The year is 4,000. After peaceful floating in zero-gravity, astronaut Barbarella lands on the frozen planet Lythion and sets out to find renowned scientist Durand Durand in the City of Night, Sogo, where a new sin is invented every hour. She encounters such objects as the Excessive Machine, a genuine sex organ on which an expert artist of the keyboard--in this case, Durand Durand himself--can drive a victim to death by pleasure, a lesbian queen who can make her fantasies take form in her Chamber of Dreams, and a group of ladies smoking a giant hookah which dispenses Essence of Man through a poor victim struggling in its glass globe. The special-effects crew constantly impresses.—alfiehitchie