Zeta One

 (1969)

Zeta One Blu-ray offers solid video and audio in this fan-pleasing Blu-ray release
In this playful spoof of the James Bond films, Robin Hawdon stars as Word...James Word, a womanizing secret agent whose investigation of a criminal mastermind (James Robertson Justice) leads him to discover a race of beautiful, exotic superwomen.

For more about Zeta One and the Zeta One Blu-ray release, see the Zeta One Blu-ray Review

Starring: James Robertson Justice, Charles Hawtrey, Dawn Addams, Valerie Leon, Lionel Murton, Carol Hawkins
Director: Michael Cort

» See full cast & crew

Zeta One Blu-ray Review

The Love Child of James Bond and Barbarella

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater, March 17, 2013

If you like the four B's—and obviously, I mean Barbarella and Bond, bongos and breasts—the cheeky 1969 sexploitation picture Zeta One will most definitely be your softcore cup of tea. Based on a comic strip from the shortly existent British lad mag Zeta, which featured sci-fi inspired photo spreads of scantily clad women, the movie borrows equally from Jane Fonda's spacey cult classic and Sean Connery-era 007, with a swinging Anglo-funk soundtrack and lovely English jubblies galore. Make no mistake, Zeta One is simply awful as a film. It's bizarrely slow, nearly plotless, and rife with continuity errors and obvious money-saving shortcuts. None of this will matter, however, to connoisseurs of the so- bad-they're-fantastic nudie-cuties of the 1960s. That is, you don't watch movies like Zeta One for their stories or production values; you watch them because they're campy and fun and positively quaint by today's sexual standards.



Robin Hawdon plays Word, James Word—hilarious, right?—a tall, dark, and mustachioed super-spy for "Department 5." The central joke here is that Word never seems to get around to doing any actual spying; he's too busy in bed with busty ladies, revealing sensitive intel during post-coital pillow talk. When the film opens, Word enters his ultra-mod London apartment—which, design geeks take note, is decorated with some swank Swedish furniture—and finds his blonde, Moneypenny-esque secretary, Anne (Lust for a Vampire's Yutte Stensgaard), making coq au vin in the kitchen. Anne's ulterior motive is to get the inside scoop on Word's latest mission, and she's willing to slow cook a totally different rooster—if you catch my drift—if Word will give her the 4-1-1.

Some foreplay is in order first, though, and what follows is a weirdly slow game of strip poker that has two discernible purposes: 1.) to get Yutte Stensgaard out of her clothes early in the proceedings, and 2.) to significantly pad the film's length. This is no montage; we watch nearly the entire game play out in close to real time. We're nearly a third of the way into the movie when the two finally retire to the boudoir, where—after a quick romp—Word tells the actual story of the film in flashback.

And it's a convoluted sci-fi doozy. Word's tale involves an Amazon-like all-female utopia called Angvia—yes, a comically easy anagram to rearrange— that exists somewhere outside Earth in space and time. Led by the sapphic Zeta (Dawn Addams), the Angvians live in something like a "vast supernatural ant colony," where they apparently spend most of their time bathing one another, meditating naked, and wrestling in what I can only describe as purple bra-less bikinis made of rope, with only pasties covering their nipples. Because, you know, a gynecentric society would totally dress in visually stimulating fetish gear for style and comfort and general utility.

Periodically, Zeta teleports her orange miniskirt and white go-go boot-wearing underlings to Earth in order to conscript new female recruits. Her newest target is the buxom stripper Teddy (Wendy Lingham), who goes by the stage name "Clarissa Richambeaux, Queen of the G-String." The villainous Major Bourden—esteemed English character actor James Robertson Justice, way out of his element here—gets wind of this and sends his mincing lackey Swyne (Charles Hawtrey) to get to Teddy before the Angvians and convince her to swallow a homing device. See, for reasons unexplained, Bourden has taken an extreme disliking to Zeta and aims to destroy the Angvians and/or harness their psychic powers. To this end, he's also been capturing Zeta's minions and torturing them in his castle's sex attic to extract information.

Where's Word during all this, you ask? Good question. Although his boss, W (Lionel Murton)—a play on 007's M—has assigned him to investigate Major Bourden, Word spends most of the film holed up in his bedroom with an Angvian named Clotho (Anna Gaël), who is most often unclothed. He only bothers to get out of the sack when Bourden kidnaps Clotho and—for sport—decides to release her in the forest and hunt her down, a la The Most Dangerous Game. This backfires when Zeta enacts "Action 69," sending her breasty warriors to finger-zap the Major's cronies until they're lying motionless in a pile of tweed and khaki. Don't worry, it'll all make sense when you see it. Or, it won't. Whatever. It really doesn't matter.

Zeta One is bottom-to-topless ridiculous, with one innuendo-laced gag after another and no shortage of bared skin. Somehow, the film is all the more charming for how shoddily it's put together, from the blatant editing issues to the chintzy sets. Look out, in particular, for the "Self- Revelation Room," which appears to be just a closet draped in tin foil. The camp factor is strong with this one, so if you like cheeky birds, swinging '60s parody, and all-in-good-fun nudity, it's worth braving the atrocious filmmaking for a laugh.

Zeta One Blu-ray, Video Quality

 

In typical Kino/Redemption/Jezebel fashion, Zeta One is essentially presented as-is, with a 1080p/AVC-encoded Blu-ray transfer—close to the correct 1.66:1 aspect ratio—that hasn't been cleaned up in any significant way. This means you'll frequently see white and black specks, small scratches, and bits of hair and other debris on the image, which sometimes gives the impression that you're actually watching a projection of beat-up 35mm print in some dank grindhouse. It certainly enhances the mood, but if you're looking for a pristine picture, you won't find it here. Still, Kino's hands-off approach also means that there's at least been no smeary digital noise reduction or abusive, halo-inducing edge enhancement. The print looks entirely natural, with a visible grain pattern that may be heavy at times—especially during certain scene transitions—but is vastly preferable to an artificially smoothed- over image. Not surprisingly for a film of this vintage and budget, the picture is never razor sharp, but it's obvious that you're seeing all the detail the 35mm print has to offer at the current 1080p resolution. No complaints here. Color too is reproduced capably, with the overlapping neon lights of Angvia looking vivid but never oversaturated. Contrast is stable and skin tones are, well, fetching. The fairly short film sits on a 25 GB single-layer disc with plenty of room—I didn't spot any obvious compression issues.

Zeta One Blu-ray, Audio Quality

 

The film's Blu-ray release features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio mono track that does what it can with the dynamically limited source material, and it's unlikely that Zeta One will ever sound better. You might hear a low-level hiss from time to time, but pops and crackles are limited, and dialogue is always clean and easy to understand. (Which is important since Kino never seems to include any subtitle tracks for these native-English Redemption/Jezebel releases—a pet peeve of mine.) The highlight here is most definitely the film's music, from the Bond theme-esque title song— featuring a Shirley Bassey croon-alike—to the swinging background score, which features bass and horns and percussion going bonkers in a groovy 1960s freakout.

Zeta One Blu-ray, Special Features and Extras

 

The lone extras on the disc are trailers for Zeta One (HD, 2:02) and Girl on a Motorcycle (SD, 00:50).

Zeta One Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation

 

Though Zeta One is not a good film, I'm oh-so-glad it exists. This sort of low-budget English nudie-cutie could never be made again, not with the same earnestness and sense of unbridled fun. It's most definitely a curiosity, and really only recommendable if you're already into this niche sub-genre, but I'm glad companies like Kino/Redemption/Jezebel are around to facilitate this kind of release. Zeta One looks and sounds as good as can be expected here considering the source material, and while short on special features, this disc is a good bet for those of you who enjoyed Girl on a Motorcycle or The Sex Thief.

The Salvation Group, creator of the Redemption, Sacrament, Jezebel, and Purgatory film labels, is planning to bring to Blu-ray a number of cult films in the coming months, including Martin Campbell's The Sex Thief (1974), Jean Rollin's Zombie Lake (1981), and Jess ...