Wow. High up there on the list of rip-off hybrids that just absolutely, should not exist in this universe, the sci-fi/sex pastiche The Beast in Space was one of those titles that graced cult movie reference books for years with only a few lucky souls actually setting eyes on the thing for ages. This strange celluloid mongrel was the brainchild of the late "Al Bradley," aka Alfonso Brescia, who had already turned out a stultifying string of bargain basement Star Wars imitations like War of the Robots, Star Odyssey, War of the Planets and War in Space (see a trend here?) along with the occasional head-scratching goofball entry like Super Stooges vs. the Wonder Women or Iron Warrior. With a distinct fondness for very leisurely pacing and electronic music scores, Bradley never earned much of a cult following like his peers, but there's no mistaking his work when you stumble across it. Of course, it goes without saying that there's nothing else in his skewed filmography that even comes close to the amazing The Beast in Space.

Our interstellar saga begins when studly Captain Larry Madison (Giallo in Venice's Karis) decides to hit on sexy space chick Sondra (The Beast's Lane) while chugging, ahem, "Uranus Milk" at the ship's bar. Another guy, Juan (Venantini), has eyes for her, too, but Larry wins out and takes her home for the night, only to learn that his competitor had a valuable container of a space mineral that rest of the fleet could really, really use. Sondra's experiencing some strange dreams about a country forest and a hairy, beast-like guy running through the woods, so when she and Larry wind up assigned to a team sent to explore a nearby planet for more minerals, she's more than a little surprised to see the setting from her dreams entering into reality. Oh, and the female crew members are also driven to horny distraction when they spy some space horses copulating nearby. Soon the real space-sex-beast shows up in a frisky mood, and Larry and his crew find themselves battling a bunch of laser-happy androids. Can they all get back to their ship in one piece?

As art-trash film fans may have already gathered, the second half of this film decides rather arbitrarily to inject elements of Walerian Borowcyk's The Beast into the storyline (complete with random, very squeezed stock footage of horses copulating), and it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that a big, hairy, hilariously-endowed forest beast doesn't sit very comfortably among all the sci-fi trappings. The fact that the film was obviously shot with leftover props and costumes from Brescia's previous space operas just adds to the weird atmosphere, giving it the feel of a cheapie kiddie matinee movie gone very, very, very wrong. Of course, casting the tragic Finnish actress Lane (who figured prominently in the Borowczyk film's most notorious sequence) was clearly meant to provide some legitimacy, though one can only wonder how far her career had fallen by this point. The Wendy Carlos-lite music by electronic noodler Marcello Giombini (who also drove viewers insane with his plonking around on such films as Waves of Lust and Joe D'Amato's '80s cannibal cycle) sounds almost exactly like his other Brescia sci-fi scores, under which he hid under the name "Pluto Kennedy." Contributing even more to the overall weirdness, cinematographer Silvi Fraschetti (Alien 2: On Earth) never seems to be filming anything from the right angles, instead conveying the impression of a constant stream of outtakes that somehow stumbled over into a completed feature.

In 2008, The Beast in Space actually hit DVD in no less than two different variants. The first version available from most retailers offered a softcore cut with plenty of groping and topless nudity in between all the spaceships, glowing sword fights, and psychedelic banquets. It looked great at the time considering the dodgy 16mm nature of the manner in which this film was originally shot. The Italian language track is ably accompanied with optional English subtitles; too bad an English dub wasn't ever commissioned, as it would've been hilarious. The soft version includes the original Italian trailer and a lengthy interview with Juan himself, Venantino Venantini, who's now a painter. The onetime star of Black Emanuelle and Contraband talks at length about his career and his memories of working with Brescia, which apparently had gusto even when budgets weren't accommodating. For the specialty market, Severin also released a mind-boggling 92m5s hardcore cut of the film adding a few minutes of unsimulated close-ups from anonymous body doubles and, more importantly, some hysterical prosthetic nastiness with the beast whose monstrous appendage manages to stop the film cold for about five minutes. The interview isn't carried over here, but you do get a different XXX theatrical trailer and a very odd 2m54s reel of deleted footage, including a ridiculous "beast climax" bit of business obviously intend to outshock the Borowczyk original.

In 2023, Vinegar Syndrome's Peekarama sublabel chose this film as its most unlikely title to date for a Blu-ray release, providing a major boon for fans of baffling Euro oddities but a real puzzler for anyone expecting anything erotic. Actually, you'll find more carnal heat in Tammy and the T-Rex. This presentation of the uncensored cut looks significantly improved with a more colorful and detailed transfer from the original 16mm negative, with a significant amount of picture info added as well. It also runs just under a minute longer, reinstating some of the material from the deleted footage reel on the older release. Considering the film we're talking about here, it looks great. The DTS-HD MA 2.0 Italian mono track also sounds immaculate and features optional English subtitles. In "Space Amnesia" (10m23s), Karis manages to be quite entertaining despite the fact that he remembers virtually nothing at all about making the film (as the title of the featurette implies). Actor Lucio Rosato turns up for "Space Lover" (22m34s) to chat about his acting background training alongside some famous names before going into how he ended up in films like Navajo Joe and, uh, this one, which he enjoyed thanks to a simulated sex scene with smut legend Marina Hedman. Finally in "Space Oddity" (9m10s), Venantini speaks excellent English as he looks back at his work with Brescia and the cult following these films have amassed in more recent years for directors who often couldn't even use their real names.

Peekarama (Blu-ray)

Severin (DVD)

Updated review on February 14, 2023