Directed by: Al Adamson
Starring: Catharine Burgess, Vaughn Armstrong, Jay B. Larson
Today’s… bizarre movie comes from the esteemed direction of Al Adamson, who is one of those semi-famous directors known for advancing that cause of B-movies in the 70’s. Normally he did gory horror films with a bunch of toplessness, but Cinderella 2000 is a separation from his normal fare and is instead a softcore sex comedy musical based on the story of Cinderella. I imagine the amount of drugs consumed over the course of the production of this movie would shock Timothy Leary.
The basic plot of Cinderella 2000 is, obviously, the same as that of Cinderella. A girl lives with her stepmother and stepsisters who treat her like dirt, until a fairy godmother comes along and gives her a makeover so she can go to a party and marry a prince. Every deviation from this is given about a second and a half pause afterward, as if they expected you to think that having a fairy godFATHER instead of godmother was just hilarious. Of course, instead of taking place in… whenever the hell Cinderella is supposed to be taking place, Cinderella 2000 is in the far off future of… well, I think you can guess. In this future, the society is controlled by one man with a Terry Thomas mustache called the Controller, and he has outlawed non-sanctioned sex. All sex is controlled by a computer that will randomly pull numbers and put them together. It’s not like there’s an overpopulation problem or anything like that, he just doesn’t want people having sex because it’s dirty.
Everybody on the entire planet except for “Cindy” (Burgess) constantly thinks and talks only about sex, and sometimes they even sing atrocious songs about it. On Cindy’s off day, she goes for a picnic in the woods and is accosted by a wiry man with little silver wings and a wand who introduces himself as a fairy godfather (Larson). His job is to get the planet Earth back on the right track, which means letting them all have free love again. He sings a song about how great love is, and then tells Cindy that she’ll be instrumental in saving the planet, then goes away for a bit so we can see some more terrible songs. Meanwhile, Tom Prince (Armstrong), the foremost male partner that the computer matches (apparently no other men get to do the randomized thing or something. They never explain it because it’s just a stupid plot device) has gotten tired of fornication. He persuades the Controller to throw a party inviting random people in hopes that he could find someone to love (and/or have sex in a different position with). To the party comes Cindy, and etc etc, you can figure it out.
Cindy and Prince boff, but then it’s midnight and she has to leave (right, who hasn’t used THAT excuse?). Tom falls in love, and apparently is also blind or has no short-term memory or something, and doesn’t remember what the person he just had sex with looks like. And neither does anybody else who was at the party. Since she didn’t leave behind a shoe or anything, Prince has to… uh… well, he has to still find something that fits, if you follow me. He goes around the town, screwing everything that moves to find his true love (who hasn’t used THAT excuse, either?), which he finally does by just finding her and looking at her. It’s almost like his master plan to bang every woman in the country wasn’t necessary! The two, along with the fairy godfather, go to the Controller and convince him to allow everybody to go crazy and have it be the 70’s with sillier clothing. Oh, and there’s songs. Terrible songs.
The songs are what drive this movie from being simply boring, predictable and sad to utter nightmare. There is obviously one person who sings all the songs, and she doesn’t even try to match her voice to those who are supposed to be singing. This works out fine, though, since the people lip syncing don’t try all that hard, either. In fact, nobody tries to do anything in this movie, except for whoever designed all the clothes. The lack of material while still making it look all Jetsons-futuristic would make the costume designers from the original Star Trek series proud. Anyway, the songs are horrible. There’s one about being horny, one about how people like having sex, a coda of the horny song in a minor key (which made my ears bleed, I’m pretty sure), a song about how Cindy wishes she was Cinderella (okay, so that one wasn’t about sex), and finally, a country song sung by a robot about how he wants to have sex with a computer, but he doesn’t know “where do I plug it in?”
You know, I like campy stuff. It’s fun. This is an extremely campy film, but it isn’t fun. It’s just kinda sad and leaves one feeling hollow afterward. Still, if I hadn’t watched this movie, I never would’ve learned that Al Adamson was shot and buried in concrete under his new kitchen floor by a guy who stole his identity and credit cards for a couple months before he was caught. And that’s awesome.
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