its relentless parade of innumerable but anonymous starlets of the era in the nude or otherwise scantily-clad: the above-mentioned Valerie Leon herself is underused, but fellow future Hammer lead Yutte Stensgaard – who engages the hero (to whom he's recounting his non-exploits) in a lengthy and decidedly irrelevant game of strip-poker – comes off quite well (no pun intended). Also worth mentioning are the low-budget but appropriately psychedelic sets and the title tune (featuring a reasonably effective guitar riff).
kmoh-1
Most of the time, when you watch a film, you think about the film itself, the narrative, the people in it, the cinematography etc. In this case, you spend half the time wondering what the film-makers were trying to do. It really is worth emphasising what a weirdie this one is. Weird in a bad way.It is incredibly disjointed. The stars remain completely separated. James Robertson Justice and Charles Hawtrey are in one lot of scenes. Robin Hawdon sans moustache and Yutte Stensgaard are in another lot. RH avec moustache is in a third lot, and Dawn Addams appears in a fourth. There is no overlap between these. The opening twenty minutes with the charisma-free Hawdon & dear old Yutte playing strip poker are so excruciatingly dull that you wonder how many people lasted the course in the days before fast forward buttons. Or maybe pause buttons.Of course the story is intended to be quirky, and the makers were obviously going for a Barbarella-type vibe. OK, but this one is downright strange. Some of the odd bits include: a completely unmotivated dialogue between James Word and a grumpy lift; the bizarre incident of James Word's moustache, revealed as false in the opening scene; overdubs of Major Bourdon's added dialogue, which sound nothing like James Robertson Justice, but passably like Basil Brush; James Word being fed an aphrodisiac diet of oysters and what appears to be Mackeson Stout; the British secret service employing an American boss and a Scandinavian secretary; the mystery of why Charles Hawtrey's bottom is bitten by one of his own dogs.Other commentators have unpicked the relationships between the various bits of the film - it looks like the Justice/Hawtrey scenes were shot first, and then the Hawdon/moustache scenes shot to make sense of them, and then the Hawdon/no moustache scenes shot to make sense of them. Stensgaard's lines about what rubbish it all is are clearly a tongue-in-cheek admission of the blindingly obvious. Naturally, the whole thing is a thin excuse for some girlie nudity (and that also is laid on thicker in the scenes shot later, as if they realised that nudity would be the film's only saving grace). The basic idea of topless aliens invading Earth is a very amusing one. But given the cast there really is no excuse for making such an awful picture.The nadir of the film is the jokey kidnap-and-torture sequence about half way through. Not erotic, just a gigantic lapse of taste, unredeemed by the reappearance of the kidnapped girl towards the end. That is the problem with this film in its most egregious aspect - it is just not likable enough.
Mark_D-2
If anything, "Zeta One" (a.k.a. "The Love Factor" and "Alien Women") proves that the U.S.A. doesn't have a lock on cheesy soft-core porn movies. In this one, a race of alien women (many of whom run around topless) kidnap earth women to repopulate their world. What sounds like a fun spoof of spy movies and sci-fi flicks fails miserably, due to many factors, not the least of which is that there's simply no point of view. The cast (and the script) seem to meander around without any real purpose. The secret agent character, James Word (played by Robin Hawdon of "When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth") seems to have two purposes in the movie: to have sex with every woman who crosses his path, and smoke cigarettes, since he doesn't seem to do anything else. A part like his takes a deft comedic touch, which Hawdon just doesn't have. The story is told in flashback, and the framing sequences featuring Hawdon and lovely Yutte Stensgaard seem to indicate trouble with the original film (Hawdon has a moustache in the main body of the film, but is without it in the framing sequences). Scenes dealing with a strip-poker game and Word's ultimate fate go on for what seems like an eternity without any real payoff. And top-billed James Robertson Justice gives a textbook example of a "where's-my-paycheck?" type performance. The British have a reputation for stuffiness, and if this movie is any indication, it is a reputation well-deserved.
