IN THE DUST OF OUR STARS (1976) (C+) - The good folks of the planet Cynro respond to a distress call from those on the planet Tema 4. But when they get there, they're told it was a false alarm. So everyone attends a swingin' party.
But the Cynro navigator Suko (Alfred Struwe) is suspicious and skips the festivities, where drinking and flirting mixes with a little laser-beam mind control on the visitors. Suko decides to go exploring, and he finds the dirty secret in one of Tema 4's underground mines. Suddenly the rescue mission is back on -- unless the Cynrovians decide instead to avoid conflict and fly back home.
Suko's love interest is Akala, played by Jana Brechova, who apparently was East Germany's version of Angie Dickinson in the '70s. The mostly female crew is peopled by various Germanic beauties, one of whom showers for gratuitous reasons and performs a sexy silhouette dance. Elsewhere, we get other dancing pixies, snakes, and a weird hall of scary heads.
It's all rather trippy, and the futuristic devices are appropriately cheesy. But it's not any more imaginative than an episode of "Star Trek" or "Lost in Space." It is, however, an unsubtle Cold War parable about advanced nations' duties to subjugated cultures.
THE 10th VICTIM (1965) (B-minus) - Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress star as dueling assassins in this mid-'60s satire about the government's solution to the population explosion: legalized murder.
Set in the near future, with a global truce in place, nations instead allow the more violent people to engage in the Big Hunt, a "Hunger Games"-like exhibition of hunter vs. assassin. Survive 10 rounds (five as hunter, five as hunted) and you retire to universal acclaim in your homeland.
Caroline Meredith (Andress) is after her 10th victim, Marcello Poletti (Mastroianni), a suave stud who suspects Caroline is his opponent. He hesitates to take her out before she offs him, because if a would-be victim guns down the wrong hunter, he or she goes to prison for 30 years. Caroline takes her time setting up her prey, seeking to maximize the financial gain from the hit by turning it into an ad for Ming Tea.
As both of them plot, they also fall in love (or lust). Both stars are magnetic, oozing appeal at the peak of their celebrity power.
Director Elio Petri has fun choreographing random street gun violence. He takes a rather silly plot -- really, why doesn't either Caroline or Marcello get it over with early on? -- and imbues it with depth and even a bit of suspense. This is classic mid-'60s mod fun.
EOLOMEA (1972) (C-minus) - An overly chatty, plodding space tale never finds its momentum. Wikipedia has an efficient plot summary:
Eight spaceships disappear and radio contact to the enormous space station "Margot" is broken off. Professor Maria Scholl and the high council decree a flight ban for all other spaceships. Nevertheless one ship succeeds in leaving earth. The cause of all these strange events is the mysterious signals in Morse code coming to earth from the constellation Cygnus. Deciphered, they say the word "Eolomea," which seems to refer to a planet. With Captain Daniel Lagny, an unmotivated eccentric, Maria Scholl undertakes the risky journey to the space station "Margot" to uncover the secret, only to discover that a secretly planned expedition of stolen spaceships is leaving for Eolomea against the will of the government.Nordic beauty Cox Habbema, as Prof. Scholl, lends both eye candy and gravitas. Capt. Lagny (Ivan Andonov) is pretty much one big mope. The dialogue is cumbersome, weighed down in constant exposition. The attempt at "2001"-level profundity falls flat.
UNAVAILABLE FOR RENTAL
THE END OF AUGUST AT THE HOTEL OZONE (Czechoslovakia, 1967) - A troupe of young women on post-apocalyptic earth are led around by a mistress born before the war, eventually stumbling into the company of a lonely old man.
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