Whenever a TV show or film attempts a ‘throwback’ vintage porn parody for laughs, Im always left with the feeling that they go TOO far into trying to make it funnier than it is sexy…Then I remember that ‘Starship Eros’ exists and quickly fall back into place.

CHEESY. this film is wall to wall 6 inches thick of pure cheddar. Parodying seveal 70s and 60s science fiction shows, ‘Starship Eros’ is short, sweet, and not here to mess around.

The film follows a ‘star trek’ style crew made up entirely of women who pilot the titual ‘Starship Eros’ its mission seemingly to uphold the ‘sexy’ values of their home planet. We open to the commander of the ‘Eros’ engaging in ‘shenanigans’ before being called up to help stop an attack from an amazonian space tribe (also made up of women) who are on their way to attack earth.

On arrival at the ship, the commandor is introduced to her new vice captain, where further ‘Shenanigans’ ensue only pausing briefly so that the commandor can introduce the male servent droid of the ‘Eros’ who comes *fully* equipped to help the ladies on board keep warm on those dark cold lonely space flights…and…thats basically the movie. gangbangs with a C3PO clone thats bordering on litigeous and waiting for the grand encounter with the rival space faction.

All the while we have everyhting from bad green screen effects, to cardboard sets, to bad stock footage, to cheesy and stiff dialogue. for someone interested in analysing bad movies, this thing was astounding.

it clocks in at a tidy hour and seven minutes, the sex scenes make up about 45 minutes of that runtime, with the remaining being the MST3K-esq style dialogue and set work. at least 10 minutes of this movie is set on earth. the pacing is repetative, but the charming low quality of everything kind of wins me back over. the characters are all one not. the tone is campy, self aware and very tongue in cheek, the dialogue is ASTOUNDING. You’d think, given its supposed to be a ‘far future/utopia’ type picture that they’d flower up the dialogue a little…make it sound a bit more affluent. But we have cast members regularly and aggressively instructing each other to ‘Do them.’ the first time that happened it was so abrupt I damn near lost a mouthful of cherry 7up in the process.

The directions dry, stiff and frankly uninterersting. a lot of it feels randomly focussed or not thouroughly planned. the camera kind of just swings around till it finds a point to settle on, its largely mids and wides, which just about keeps it on the level, but the second it tries to do anything more than ‘fixed’ shots, it just starts going downhill fast.

The cine is much the same, the sequences are a kind of hodge podge of whatever was shot just shoved together. compositions not the worst i’ve seen, but is FAR from ‘technically proficient’ B-roll is pretty plentiful here, but it feels like they didnt really know how to encorporate it…Frankly this thing isnt very erotic. and because the plotting is paper thin, it cant even really fall back on that. Add to that a wishy washy edit, which again, isnt the worst i’ve seen…at least they time cuts reletively well…its just that they dont seem to know what they’re cutting TOO thats problematic.

The cast are all playing it very cold, serious and professionally, which is hilarious given the genre they’re playing in…It makes sense! and they’re doing a decent enough job of maintaining that early ‘Star Trek’ style of delivery…but the combination of the SUPER cheesy and weird dialogue and the dodgey direction and camera work just makes it BEYOND hilarious and kind of tempers the eroticism a bit more.

All in all? if it wasnt for the fact that this thing is SO cheap, and SO cheesy in its execution, this would be a snorefest. As it stands, it kind of makes me wish that Rifftrax or MST3K riffed adult features, as this is a prime candidate for a solid riff.

Cute and funny more than erotic and arousing. I had fun with ‘Starship Eros’ its just trying to be a goofy cheap and cheerful parody and in that sense, it succeeds…if you go in with that expectation, you’ll probably be pleasently surprised.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/starship-eros/