Based on Jean-Claude Forest’s adult French comic, Barbarella giddily imagines a pop, flower-powered space age where sexuality isn’t considered prurient or even provocative. Campy and over-the-top in every respect—from the catchy, loungey TV-era theme song to its surreal and oversexed imagery reminiscent of Italian Gothic horror films, Barbarella is both an idealistic and cynical view of modern culture, but does not take itself very seriously. Director Vadim emphasized that star Jane Fonda would not “be a science fiction character, nor will she play Barbarella tongue in cheek. She is just a lovely, average girl with a terrific space record and a lovely body.” Barbarella remains incorruptible even as she awakens to her primary power—sex—and the concept of evil. She is flexible though, sometimes fighting fire with fire, but does so with a positive resourcefulness as she encounters all manner of attempts on her life: marching robots, animatronic vampire dolls, a highly stimulating electric organ, a transparent bubble filled with pretty—and lethal—parakeets, and the lava-lamp-like liquid “Mathmos” that surrounds and sustains the dystopian Sogo, the city of night.