Sex machines (started with Barbarella?)

The sex-machine in the 1968 Jane Fonda film may, or may not, have started it. Anyone know?! I don't mean a simple instrument like a vibrator. I mean something more elaborate, imaginative. (A promo for the film refers to its Excessive Machine - the scene is on the Web, btw.) Perhaps in fiction, porno or otherwise?

I did read something along those lines years ago on the Web. That machine was described in an offbeat porn story which l found quite engaging, not least because it had characters (controllers and controlled) and a vaguely medical setting, extendedly described and put to use.

If you watch the Jane Fonda scene, there's a wonderful line (more like a squeal!) which tells you that the machine is doing its stuff!

- Ken

The only machine I’ve seen that evens comes close is the Symbian (sp)

Ah yes, big thanks plnbrnwrppr (post #2 )! The Sybian! (Clearly related to the word 'sybaritic'!) Worth googling! Wikipedia has an entry, as does the company that makes it. Some porn sites show it in use, often amusingly. (You may have to search under 'machine'.)

- Ken

P.S. I see that there are also machines a bit like letter-boxes for male use ...

I liked the see-through plastic bra she would in the movie. Here's a link to the scene of her in the "Excessive Machine" as it was called https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX2hTObHfxM

Thanks for the link to the Barbarella scene, reddevil (post #4 ). Her controller is the actor Milo O'Shea - perhaps playing a relative of Dr Frankenstein, who just didn't get around to inventing a sex-machine? ?

- Ken

P.S. Anyone, any more such machines - in fiction, film, comic strips, whatever?

If you watch the Jane Fonda scene, there's a wonderful line (more like a squeal!) which tells you that the machine is doing its stuff! (Post #1)

Come to think of it, there's an equivalant moment in the porn story l mentioned, set in a vaguely hospital-like building. A young (male) 'patient' is prescribed a session on the sex-simulation machine. At one point, it enters him from behind. Taken by surprise, he gives a little exclamation. I must admit that l find this moment (like the Barbarella scene) quite funny.

Hmm. I was once told (in an English class) that one type of comedy results from a character's sudden loss of dignity, especially if at that moment his reaction appears somehow mechanical. Example: a pompous man slips on a banana-skin, and he makes a swift and sudden landing!

So l see a connection between that porn story and my English lesson that day! (Btw, l found the story via the old alt.sex message-thread that used to run on my computer - along with many parallel threads like alt.hobbies or alt.news. Anyone else remember those?)

- Ken

Thanks for the link to the Barbarella scene, reddevil (post #4 ). Her controller is played by the actor Milo O'Shea - perhaps a relative of Dr Frankenstein, who just didn't get around to inventing a sex-machine? ?

- Ken

P.S. Anyone, any more such machines - in fiction, film, comic strips, whatever?

Thanks for info about Milo - watching him really working to get her off reminds of times when I'd be trying to masturbate a gal to climax... some gals don't pop too easily, while others, almost as soon as the hand touches them, off they go.

I'm sure you're right, reddevil (post #7 )! 😃

Coming back now to the notion of a sex-machine, l can't really convey how sexy l find the idea! Watching Milo O'Shea pressing the machine's buttons to do multiple things to Jane Fonda - and watching it go into action (though some of the action's out of sight) - already delights me! But then there's her little squeal of pleasure ('Ooh, it feels rather nice, doesn't it?!'), and l'm grinning like the Cheshire Cat! ?

- Ken

The sex-machine in the 1968 Jane Fonda film may, or may not, have started it. Anyone know?! n

The Barbarella movie certainly did not start the notion of constructing sex machines, hardly. They have been on people's minds since long ago. While nothing survives, you can bet that Greek/Roman mechanical devices must surely have existed.

I have illustrations of quite a number of sex machines and some date from the 19th century and others from around the mid 20th century. Nothing new under the sun should be the guiding principle.

Thanks, agracier (post #9 ). I don't know about the ancient Greeks and Romans, but you've drawn attention to the lusty Victorians (vide: Steven Marcus's eye-opening book, 'The Other Victorians') and their contemporaries. Given that the Machine Age, aka the Industrial Revolution, was in full roll back then, l'm not surprised that they came up with some leisure-time spin-offs. (I was going to speculate about that!)

Could you share a few more details of those illustrations you have?

- Ken

Barbarella was a movie satire!

Dear Jane was just 30/31 yrs. when they made that film. I rewatched it on "PLUTO" this afternoon.

I forgot all the different outfits she wore filming.

Barbarella was a movie satire!

Barbarella was a movie adaptation of a 1960's French comic strip by Jean-Claude Forest. Unlike other movie adaptations of comics these last years, it did not develop into a franchise ... ha ha.

It was advertised as an erotic comic, but being published in 1964, it now wouldn't even turn an eye anymore.

There's another nice touch in the same scene from Barbarella. Obviously (in a mainstream 1968 movie) the filmmakers couldn't show Jane stripping naked to enter the sex-machine - so they have the machine do it for her! Down a sloping chute, her various items of apparel come tumbling! Salacious!

- Ken

There's another nice touch in the same scene from Barbarella. Obviously (in a mainstream 1968 movie) the filmmakers couldn't show Jane stripping naked to enter the sex-machine - so they have the machine do it for her! Down a sloping chute, her various items of apparel come tumbling! Salacious!

- Ken

The original comic, while sometimes touted as a sex comic, was actually anything but. Here and there a few breasts and that was it. Looking back, it's difficult to see how it got it's reputation.

Thinking about how the machine 'undressed' Jane so efficiently ... maybe it used powerful suction?! (That could have felt kinda nice in itself!)

The film was directed by Roger Vadim (French, of course!). I think he also directed And God Created Woman (1956), featuring his then-wife Brigitte Bardot. Thirty years later he re-made the latter film, this time with Rebecca De Mornay.

But my original question was about prototypes, etc. (in porno fiction, etc.) for sex-machines. We've heard that indeed there were some - thanks agracier and plnbrnwrppr. Any more?!

- Ken

Big thanks to agracier who has sent me images from his collection. Some of these illustrations of sex-machines look like they are quite old, perhaps early 20C. Which is interesting, as some of them, in the elaborateness of the machines' designs, look like they may have inspired contraptions (non-erotic) featured in the work of respectable cartoonists, W. Heath Robinson (1872-1944) and Rube Goldberg (1883-1970). (See, l have a scholarly side!)

Virtually all of the machines are user-operated (auto-erotic), unlike the one in the film Barbarella. But one of the pictures has a little bird (with symbolic phallic beak) as an interested onlooker.

Also interesting. Several of the cartoons give their ladies a peep-show device (forerunner of the movies) to engage their attention while the machine goes about its work. Hints at our own voyeurism, perhaps, as we study the cartoon!

- Ken

There was a series of films out of Europe on the old 8mm format that depicted sex machines. Several from Germany which I had at one time that had been transferred to VHS video. Others originating from Copenhagen that predate Barbarella by decades

Peepshows was another sub - set that produced several loops on the one 3 hr video with most of it somewhat dated

There was a series of films out of Europe on the old 8mm format that depicted sex machines. Several from Germany which I had at one time that had been transferred to VHS video. Others originating from Copenhagen that predate Barbarella by decades

Peepshows was another sub - set that produced several loops on the one 3 hr video with most of it somewhat dated

Good old Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld had a collection of sex machines in his Berlin Institute of Sexual Studies before 1933. Such contraptions are not really anything new, they are attested as having existed in the 19th century, though means of propulsion have been modernized and they have become both more intricate and also affordable nowadays. You can buy one on Amazon now for about $160.

In any case, Dr. Hirschfeld's collection was vandalized and presumably destroyed by Nazis (Nazi students actually acting ‘spontaneously’ in destroying ‘sexual filth’) in 1933 along with all books, photographs, notes and intensive paper material, along with his collection of objects and sex instruments.