History Film / Barbarella

* DownTheRabbitHole: ''Barbarella'' feels a lot like a sexy sci-fi version of ''Literature/AliceInWonderland'' considering it involves a naive young woman going on an adventure in a nonsensical (to her) realm full of strange sights and people. One can also draw parallels between the Tweedle twins and Stomoxys and Glossina, the White Rabbit and Durand Durand, and more obviously the Queen of Hearts and the Black Queen.

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: The Sogoites, who are led to do evil and all kinds of depravities by the Mathmos, which feeds on evil. There are good Sogoites as proven by Ping and Dildano, but those get expelled from the city and dealt horrible fates.

* DisintegratorRay: The reason Barbarella is looking for Durand Durand is that he invented a positron ray, which could spell doom for the universe. Its effects are seen at the end of the movie, when he uses it to kill [[spoiler:Ping and Dildano]].

* KillEmAll: [[spoiler:After he comes to power, Durand Durand uses his positron ray to kill sympathetic characters like Ping and Dildano without much fanfare. Then the Black Queen unleashes the Mathmos to stop him; Sogo is destroyed and everyone in there dies. The only survivors are Barbarella, Pygar and the Black Queen herself.]]

* TorsoWithAView: A labyrinth prisoner that Ping points out to Barbarella appears to have lost nearly all of his torso as punishment, yet he's still perfectly able to walk around.

* DiscOneFinalBoss: The Black Queen/Great Tyrant because [[spoiler:the real BigBad is the concierge who's Durand Durand and he is also TheStarscream. If anything, the Black Queen is the real heroine, or at least an AntiHero with a PyrrhicVictory due to letting loose the Mathmos, which destroys the evil city, Durand Durand and saves the Queen, Barbarella and Pygar.]]

* DilatingDoor: PlayedForLaughs. At some point Barbarella is wearing (little more than) an animal-skin suit with a long tail. The tail gets trapped in the closing iris.

* DarkerAndEdgier: The movie, in a way. In the comic, many of the good [=SoGo=] folks in the Labrynth (and Professor Ping) survive and succeed in escaping the Labrynth whereas in the movie they all get zapped to the Fourth Dimension by Durand Durand's ray. In fact; The whole "Saving the Labrynth People" subplot is a huge failure and everyone is dead except for Barbarella, Pygar and The Black Queen.

* CoversAlwaysLie: There are lots of things wrong with that poster up there. No moons are visible from Lythion in the movie, Barbarella never wears [[ChainmailBikini that particular outfit]], that rocket-like spaceship is nowhere to be seen, ''Pygar is missing his wings'' and the Black Guards are '''black''', not that gold-ish color.

* ChariotPulledByCats: Barbarella is rescued from the feral children of Planet 16, and gets a ride to the city of [=SoGo=] on a sled pulled by something like a stingray. The ground is presumed to be dry ice, as there's a constant mist six inches deep. How this critter gets traction enough to pull Barbarella around, and see where its going amid the fog [[BellisariosMaxim goes unexplained]].

* SpecialEffectsFailure: The famous opening zero-G strip is clearly Jane Fonda rolling around on a sheet of glass over the projection of her apartment (notably, part of the opening credits is reflected in the glass, and Barbarella only rolls from side to side, never moving towards or away from the camera).

** With three different people over the course of the movie. Dildano explicitly states that he rescued Barbarella just so he could get this (though, to her disappointment, he means the mental connection practiced on Earth).

* FetishFuelFuture: While Earth has removed physical sex as the core foundation of propagation and has been replaced with a future psychic-sex pill, the taboo of nudity is completely gone and Barbarella's official uniform has a partially-translucent top. The fact that the communication screen on Barbarella's ship takes the form of a half-naked statue of the Greek Goddess Artemis probably counts also.

* FreeLoveFuture: Their salute is even "love," although they don't practice physical sex any more, considering it to be distracting and pointless. Mark Hand convinces her otherwise.

* HighAltitudeBattle: Barbarella and Pygar's mid-air battle with the Black Guards air patrol. She's a pretty good shot.
* {{Homage}}: The (in)famous opening scene was the basis for Music/KylieMinogue's music video for ''Put Yourself in My Place". It was also re-created in Music/ArianaGrande's music video for "Break Free".

* IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace: In a subtle way, Sogo, because it's supposed to be a reference to '''So'''dom and '''Go'''morrah, biblical sin cities. The Chamber of Ultimate Solution, being a suicide booth, is also this, as lampshaded by Barbarella.

* KillerRabbit: Early in the film, Barbarella is menaced by a group of dolls whose mouths show very pointy teeth. The scene ruins her clothes and leaves her bleeding. Later in the movie, she is nearly killed by vicious killer budgies (parakeets). With similar bloody effects.

* LampshadeHanging:
** "What's that screaming? (pensively) A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming." This leads to her finding Pygar being tormented by the Sogoites, who cheer and laugh at him in turn.
** Given all of the other stuff that goes on in [=SoGo=], it would probably be more surprising if somebody in it ''wasn't'' screaming at any given time.
* LastOfHisKind: Pygar is the last of the * Pygar from ''Film/{{Barbarella}}'' is a simple WingedHumanoid referred to as an angel several times.
* LightFeminineAndDarkFeminine: Barbarella and the Black Queen, with Barbarella being naive, innocent and kind, and the Black Queen being evil to the core and debauched.

* MentalAffair: The "Earth Way" of having sex. Demonstrated by Barbarella and Dildano, leader of the Resistance.

* {{Hunk}}: Pygar seems to be this and a PrettyBoy at the same time.

* InstantConstumeChange: After her naked conversation with the President, our heroine steps into a chamber and instantly emerges in tight-fitting SpaceClothes.

** Subverted with the Black Queen, who saves Barbarella and clearly wants this, but Barbarella isn't as generous with her.
* {{Robosexual}}: In the comics, Barbarella believes that robots can be just as good, if not better, lovers compared to humans. She has sex with one robot called Diktor ([[CompositeCharacter elements of him can be found in Dildano's character]]) in the Sogo chapters. There's another chapter where she drives a {{Fembot}} to orgasm just by fiddling with her insides.

* SamusIsAGirl: The infamous opening where no one knows who is in the spacesuit at first.

* ShamelessFanserviceGirl: Barbarella ''really'' has no problem with showing off her body.
* SlippySlideyIceWorld: The Icen Forests of Weir.
%%* SpaceClothes: Taken to the point of absurdity.

* KissOfLife: The Black Queen (the perv) suggests that Barbarella reanimate Pygar with a mouth-to-mouth when they find him after being vomited up by the Mathmos. It's subverted as Barbarella tries something completely different and much more platonic: move his wings up and down. It works.

* TheOnlyOne: Parodied when Dianthus (President of Earth and Rotating Premier of the Sun System) sends Barbarella to find Durand Durand .

* BreakOutTheMuseumPiece: The only weapon Dianthus could find for Barbarella had to be borrowed from the Museum of Conflict.

* TheOnlyOne: Parodied when the

* HowWouldYouLikeToDie: Barbarella wanders into a walk-in suicide booth, which offers world-weary beings a choice of ways to terminate their unendurable existence.

%%* {{Stripperific}}: And how!
%%* SubspaceAnsible: Dianthus video calls Barbarella.
* TapOnTheHead
** Barbarella is knocked out by some kids with a crystal, hidden inside a snowball, while she adjusts her [[TranslatorMicrobes tongue box]] to their language.
** She's later knocked out again by some falling rocks.

* TooKinkyToTorture: Barbarella overloads the [[{{Orgasmatron}} Excessive Machine]].
* TooSpicyForYogSothoth: The city is swallowed by the Mathmos... except for Babs. The Black Queen (who gets saved by being — nudge nudge — [[LesYay close to her]]) explains that it can't stand the taste of her innocence.

* TortureIsIneffective: Due to an inept torturer in this case. [[spoiler:Who knew women could actually ''survive'' multiple orgasms? Durand Durand sure didn't.]]

* TranslatorMicrobes: Barbarella's wrist-mounted "Tongue Box" whose name can be seen as a DoubleEntendre.

* {{Yandere}}: The Black Queen, apparently. After Barbarella rejects her advances, she aims a knife at her. Though she doesn't go through with it.

* DoYouWantToCopulate: A variation; Mark Hand flat out states that he wants to make love to the heroine, but she comes from a society where sex is more like a MindMeld, so her objections are based on the fact that their psycho-cardiograms aren't in confluence and he doesn't have the right pills. Hand isn't impressed and insists they do it the old fashioned way.

* ForcedOrgasm: Barbarella falls into the clutches of Durand Durand, who places her in his fiendish [[{{Orgasmatron}} Excessive Machine]]. It's a device designed to orgasm the victim to death. However, Barbarella proves to be TooKinkyToTorture, [[SubvertedTrope overloading the machine and exhausting the villain]].

* FreeLoveFuture: Their salute is even "love," although they don't practice physical sex any more, considering it to be impractical. Barbarella changes her mind when she meets Mark Hand.
* FreeRangeChildren: An extreme example. The custom of Sogo regarding raising kids is to dump them in an icy wasteland til they're of "a serviceable age", as Mark Hand explains to Barbarella after rescuing her from such children. Little wonder Sogoites are so messed up.

* GainaxEnding: [[spoiler:Durand Durand is defeated, good. So Barbarella, Pygar and the Black Queen fly away to... somewhere... with no real hint at what they are planning to do after everything that went down. And when Barbarella asks Pygar why he saved the Black Queen, he cryptically answers that angels have no memory. The end.]]

* HeroicSeductress: Barbarella's tryst with Pygar has the effect of restoring his self-confidence and ability to fly.

%%* DoYouWantToCopulate
* EasyEvangelism: Despite never having sex before and firmly believing in the pill's practical applications, it does not take much probing for Barbarella to sleep with the fur trapper. By the time she finds someone who ''wants'' to have future pill-sex over the old-fashioned type, she seems almost disappointed by it.

* ElectricInstantGratification: The so-called "Excessive Machine", that can [[OutWithABang kill people]].
* EnemyMine: Barbarella and her nemesis the Black Queen team up to take down Durand Durand after he locks them in the Chamber of Dreams and usurps Sogo's throne from the Queen.

* AnythingThatMoves: Once she gets the point of the sex thing, Barbarella is really not choosy about who she sleeps with. However she refuses the advances of the Black Queen even before she finds out who she is, in contrast to the comics where Barbarella was not adverse to female attention.

* BoldlyComing: Barbarella, the pretty blonde envoy of an Earth that left behind such outdated concepts like violence or physical sex, gets used to both rather quickly after being introduced to them on a more... uhm, barbaric planet. She doesn't decline to try other things too. In one memorable scene, Durand-Durand tries to kill her with his orgasm machine, but she overloads it.

* ApocalypseHow: The Black Queen causes one by siccing the Mathmos on Durand Durand, which results in the destruction of the city of Sogo and everyone living in it dying.
* ArtificialGravity: She switches it on after her zero-gravity striptease.

* YouCanLeaveYourHatOn: Barbarella stripping off her spacesuit constitutes the entire opening credits sequence.

* AgonyBeam: Inverted. Villain Dr. Durand Durand tortures the heroine by hooking her into a device which plays her sexual responses like organ pipes, the goal being to [[ForcedOrgasm orgasm her to death]]. As mentioned further down, it doesn't work.

%% AllWomenAreLustful

* AndThatsTerrible: Durand Durand explains that his positronic ray causes targets to be "deminimalized to the fourth dimension". Barbarella says "But that's monstrous!" This is a necessary use of the trope, because who knows what "deminimalized to the fourth dimension" entails.
%%* AngelicAliens: Pygar.

* AnythingThatMoves: Barbarella is really not choosy about who she sleeps with.

* MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness: Among the softest anyone could find. Other than the very airiest of explanations, expect nothing at all but bizarre fetishy goings-on in bizarre fetishy SpaceClothes. Never mind "creative" violation of special relativity and Heisenberg uncertainty, some technologies featured violate basic physics, such as a yacht with wheels that can move by sail-power when there's no wind because there's a fan on it: such a vehicle is possible (as recently [[Series/MythBusters demonstrated]]), but would be hideously inefficient. Point the fan astern and you'll get much better results.

* ForcedOrgasm: Barbarella falls into the clutches of [[TheVillain Durand Durand]], who places her in his fiendish [[{{Orgasmatron}} Excessive Machine]]. It's a device designed to orgasm the victim to death. However, Barbarella proves to be TooKinkyToTorture, [[SubvertedTrope overloading the machine and exhausting the villain]].

%% wick for an upcoming trope * ForcedOrgasm: Barbarella falls into the clutches of [[TheVillain Durand Durand]], who places her in his fiendish [[{{Orgasmatron}} Excessive Machine]]. It's a device designed to orgasm the victim to death. However, Barbarella proves to be TooKinkyToTorture, overloading the machine and exhausting the villain.

* AgonyBeam: Inverted. Villain Dr. Durand Durand tortures the heroine by hooking her into a device which plays her sexual responses like organ pipes, the goal being to orgasm her to death. As mentioned further down, it doesn't work.

* DiscoTech: Dr. Durand Durand's Excessive Machine resembles an organ and plays music.

* OminousPipeOrgan: The Excessive Machine, with Durand-Durand playing it.

* {{Orgasmatron}}: The Excessive Machine is designed to cause orgasm after orgasm in the victim.
* OutWithABang: The Excessive Machine causes its victims to die of pleasure.

* TooKinkyToTorture: Barbarella overloads the Excessive Machine.

* PluckyComicRelief: Dildano and his secret base of operations. His "Earth Hand/Pill-Sex" scene with Babs could be counted in the film's SugarWiki/FunnyMoments.

* ThemeTuneCameo: Barbarella hums her eponymous theme song after having sex with Mark Hand and Pygar.

* DiscOneFinalBoss: The Black Queen/Great Tyrant because [[spoiler:the real BigBad is the concierge who's Durand Durand and he is also TheStarscream. If anything, the Black Queen is the real heroine, or at least an AntiHero with a PyrrhicVictory due to letting loose the Mathmos, which destroys the evil city, Durand Durand and saves the Queen, Barbarella and Pygar. Apart from the air battle, Barbarella is the most useless space heroine in history.]]

* FetishFuelFuture: While Earth has removed physical sex as the core foundation of propogation and has been replaced with a future psychic-sex pill, the taboo of nudity is completely gone and Barbarella's official uniform has a partially-transluscent top. The fact that the communication screen on Barbarella's ship takes the form of a half-naked statue of the Greek Goddess Artemis probably counts also.

* HighAltitudeBattle: Barbarella and Pygar's mid-air battle with the Black Guards air patrol. The only time Barbarella does anything heroic, she's a pretty good shot.

* KissOfLife: The Black Queen (the perv) suggests that Barbarella reanimate Pygar with a mouth-to-mouth when they find him after being vomited by the Mathmos. It's subverted as Barbarella tries something completely different and much more platonic: move his wings up and down. It works.