Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity

Plot

Daria and Tisa, two nubile female prisoners, clad only in rough-cut rabbit skin bikinis, break out of their cell in a space gulag, overpower their guards, and escape in a shuttlecraft.

The ship mysteriously malfunctions and the girls crash land on a nearby habitable world where they become the guests of Zed, a man with a scarred face who lives in a large fortress. He is the planet’s sole sentient inhabitant and is guarded by two robots who also act as the fortress' keepers.

Given new clothes, the girls are invited to join Zed for an evening meal at his table. At dinner, the two girls meet two other survivors from another crash-landing who are also Zed’s guests, Rik and his sister Shala. They warn the girls that something’s not right about Zed and that members of their party who had also survived the other crash have already disappeared.

The guests are monitored through the night by the two robots, who perform periodic bed checks on the guests. Rik sneaks out of his room and into Daria's bedroom to warn her of the danger. As they're talking, a robot comes down the hall towards the bedroom. Daria quickly throws Rik onto her bed and strips off her gown. As the robot observes the two guests, Daria pretends to make love to Rik so as to not raise any suspicion of Rik's real reason for being in her room. As the robot analyzes the situation, Daria is forced to continue her fake lovemaking; except that Rik decides to quit faking. Eventually the robot leaves as Rik finishes. Daria, who had been faking all along, then convinces an exhausted Rik that they should conduct a search of the fortress.

A late night visit to Zed’s secret trophy room reveals all. The walls are lined with the heads of dozens of Zed’s previous guests whom he hunted for sport.

The next morning, Rik disappears and becomes Zed's prize. Shala is seized and stripped by Zed and the robots. Daria and Tisa attempt to escape and are captured. Shala, now dressed in a leather bikini like the other two girls, is chained to a column with Daria and Tisa where they are told the rules of the hunt. The trio is then turned loose by Zed, to be hunted as game; he warns them to stay away from the "Phantom Zone".

Shala sacrifices herself to save Tisa from Zed. Using a map, the remaining two find their way to the Phantom Zone, an ancient temple inhabited by zombie-like creatures. They find a cache of laser weapons, and return to the jungle to fight Zed, pursued by one of the creatures. Zed knocks Daria off of a bridge over a chasm to her apparent death; unbeknownst to him, she saves herself by grabbing hold of a vine. He returns with Tisa to his fortress where he attempts to rape her. Daria interrupts and fights him; the monster that was pursuing her shows up, mortally wounds Zed, and attacks the women. They manage to kill the creature and find a spaceship to escape the planet. Zed, dying from his injuries, initiates a self-destruct of his fortress but Shala and Tisa escape in time, and decide to explore the universe.

Cast

Release

The film was given a limited release theatrically in the United States by the Charles Band funded Urban Classics in September 1987.

The film was released on DVD in the United States by Cult Video, a subsidiary of Full Moon Entertainment, in 1999.

Controversy

The movie is a mix of action, drama, and comedy, and features partial female nudity, restraint, simulated sex, and mild violence. The film is intended to be a B-movie mainstream film, despite its low production budget. However, the scene depicting Daria and Rik engaged in passionate lovemaking, with some female nudity (although no genitalia is shown) as part of the character development process prior to Rik's disappearance is intentionally done for comedic value in the same style as some soft porn scenes in other movies.

Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity was specifically criticized on the floor of the U.S. Senate by Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina) in 1992.

Senator Helms cited a case in which some of his constituents had accidentally stumbled onto the movie while flipping through cable channels as justification for amendments to the Cable Act of 1992. Helms wanted to force cable operators to block “indecent” programming unless customers specifically asked for it in writing.

The amendment was struck down by a U.S, Federal Court in 1993 and the decision was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996.

Trivia