The most dangerous dame

"Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity"
(1987)

Another day, another movie handed along by a pal. This "Up All Night" special comes from adverb1000, who snagged me a pile of cool videos from her dad some time ago. We may visit another of those titles as March shudders to its awful close, but for now, we focus on one of the most memorable movie titles of the '80s. I don't know where you lived then, but I'm pretty sure "Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity" did not play theaters around Chicago. Ken Dixon, the guy who made it, was previously responsible for a bunch of compilations, one of which, "The Best of Sex and Violence," I believe actually did run in theaters. Dixon never made another movie after "Slave Girls," and that's probably for the best - for a guy who seemed to know exploitation movies, this one is really tame. It stars two of the era's busiest gals, Brinke Stevens and Elizabeth Kaitan, the latter credited here as "Elizabeth Cayton." On purely physical merits, main star Kaitan's got a bigger rack, but I'm a face guy. Brinke has always been my favorite scream queen, so I naturally wished she had the lead instead of the dinky supporting role. As an actress, of course I think Stevens is much better, but they're both more convincing than the movie's other girl, Cindy Beal, who always looks and sounds like she just woke up. Some dudes are into sedated women, but I'm not one of them. At least Beal gets the sexiest negligee in which to wander around a creepy mansion at night.

Kaitan and Beal escape from some sort of galactic white slavers at the beginning, but their getaway ship crashes on a jungle planet. The sole inhabitant is Zed, a big game hunter living in a huge mansion adorned with animal heads and other trophies. Zed has a pair of robot henchmen/butlers to do all of his work for him, yet these two are sentient enough to argue with each other, He invites the ladies to stay and dine with him and his guests, who turn out to be Brinke and her brother, some dorky ass '80s guy. The dude has the hots for Kaitan, and he asks her to get "some air" with him. This literally amounts to them walking over to the window, about fifteen feet from the rest of the folks, yet somehow their discussion about their host's foreboding nature is not overheard. It turns out Zed also hunts... wait for it... humans. Yes, this is ultimately the six-thousandth version of "The Most Dangerous Game," only this time there are robots and skimpy outfits. Thankfully, there's not a fake set of boobs in the lot, which is increasingly rare in a "girlie" movie. There's a cool cyber-beast creature, a guy in a ratty but tactile suit. I like the conceit that the slave girls are actually really smart - they know how to pilot ships, they read hieroglyphics, they do all the planning and fighting, etc. I think it's supposed to be played for laughs, but Kaitan and especially Beal never sell it well enough to actually be funny, which is a letdown. Linnea Quigley and Michelle Bauer would have nailed that shit! The other thing keeping this flick from inciting much enthusiasm in me is when Brinke gets shot by Zed's kickass pistol crossbow - never trust a horror movie where the best-looking woman dies first, folks, and that rule goes for other genre entertainment as well. Nonetheless, there are far more laborious ways to spend an hour and a half than watching "Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity." The not-safe-for-work trailer: