It's amazing to see what passed for a PG-rated movie back in 1968!  The common perception is that movies have gotten more violent and more sexualized and that the ratings are being pushed closer to the edge as we get more and more desensitized.  I'd argue that might be true for the nearly-useless PG13 rating, but PG and G have gone the other direction.  In 1968, Stanley Kubrick's 2001 was considered a G movie... and why not?  There's no blood in it, no overt human violence or sex.  Dr. Floyd does say the word "damn" which probably would make it PG in today's market, but otherwise there's nothing too 'objectionable' about it.  Still, when you think about a two and a half hour movie where humans evolve from apes prodded on by a strange extra-terrestial intelligence and a computer kills all of the human members of its crew--does that sound like a G movie?

Barbarella is even more shocking as a PG movie.  Like the also-PG 1971 Charleton Heston apocalyptic thriller The Omega Man, it features full frontal nudity, but Barbarella gets there in the opening title sequence!  I kind of like the idea that PG means "Parental Guideance."  Parents in 1968 would have been encouraged to find out that the film includes many scenes of a topless (or bottomless) Jane Fonda, and they would have decided if that was OK for their nine-year olds.  Nowadays, parents seem to assume that PG is appropriate for anyone over the age of five, but I bet they'd be shocked to see a completely naked Barbarella spinning around in space only two minutes into this film!

While I was watching Barbarella  it was hard for me to tell what movie Jane Fonda thought that she was in.  Actually, she seems sure that she's in a goofy B-Movie, but the rest of the movie doesn't always agree.  Fonda approaches the character with the right amount of camp for the movie that we know it as today, but she is surrounded by people who are playing the movie absolutely straight.  It makes her strangely endearing because she seems to be a fish out of water not only in the script but in the film's production too.  Still, she plays along with everything the movie throws at her including that nude opening sequence, impromptu sex with a couple strange men, and a scene where she's stripped and sexually stimulated by a diabolical sex torture machine.  She also gets carted around by a blind angel in front of a blue screen, tied up and attacked by man-eating dolls and birds,  and tossed around her goofy spaceship in outfits that accentuate her nipples.  None of this should be taken seriously at all, but someone forgot to tell the rest of the cast that.

I can see why science fiction films had such a bad reputation heading into the 1970s.  With the rare exception of 2001, most Sci-Fi was nearly this goofy.  Bad space suits, bad spaceship models, obvious soundstages, stiff acting, and lots of zany sound effects were the order of the day.  Barbarella is cemented as a camp classic, but I'm glad that Sci-Fi has been able to move in more serious directions.  Now, I just wish that more B-Movies like this would be made today, instead of the made-for-SyFy garbage that we get going direct to video.  There's something charming about the sets, the nearly Ed Wood quality models, and the whimsy of the space-bound sex romp that is missing in today's market.  Getting to see this on a big screen was a real treat.