Zeta One
Entry updated 10 February 2025. Tagged: Film.
UK film (1969; vt The Love Slaves; vt Alien Women; vt The Love Factor). Tigon British Film Productions. Directed by Michael Cort. Written by Cort and Alistair McKenzie. Cast includes Dawn Addams, Anna Gaël, Robin Hawdon, Charles Hawtrey, James Robertson Justice, Wendy Lingham and Yutte Stensgaard. 86 minutes. Colour.
Spy James Word (Hawdon) seduces (or is seduced by) his boss's secretary, Ann Olsen (Stensgaard), and reveals to her the secret of the all-woman world of Angvia, which may exist in outer space or another "time Dimension". Their queen (Addams) and her subjects regularly abduct women from Earth to live and work on Angvia, and have set their sights on stripper Edwina (Lingham) as their next target. The shady Major Bourden (Justice) is also aware of Angvia, and feels he needs to defeat them to achieve his dreams of world domination. All leads to a showdown at Bourden's country estate, where a fighting force from Angvia easily defeats the Major and his minions, foiling his very vaguely defined Bond-Villain-like plans. At the end Ann is revealed to be an agent of Angvia, and she abducts Word to serve in the insemination unit there.
A cheap, cheerful and largely nonsensical attempt to blend a James Bond rip-off, swinging sixties Sex comedy and sf, Zeta One has been released under various titles, none of which helped it at the box office until it became a minor cult item in the VHS era. All the expected elements are there: no excuse needed for bare female flesh, low budget pop art set design, an attempt to mimic the Stargate sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) (with the addition of a naked woman), familiar faces from the Carry On and Hammer franchises, wooden acting and rudimentary direction. The most interesting element is the depiction of Angvia, which is shown as advanced and well-balanced (the women there show no signs of upset at having been abducted from Earth) and more than a match for the male characters (see Feminism; Women in SF). This includes the Bond stand-in, Word, who is naturally irresistible to all the women in the film, but who does very little to resolving the plot. [CWa]
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