Can robots fall in love? Hard to say, but one thing's for sure — machines are getting laid all the time. Whether it's a lifelike android like Gigolo Joe from A.I. (2001) or the weird, morphing art installation from The Holy Mountain (1973), your video store is filled with evidence that some whirring contraptions are getting more play than you are.
• Orgasmatron from Sleeper (1973) — In the future society of this Woody Allen comedy, every home is equipped with one of these closet-like devices. Regular one-on-one sex is outdated: couples now slip inside this handy device for a few seconds of ecstatic moaning before emerging with a satisfied smile and lighting a cigarette. Much more time-efficient, don't you know. That's right — in the year 2173, humans are frigid, but their appliances know how to get the job done right.
• Sex machine from The Holy Mountain (1973) — Alejandro Jodorowski's hyper-surreal film hits us with an unending stream of berserk imagery, including a peculiar machine that performs an abstract form of sexual intercourse. A human operator stimulates the device with a large rod, while the machine (which resembles a funky 1970s piece of Ikea furniture) beeps and moans in appreciative pleasure, while reconfiguring its size and shape like a climaxing Transformer. The machine's movements and sounds become more frenzied and suggestive until an obvious orgasm occurs, and the squealing device gives birth to an adorable little baby machine the size of a portable stereo. Awwww.
• Delos androids from Westworld (1973) — Wow, 1973 was a banner year for sex machines. This enjoyable tale of a killer amusement park was written and directed by Michael Crichton, making it a sort of warm-up for Jurassic Park. Delos is a futuristic theme park populated by androids designed to fulfil tourists’ fantasies. Robotic saloon floozies offer sex, while gunslingers like the one played by Yul Brynner are programmed to lose gun battles. Eventually the robots decide that they'd just rather kill everybody, and things get a wee bit hectic.
• Bender from Futurama — This wisecracking automaton from the popular animated series is clearly a machine, but possesses decidedly human appetites. He consumes a lot of alcohol and cigars, and lusts after a variety of inanimate objects. Fembots become giggling schoolgirls in the face of Bender's romantic charms. A bulky machine called “The Crushinator” bears him a child, and he breaks the heart of the Planet Express ship's sexy-voiced computer. Bender has been arrested for pimping, and once made a pass at a torpedo. He's even scored with human chicks after becoming human in the “I, Meatbag” segment of the episode “Anthology of Interest II.” Whatta guy.
• Proteus IV from Demon Seed (1977) — The computer in this technophobic flick wants a child, and goes to sinister lengths to get one, leading to the film's infamous “rape by computer” climax. Imprisoning Susan (Julie Christie) in a high-tech house, Proteus synthesizes artificial sperm from human cells, imprints them with his massive intellect, builds an incubator for his offspring to gestate in and electronically stimulates the pleasure centre in Susan's brain during the procedure.
• Sexy Sadie and Lovely Raquel from The Pick of Billy Connolly (1982) — Comedian Billy Connolly hilariously reports on the availability of surprisingly advanced blow-up sex dolls in his standup routine. Some of these dollies cross the line from inflatable sex toys to full-on machines, with “electronic moving parts” and the ability to speak. (“What would it say?”) Billy mimes pumping his date up while humming “I'm in the mood for love,” and ponders about the procedure for starting up the “moving parts.” Do you make yourself cozy first and then start them up, or do you start them up first and then carefully time your “entrance,” like kids skipping rope? Then, of course, there are the shopkeepers who have to deal with irate customers returning punctured merchandise. (“I gave her a wee love bite, and she farted and flew out the window!”)
• The Excessive Machine from Barbarella (1968) — Sexy space heroine Barbarella (Jane Fonda) is captured and put in this device, which resembles a cross between a Hammond organ and a giant typewriter. The villain plans to use the machine to give Barbarella such an intense electronically induced orgasm that she dies of pleasure. Barbarella oohs and aahs while the device does its best, but it can't keep up with the insatiable girl and breaks down. Snapping out of it, Barbarella looks down at the smoking ruins of the Excessive Machine with the disappointment of a child looking at a broken toy.
• Pax from Creation of the Humanoids (1962) — In this surprisingly thought-provoking civil rights parable, the bigoted protagonist becomes enraged when he finds out that his sister is “in rapport” with a “clicker” (ie: is married to an android).
• Martian vacuum cleaner from Over-Sexed Rugsuckers from Mars (1989) — Hey, vacuum cleaners need love, too.
