DIRECTOR: BERKELY JOHNSON. RUNNING TIME: 86 mins. DVD: BIZARRE BAZAAR. PRICE £12.99 CERT 18

An enterprising piece of science fiction smut – basically an unauthorised erotic remake of original Star Trek pilot episode The Cage – this amazing shoestring production (variously released as Sex Slaves of the Porn Planet, Space Assignment: Big Blast Off and Maximum Thrust), was filmed in Turkey, where such copyright infringing knock-offs were commonplace in the 1960s and 1970s. However, legal action by Trek creator Gene Roddenberry resulted in the destruction of all known prints in 1978. Or so it was believed for over twenty years, until a pirated copy surfaced in Latvia in 1999. Redubbed and re-edited, this has now been released on DVD under the title The Search For Cock, and is being marketed as sex comedy/Galaxy Quest – type Star Trek parody. Shot in 1969, but not released until 1973, the shoddy production follows the basic plot of The Cage surprisingly closely. Lured to an uncharted planet by a false distress call from a long-lost space ship, Captain Pikestaff of the Starship Zipperfish (yes, really), finds himself captured and imprisoned by a group of underground-dwelling alien pornographers. They want to film him breeding with their other human specimen – the pneumatic Mary-Ellen (Dolly Balongas), the sole survivor of the crashed space ship. The aliens (who, for some unexplained reason, have heads shaped like arses), are able to create powerful illusions based on the humans’ innermost sexual fears and fantasies. This is used an excuse for a series of tacky soft-focus erotic vignettes involving Pikestaff and Mary-Ellen ripping their clothes and engaging in much sweating and grunting against ‘exotic’ locales. Meanwhile, Pikestaff’s shipmates are prevented from rescuing him by the aliens’ invoking their deepest sexual desires – alien Science Officer Mr Pork (Fekhim Bazoombas, a top Turkish stand-up comic renowned for his hilarious bull-buggering routine), for instance, bends the young Russian navigator across his control panel and gives him a damn good ram-shackling, whilst shouting “Hold it steady Mr Jerkov”.

Despite being punished by illusions involving being chased around a castle by a man with a large chopper, and being spanked by a an elderly and obese schoolmistress, Pikestaff defies the aliens and succeeds in withholding his ejaculation in each scenario, thereby denying the aliens the ‘pop-shot’ vital for lucrative intergalactic sales of their film. In desperation the aliens kidnap two female crew-members – uptight First Officer ‘Number One’ and busty Yoeman Smiddy – in the hope that faced with a choice of breeding partners Pikestaff will finally do the deed. A further series of erotic fantasies follow involving the two new women – ‘Number One’ justifies her name by giving Pikestaff a golden shower in one particularly memorable sequence. However, the Captain continues to resist and his captors, finally convinced that he would prefer an eternity of hand relief to captive sex with three horny women, agree to release him and his crew. In a final revelation, we learn that the aliens had, in fact, been rendered impotent by a nuclear war aeons ago – their genitalia are shown as being horribly withered – and voyeurism via porn-movies is their only means of sexual stimulation. They also reveal that Mary-Ellen is in fact not the amazing 36DD she appears to be – this is an illusion they have created to boost her self-esteem – but is actually a 32A. She elects to stay on the planet and maintain the illusion.

The producers main coup was the casting of Jeffrey Hunter in the lead, recreating his role of Captain Pike (or Captain Pikestaff, as he is here). By 1969, his reputation tarnished by a Spanish paternity case and a three-in-a-bed scandal involving Zero Mostel in a gorilla suit and Lassie, Hunter’s career was in the doldrums and he was in no position to turn down work. Even in unbelievable filth such as this. Sadly, Hunter died within a few months of completing this film – choking to death on horse semen during a bizarre sex party in an Algerian brothel. Lurking behind the anglicised director’s credit of Berkeley Johnson was local director Ali Chabobs – most of whose previous film-making experience had been confined to the grainy three-minute animal buggery loops popular in Turkish bazaar peepshows. If you like wooden acting, cardboard sets and ‘special’ effects where you can see the string combined with heaving buttocks and erect nipples, this DVD is for you. But buy it quick – rumour has it that Paramount Pictures are currently trying to get it banned again.