Low-budget dreams

PLASTIC hula hoops that double as time-travel machines. A big-headed, lobster-clawed monster named Gary. Go-go-booted vixens from the planet Utaryis (pronounced "uterus," get it?) who apply colanders to the heads of their male enemies in order to read their minds. If all this sounds like a really fun and intentionally "bad" sci-fi B movie, that's because it is. Directed by low-budget filmmaker and Henderson resident Kathe Duba-Barnett, Spacebabes Meet the Monsters revels in its own Roger Corman-like goofiness while also stoking a retro buff's appetite for more cheese, more kitsch, more ... um, post-apocalyptic desert nomads with tentacles sprouting from their skulls.

Spacebabes doesn't offer a no-name cast, either. Everyone from True Blood actor William Sanderson to The Avengers secret agent Patrick Macnee to alt-rocker Frank Black lends his star power to this 50-minute film about three goofy time-traveling dudes and their effort to save mankind from a killer plague. (Black, with assistance from Pixies guitarist Joey Santiago, contributes the peppy love theme, "My Name Is Gary," arguably the best song about a space alien since David Bowie's "Starman.")

Of course, hiring Screen Actors Guild talent has its drawbacks, too -- mainly in the way that union labor drives up productions costs. But Duba-Barnett isn't complaining.

"You can get quality acting from people not in SAG," she says. "But we sought out certain people specifically for the reason that they are known as cult actors. It's definitely worth it even if costs go up and there will be many regulations to abide by."

Talent in Spacebabes isn't limited to actors. Sci-fi writer Brad Linaweaver, who co-authored the best-selling Doom novels (based on the popular video game), came up with the Spacebabes story concept, which includes and inverts every sci-fi trope imaginable, from a laboratory gorilla named Zotz to washed-up astronauts to the (shades of Rod Serling) Twilight Zone spoof of an introduction and summation courtesy of Macnee.

In addition to directing and producing underground fantasy flicks (her production credits include 2001's The Vampire Hunters Club), Duba-Barnett happens to be married to low-budget celluloid royalty. Her husband Buddy Barnett, who contributed to the Spacebabes script, used to publish the long-running Cult Movies magazine, an eye-popping staple of the Barnes & Noble magazine racks, and continues to operate Cinema Collectors, a movie memorabilia shop located on Water Street in Downtown Henderson. Indeed, living with a walking, talking encyclopedia of everything B movie-related has its upside.

"It's a lot of fun," says Duba-Barnett. "Sometimes I'll throw Buddy for a loop by knowing something he doesn't. But he opens up my eyes to the lowest of the low budget and the most obscure films. Once I met Buddy, I realized I was only scratching the surface of cult movies. He lives up to his name."

Spacebabes was shot in and around the desert environs of Southern California in 2003, and it took five years before the film finally found a home at Oldies.com (you can also rent the movie via Netflix). So what's next for the Spacebabes director? Look for her next project, a sequel tentatively titled Spacebabes Conquer the World that boasts a screenplay by famed Love and Rockets graphic novelist and fellow Southern Nevadan Gilbert Hernandez.

"We feel so honored to have someone like Gilbert working on a screenplay for us," she says. "Working with so many different and creative people is what makes filmmaking fun. And there are some pretty cool people here in Vegas."