Abducted by the Daleks (2005)

 

Director: Roman Nowicki

Screenplay: Billy Hartnell and David Stanley 

Cast: Katarzyna Zelnik as Sylvia; Eliza Borecka as Isabella; Sonja Karina as Barbara; Lina Black as Anna; Maria Vaslova as Anna; Lenny Delmore as The Serial Skinner; Terry Barlet as  The Hunter; Connal Rose as Dalek 1; Pedro Robinns as Dalek 2; Andrew Witsend as Dalek 3

Obscurities, One-Offs and Oddities

 

The reason the Daleks are still the most sinister thing in the universe is because they do not make things like porn. They weren’t ever intended to be sexual creatures. It’s simple, Daleks do not do porn. - Tim Hancock, director of the estate of Terry Nation, the creator of the Daleks¹

To be likely lost to time, let us however have the tale of a softcore sci-fi film which, ultra-low budget and obscure, managed to briefly gain controversy and get the ire of the BBC due to their use of an iconic Doctor Who adversary, the Daleks. To give an idea to anyone with no idea of what any of that sentence means, in the United Kingdom in 1963 a series called Doctor Who came to be which, barring at least a period in the nineties where only a failed Americanised feature length film was created, has managed to sustain a legacy to this day, evolving as it went. The most iconic monsters to this day are the Daleks; it would be mean to describe them as moving trolleys with death plungers, but that is in mind, when their creator Terry Nation came up with them in 1963, they are a striking and memorable creation for any science fiction work, iconic even for someone like myself who never grew up with Doctor Who and is an outsider to the long lasting series baring watching a few of the first 2000s reboot episode.

Not having the license to the characters, even if meant as a parody, Abducted by the Daleks would eventually vanish due to Nation's estate and the BBC intervening after an article from the British newspaper The Sun brought this title up. Its creators, the creators of the likes of the Fantom Kiler franchises specialised in the likes of down-and-dirty erotic fetish films with a dark slant, very much coming from the school of having cranked out films like this for a target audience for titillation of a kinky kind. This is established by a striking start when over credits and outer space photos we get Akira Ifukube's legendary theme for of the Godzilla franchise, a sinister Stephen Hawkins voice over, Theremin, and then the Pink Floyd song Lucifer Sam, copyright not something to consider for the producers of this film which is less than sixty minutes long.

We begin with four blonde women in a car, driving in the countryside in a woodland area. Most of them are clearly European due to their thick accents in their performances, all of them only really having acted in films by the director Roman Nowicki like the Fantom Kiler work. A killer is on the loose, but they accidentally run over a cheap CGI alien in the middle of the driver being perturbed by the graphic details of the notorious Serial Skinner's M.O. It feels, as they wander then in woodland with a broken car left behind, bordering between actual woodland and sets, as a very limited budget production but one were the person who got the copyrighted music becomes the MVP alongside the one who designed the Daleks. An ethereal orchestral piece with a siren's singing stands out within the prolonged scene of the characters wandering the woodland, all in a film where apparently they even used Black Sabbath's War Pigs and music from The Mole People (1956) according to the end credits, decent of them to at least credit their music sources.

When the Daleks appear, they look insanely accurate to the Doctor Who versions - consisting of one in red, one silver and one black - to the point I actually have to praise a film which does frankly skimp on so much production value, very much for a very scuzzy reason to even make the movie in the first place. There is nothing sexy about a Dalek however. Maybe I am not open minded enough, and will admit to this, but I cannot envision a sex scene working especially with their robot voices, which can be grating at times, nor hear them talk about examine someone's human body in an innuendo and creepy minded way without it being off-putting.

There is full nudity, a film designed purely for titillation even in illogical ways. Baring one scene, it is a lewder form of cheesecake but not beyond that, definitely not hiding its purpose as there are thin cocktail dresses for all in the female cast but not wishing to go any further into anything remotely more explicit. There is a lot of scenes just of female characters wandering those woods with only shoes on, prolonged, to which the greater concern, brushing aside the intended erotic content, that these characters at least keep their high heels rather than walk the woods at night in bare feet.

Before anyone asks, Abducted by the Daleks is not a positive work in terms of erotica, but to call it leery and sexist and misguided would be shooting fish in a barrel. It has to find contrivances like many this area to allow many erotic scenes, such as fear inducing sexual desire to the point in the middle of the woods, at night in the cold, what can only be described as curious nudie cuties nude stroking between two female characters transpires. All before the Daleks teleport them to the ship, all whilst the theme tune to One Step Beyond, an American anthology television series from the Sixties, is playing.

Try as we might want to side step this either, the theme of people (usually women) being abducted by aliens for "experiments" has been made into something to arose. Like the inexplicable amount of times Bigfoot has managed to be in erotica, aliens and the unknown clearly follow a kink. Obviously, the issue of UFO abductions when they became a phenomenon plays a part in this, a phenomenon that in itself has led to this tangent. There is the uncomfortable idea of eroticising the capture and bounding of people, especially female characters, in these scenarios but likewise I am going to be careful not to inherently just dismiss this as misogynistic either, as context is important. That of between this, which is clearly the titillation of Daleks molesting the female cast from a male gaze, which is uncomfortable even if it is utterly tame, and a fantasy of a person (male or female) where they themselves are abducted by aliens, which is their own fantasy and one they have the right to have. Likewise a) there may be a couple of consenting adults who might have this fantasy, one the woman and the other dressing up as the Dalek for role-play, and b) in more seriousness, my thoughts on this have been more careful, even as an outside, in knowledge to BDSM and kinks in general which have caused me to think much more carefully on the subject.

BDSM to an outsider could be far more uncomfortable and violent in how it looks, but within its kink community there is a lot of consent, and communication and participation between the person(s) being bond/whipped/gagged/restrained/clothes-pegged/raised aloft on cables and the person(s) doing this to them. BDSM as an outside has made me really be more cautious in saying something is misogynistic, or grotesque or offensive when in reality context is so much more important. Kinks as well, especially online with women as much part of their creation, has this same context which means I will not immediately throw myself into the camp to damn something until the context is understood. Context makes a fantasy of a woman being abducted by aliens more acceptable if there is an active female gaze intrigued or arousal for a woman by it, even if just one, or in the privacy of one's bedroom a woman is attracted to this fetish. The idea of a woman being a victim in these scenarios is problematic, but time has forced me to consider with greater concern, with thought this idea may offend some, that women have a considerably greater spectrum of fetishes and desires then even our liberal Western society has even caught up with and digested yet. Likewise, the gaze in this film is an issue, but it is also a lame, almost comical production, neutering my personal reaction significantly.

This is tame even with the moral quandary, where even sixties American "roughie" films, an exploitation film genre, are far more uncomfortable than this in comparison where they, will less explicit nudity if any, had violence like slapping and threat as something meant to be titillation. Also, the reason I will not spend a review calling this repugnant filth is that I am also considering the actresses themselves. If they were paid and not exploited, I will just think this was a group of actors comfortable in this ridiculous production being naked on grey sci-fi sets with prop Daleks, even if the content deserves to be scrutinised. And whilst I am mentioning BDSM, actual kink practitioners would probably find this film comically woeful, as here there is one actress dressed as a dominatrix waving a whip loosely and awful laser effect threats, not exactly the most intense of sights when actual BDSM, again between consenting adults, can look rougher and nastier, but with the participants fully prepared for what is happening and able to leave it content afterwards.

I think in mind with sympathy with the actresses in general. The fact they are all lithe and blonde is the more perturbing thing for me than then even being lasered to death nude. That this film does not even have a broad mind even to different hair colours let alone women being more than this archetype onscreen is more of an issue, especially as they had to change one of the cast members, Lina Black, to Maria Vaslova as Anna in the final act, likely because of both Black not wanting to do the nudity nor the one moment, which the film warns is "XXX Rated" where, tied up by a hunter after the Serial Skinner, there is intimate groping and touching with a prop gun barrel. Also blonde, casting Vaslova means teleportation changes one physically as much as take your clothes and give you a European accent. The production by this point is also emphasising how much it is obsessed with characters wandering the woods naked, having to write a sci-fi reasoning (via molecular changes) for this and changing actresses, whilst having Vaslova apply lipstick, nude in the same woods at night for no discernible reason baring that one should always look good.

I had expected something worse, trepidation to actually watch this in the first place, but even with the ending, which get scuzzier, is in a small ball of absurdness cheapness, a soldier hunting the Serial Skinner an actor in a Halloween face mask with the evil Stephen Hawkins voice. Even with the Serial Skinner, you have a man in a creepy mask with a fondness for red track suits; whilst it is problematic an image, of a nude woman bound to a tree whilst a killer marks in lipstick where he intends to cut, there is still the knowledge these are actors within this scene, in foggy woodland, playacting for a production in their tiny little fimographies where their careers were probably in other areas entirely. The image is still an issue but, in a film like this to have a woman inexplicably nude in a police office for the ending, the greater concern was whether Maria Vaslova was freezing under the water poured over her for rain effects.

The film is definitely, absolutely, dumb. Made for a cheap purpose but, with an end credit "Beer & wine ... drunk by the crew", this is a British production made by people with some self awareness of this. Unfortunately, Abducted by the Daleks both fall back on a crass series of dated erotic imagery, without even the budget to do so, and half arsed about it too. Likely to be lost in time, it is the notoriety with Doctor Who fans which people may know this film through, which is the ultimate irony that, wishing to suppress the film or wish it was buried, Terry Nation's estate likely kept this film alive as a result among the morbidly curious like myself, or Doctor Who fans they wished to suppress this film from. You do not even get the Daleks saying "Exterminate" until the final line of the film, which just emphasises the film's lackadaisical nature; no malice to anyone who made the film, just curiosity now dampened by its existence and having watched it.

 

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1) Referred to HERE.