Film / Sex Mission

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Two men — Albert Starski and Maksymilian "Maks" Paradys — are chosen to be cryogenically hibernated as part of a test. However, something goes very wrong and they are left frozen for many more years than they were supposed to. They wake up in a post-apocalyptic underground totalitarian world inhabited entirely by women, and find themselves defending the very fact that they're men. In the future, it seems, all of history has been re-written to only star female heroes, and men have since been done away with entirely. But is everything as it seems, and are men really useless, like the new society claims? Can Albert and Maks turn the world back on the right track?

The ensuing adventure is part sci-fi sex comedy, part harsh criticism on Eastern European communism. Or any totalitarianism. And while it would appear to be first and foremost a pamphlet against radical feminism as well today, that was not really the case when the movie first came out, as in the Eastern Bloc feminism was never actually allowed to develop anywhere beyond its early 20th century form, i.e. granting women voting and divorce rights. Still, that did allow Sexmission to escape the fate of an overwhelming majority of comedies made in Eastern Europe during the communist era, namely being seen as hopelessly obsolete and confusing a mere few years after Soviet collapse. For these reasons, the film is still well-loved in Poland and other post-communist countries.

It received two loose video game adaptations in 1991 and 1996, both titled A.D 2044.

This film contains examples of following tropes:

• Actually Pretty Funny: When Albert is told by representatives of Women League that Copernicus and Einstein were both women, annoyed Maks asks rhetorically whether Curie-Skłodowska was one as well. This makes the crowd erupt in laughter.
• After the End: The action of the movie takes place a few decades after nuclear war which rendered the surface of the Earth lifeless (except it didn't — it is all just a ruse).
• Air-Vent Passageway: Combined directly with So Much for Stealth
• Anti-Hero: Maks is one. He is a protagonist thrown into a crazy totalitarian world, so he's sympathetic, and he is far from being outright villainous, being a viewpoint character for most of the movie... but he's also boastful, crude, boorish, and took part in the cryogenics experiment just for the money and fame. Most of this is Played for Laughs.
• Apocalyptic Log: A piece of newspaper from 1993 found in an old boot reveals some details about the political situation shortly before the war, like the dissolution of the United Nations. Or the USA being so deep in debt they had to sell Alaska.
• Artificial Outdoors Display: After the protagonists get out of the city, they discover the dismal view from the outside cameras is a painted backdrop. Max rips the canvas trying to walk away from the exit and they get out on the perfectly normal Baltic beach. Later they walk on through a perfectly normal Baltic shore pine forest.
• Brick Joke: Just after being woken up, the protagonists have problems with artificial food, stored in weird containers. For example, some sort of paste is stored in an egg-shaped jar opened by twisting it. Three guesses what happens near the finale when Lamia's served a real egg.
• Brutal Bunker: Facing the radiation, survivors of the WW3 ran for the mines and started to organise their lives there. Fifty years later, the society is a Totalitarian Utilitarian hell-hole run by the International League of Women inside a sprawling, underground complex and propaganda brainwashes all the women to hate men (even if men went extinct during the war). Everyone is on mandatory happiness pills to keep the society running and various departments of the new, corporate-like society are actively sicced at each other for endless competition to keep them too busy to think twice. The remaining elderly, who still remember old times, are kept in isolation, to not disturb the rest of society with their "backward" ways and mentions of the world before war. All of which is supervised by State Sec for a good measure. Religion of any kind have been also dealt with. And then it turns out the lingering radiation is just a sham - it was a problem for the first few years, but the League found it was easier to keep the women in check with fear of the outside, and fabricating an "outside enemy" to unite against made their situation more bearable, than facing all the hassle of trying to rebuild pre-war society without men. Notably, the society seems to function just fine, with the generations born into the system accepting it wholesale and dissent being minimal (and mostly about minor issues, like Situational Sexuality). Did we mention it's a high-concept sci-fi comedy, created entirely to get around political censorship of then-communist Poland?
  Berna: Aren't you sick? Only a sick specimen starts to have doubts.
• Casanova Wannabe: Max. It's heavily implied he used to be a womanizer before the experiment - and signed for it for the hero fame and thus even easier chance to get laid. All while being pushy, very blunt and just keeping on trying to hit on random women. Even Albert finds this disturbing.
• Chance Activation: The capsule is activated when one of the male protagonists curses. It makes sense considering Her Excellency, who had set the password, is male.
• Censor Suds: Towards the end of the movie, there's a completely gratuitious scene of Lamia and Emma taking a bath together and chatting (although we mostly hear giggling) which is full of the stuff.
• City in a Bottle: The nuclear wasteland that appears to surround the entrance hatch to the base (and the periscope used to observe the surface from the inside) turns out to be a circular backdrop in the middle of a perfectly fine seaside location.
• Clean Dub Name: For its Soviet release, the original title was initially translated as Новые амазонки ("New Amazons") for obvious reasons.
• Cryo Sickness: Maks and Albert wake up blind and disoriented, and have to spend some weeks in "adaptation".
• Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: A variation. After escaping to the surface along with the males and breathing natural air, Lamia — having lived her entire life in an Elaborate Underground Base — is constantly coughing and sneezing, asking her companions incredulously how did they manage to "live in such a draft".
• Depopulation Bomb: A male gene-suppressing weapon Gone Horribly Wrong exterminated the male population, due to historical revisionism of the Women League. Seemingly it worked more or less as intended, but most of the remaining boys were converted to women.
• Disguised in Drag: Her Excellency!
  Maks: So we almost got castrated here, and you're gluing a pair of tits onto yourself, you gyp?!
  • Also Albert and Maks in the penultimate scene where they're putting male embryos in the incubator.
• Elevator Escape: Lots of them.
• Escape from the Crazy Place: The room where Albert and Maks are held has a very bright-lit, clinical, observing-the-odd-creatures-safely sort of a look. It's even lampshaded by Maks.
  • And then it turns out the Women League's "council hall" is located directly above it.
• Escape Sequence: Most of the film is this.
• Establishing Character Moment: At the beginning of the movie, Albert shows up on press conference dressed in an elegant suit and when asked by TV reporter what made him volunteer for a hibernation experiment, makes an eloquent but humble and honest speech about how he simply feels responsible for the future generations and wants to do some good for mankind by helping develop a technology which might help terminally ill people to wake up in times when cure for their disease has already been discovered. Meanwhile, his speech is being watched on life television by his entire family (in what seems to be a classy house), who are all very supportive and proud of him. Maks, on the other hand, shows up wearing a crude tracksuit and responds to the same question with clearly dishonest speech about how he volunteered out of craving for an adventure and fascination with concept of hibernation itself (while in reality, he was motivated solely and only by reward money). His speech is being watched only by his distraught wife and little daughter — both obviously hurt and resentful that he decided to abandon them — living in an ordinary, modest flat. It really goes far not only in displaying the protagonists' personalities, but also establish that they're polar opposites of each other.
• Fanservice: Quite a lot for obvious reasons - see Innocent Fanservice Girl below. Could also serve as Fan Disservice to some, considering that none of the women are shaved, the movie having been made in 1980's Poland after all.
• Foreshadowing: When the press conference at the beginning of the movie comes to an end, the TV reporter speaks directly to the camera and reminds the viewers that they'll be seeing each other again soon, on another gathering of the International League of Women. "League protects, League advises, League will never betray you". Guess what organization is going to enact totalitarian rule over future female-only society. Or what one of their mottos (distorted) will be.
• Food Fight: With pies! Just don't ask from where they got them.
• Future Imperfect: The women of the future are brainwashed by their Straw Feminist leaders to think that inoccuous tools, like shaving razors or corkscrews, were used by men to torture women.
• Future Food Is Artificial: Justified because of the radiation outside (except it's not real). Actual vegetables are a valuable good, and it's hinted that possession of them is illegal. An elderly lady begs a visiting scientist not to confiscate her potato plant. Right after that, the aforementioned scientist bribes the elder with a jar of marmalade for some information regarding males.
• Gendercide: While Albert and Max slept, the entire male population has been eradicated.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: At its core, the film exists to criticise communist regime ruling over Poland back then and get around political censorship. It does so the standard way - as a high-concept, fantastical in nature comedy. Since censors had rather strict guidelines, they had to let the film free. The only line that got cut (and only for the TV reruns) was a direct, blatant Take That! to the Soviet Union.
• Gender Rarity Value: Subverted and defied. Learning they are the last two surviving males on the planet, Max almost instantly tries to play it up in a really smarmy way. He is not just quickly rebuked, but quite literally thrown down, long before he learns just how much the world hates men now. As far as the society is concerned, they should be either put through gender change or simply harvested for organs and what's left made into a high-protein paste.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Lamia has some trouble deciding, but ultimately joins the guys in their escape.
• Hope Spot: Lamia, who held custody over the males for quite some time and actually grew kinda fond and sympathetic towards them (even becoming gradually infatuated with Maks) unexpectedly joins them while they're on the run and leads them towards the exit to the surface. However, it turns out that she did so merely to show them that the world has turned into uninhabitable wasteland (to the best of her knowledge, at least...) and thus convince them to remain underground and undergo "naturalization" (i.e. sex change) willingly. When that fails, she lets in a team of Special Section troopers who overwhelm and capture the escapees. Fortunately, it does not last long, since Lamia's superiors make a fatal mistake of screwing her over for her efforts, thus triggering her final and definite Heel–Face Turn.
• Human Popsicle: The guys are part of a pilot program - it's only been tested on a chimpanzee before.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Considering that they live in all-female society, the girls have no problem with their nudity, especially around the swimming pools or during shirt-swapping after games (for some reason they don't have bras in the future), much to the delight of Maks. Albert's reaction is less enthusiastic, but then, he's the more repressed of the two.
  Albert: Our civilization turned into rubble, and all you care about is ass!
• It Has Been an Honor: When Albert — strapped to a gurney — is being separated from Maks and taken to the operation room to be dissected, he thanks his companion for all the time together and calls him true friend while bidding him farewell.
• I Was Beaten by a Girl: Max moaning this went memetic.
• Kangaroo Court: The last two males in a Lady Land inhabited by Straw Feminists are put on trial, with their crime being their gender.
• Lady Land: Obviously.
• Meaningful Echo: The instructor brainwashing Special Section recruits in one scene repeats the League of Woman's catchphrase spoken by TV reporter in 1991 almost verbatim, except instead of saying "League protects", she says "League rules". It really goes far in saying that what was originally established as an organization meant to defend people's rights turned into oppressive, totalitarian regime enforcing one world order on everybody.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: After spending some time going back and forth between aiding the males in their escape and helping apprehend them, Lamia finally decides to screw over her former colleagues and definitely take Max's and Albert's side after government officials "reward" her for taking part in capturing the males by taking away the custody over them from her to Genetix and seize all her research, turning her entire hard work into naught and leaving her with nothing.
• Next Sunday A.D.: The movie, made in 1984, starts in 1991 (which seems more like 20 Minutes into the Future). That said, action switches to 2044 fast.
• Nice Guy: Albert is overall kind-hearted, meek, humble and also gentlemanly towards the women he meets — especially in comparison to downright boorish Maks. Even Lamia, who's been conditioned to hate males since childhood, describes him as a benign person and how Maks is the aggressive specimen that has bad influence.
• No Party Like a Donner Party: Before their final escape, Albert and Maks are sentenced to become organ donors; their remains are to be turned into high-protein nutrient.
• Only A Dream: Subverted and Played for Laughs halfway through the movie. When Lamia injects unconscious Albert with a drug in order to wake him up, we may see that he is dreaming about waking up three years after he and Maks were frozen, just as planned. It's as if all events in the movie up to this point were just Albert's hibernation-induced delusions. However, it quickly turns out that no, it was all real.
  Albert: [in dream] It's so good that it was only a dream!
  Albert: [after actually waking up] I, uh... I had such a beautiful dream [starts wailing like a baby]
• Only in It for the Money: Maks' sole motivation for volunteering to partake in hibernation experiment. He gives quite different story during press conference when asked about his motivation, but his wife knows better.
• Our Graphics Will Suck in the Future: 2044's security systems run on ZX Spectrum, apparently.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: All randomly encountered women are completely unaware of the protagonists' true gender, so Albert and Maks can easily pass for women, as long as they address each other in feminine forms. It works most of the time. Justified in that most of the time average employees are supposed to be unaware of either the two men's escape or their very existence.
  • The use of the trope makes sense, as none of these women has ever SEEN a man, so they're unable to tell when they do. Which adds a layer to the movie's satire, as throughout the film, women are shown being taught about the cartoonish supposed evils of men... while having had no contact or interaction with men ever. This parallels the politics and propaganda of the real-life Soviet Block, which the movie satirizes, with the demonization of the West concurrent with the government isolating people from anything Western as carefully as possible.
• Path of Inspiration: Our protagonists are told it was Adam who picked the apple off the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and later tempted the female into eating it. It is also mentioned how "the man Cain invented crime and tried it out on his sister Abla". Implication being, the rewriting of historical records also involved a similar rewrite of religious scriptures.
• Phlebotinum Pills: All women are reminded by the computers to "take their pills". While it seems a minor background detail at first, the pills are vital to the one-gender system running smoothly. They convert the women's sex drive into professional ambitions, resulting in an asexual, career-oriented society.
  • When Lamia's interest in the captured men starts wandering into unprofessional territory, she stops taking her pills. The withdrawal makes her even more unprofessional, resulting in a High-Heel–Face Turn.
  • When the protagonists stumble upon a Decadent Camp, they spot couples making out , since Decadents are off the pills and thus have a healthy sex drive.
    Albert: [stands up, about to wander into Decadent camp] Maks! Come on!
    Maks: [stops him] No! Be careful. There are only babes there too, after all.
• Precision F-Strike/Atomic F-Bomb: Max lets out a loud curse when they reach the surface elevator and can't activate it, because only Her Excellency knows the password. Conveniently, the password turns out to be the curse word. Cue surprised reactions from the clueless elevator guards.
  Guard 1: What does that mean?
  Guard 2: [shrugs her shoulders with "I have no idea" expression]
  • It works on multiple levels - the password, while usually just translated as "fuck" when put into sentences without context, translates literally as "mother whore", something no woman would say in-universe.
• The Reveal: At one late point, we learn that Maks's daughter survived the war, and is now filled with rainbows due to her wishes of applying revenge upon her father. Her desire for revenge is over him leaving her and her mother for the duration of the experiment. Come to think of it, her mother's attitude (as seen in the beginning of the movie) might have influenced daddy's decision.
  • Even later, we learn that the world wasn't completely destroyed in the war. In fact not all men went extinct, however due to the Depopulation Bomb being rather effective anyway, the Women League enforced sex change operations on survivors. Her Excellency turns out to have been a man all along, surviving due to his mother's plan to disguise him.
• Rewatch Bonus: Scenes involving Her Excellency after The Reveal. Also, the opening credits, which feature drawn images of various scenes from the movie. They are a mystery when you watch the movie for the first time and don't know the context. After you've already watched it, though, the very same drawings will look familiar.
• Right Under Their Noses: Her Excellency. Played by Wiesław Michnikowski in drag - which makes perfect sense because his character is literally a man Disguised in Drag.
• Shout-Out: Multiple.
  • Maks's surname, Paradys, connects it to the novel Paradyzja. Its author, Janusz Zajdel, also wrote Cylinder van Troffa, which has Cold Sleep, Cold Future as its main plot and features Earth as a(n almost) No Woman's Land.
  • At one point, a list of older women's names is displayed, and it's seemingly full of various shout outs. The most obvious ones are the director's surname as well as Kwinto, one of the protagonists of Machulski's earlier movie, Vabank.
  • Another one to Vabank - remember the black tourist in white clothes, who was walking an enormous dog? There is one in this movie too (it's the lady who asks for directions).
• Situational Sexuality: The Decadents reawaken sexually once the Pill wears off, and there aren't any men left in the world, so what's a girl supposed to do?
• State Sec: Special Section, which consists of women specifically trained to hate men — and any opposition to the government — as much as possible (if a scene where recruits are indoctrinated with stories about how men supposedly used daily tools to harm and oppress women in various ways) and deliver a hard beating to them. They are clad in black uniforms and helmets with protective grill (sometimes plexiglas) visors — which, not coincidentally at all, heavily evoke the uniforms of the real-world State Sec in Poland at the time.
• Straw Feminist: The official ideology of the dystopian world is pretty much this. Deliberately so.
• Symbolism: There's a whole lot of sneaky anti-communist imagery. There are multiple parallels between the presented society and a communist one, with females representing the proletariat. At some points this gets quite blatant (including a scene parodying the parliamentary assembly).
• Take That!: During Maks and Albert's hearing, they try to come up with the names of various male scientists to prove that men had a lasting impact on the human civilization, however, members of the committee insist that those were, in fact, all women. Since one of the scientists mentioned happens to be Copernicus, it might be read as a parody of a German-Polish controversy regarding the nationality of the famed astronomer (who considered himself a subject of the Polish king yet spoke German on an everyday basis), dating back to the very beginnings of both the German and Polish nationalist movements.
• 20 Minutes into the Future: The protagonists wake up from their hibernation in the year 2044, fifty years overdue.
• Unusual Euphemism: Naturalization, for enforced sex change operations.
• Used Future: At one point two security guards, listening to conversation between Lamia and elderly lady via hidden microphone, complain about the malfunctioning equipment at their workplace (although in this case, unbeknownst to them, Lamia deliberately sabotaged it). This is actually one of many subtle jabs at contemporary reality of communist block, which always lagged behind the West in terms of civilian technology, forcing people — even those working for security services, who you'd think would have access to better stuff than common citizens — to rely on a subpar, unreliable equipment.
• Gone Horribly Right: Somewhere after the hibernation experiment was started, Dr. Kuppelweiser was involved in developing of a new, special bombs, to suppress male genes. It did just that - by wiping out almost all males on the planet.
• Wacky Sound Effect: After escaping to the surface, Maks runs head-first into a painted backdrop surrounding the underground's entrance to a low "boing!" sound.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The country in which the story takes place is never specified, and and there is no implication. The scientist who invented the experiment is named Viktor Kuppelweiser, a very German-sounding name. Everyone in the movie speaks Polish (granted, that's where it was made), but the names of the protagonists are also ambiguous: Maximillian and Albert. While those names are in use in Poland, they're also used in a lot of other European countries. Max mentions waiting for a flat allotment, which could happen in just about any of the Eastern Block countries. It's even ambiguous whether or not the two main characters are from the same country. This was intentional; once the apocalypse happened, men died out, and women retreated underground, the borders stopped being important.
  • At one point, the protagonists actually do stumble onto a tunnel with a border checkpoint. When the guard demands passports in German, they flee in terror. While this is mostly a cheap gag based on All Germans Are Nazis associations, it narrows the setting down somewhat.
  • One exit to the surface is located on a sea shore. The surface scenes are kind of obviously shot in Łeba, but that doesn't have to mean anything - they are your "generic seaside sandy dunes", at best narrowing it down to any place on the shores of the North or Baltic Sea.
• Written by the Winners: After the League took over, they gradually rewrite entire human history and culture to suit their agenda of Straw Feminism and censored other things. Two generations later, there is virtually nobody left to even know those are lies and propaganda.
  • The world was turned into ruin in the early 90's, with women fleeing into mines, so it can count more as Fridge Brilliance... from a certain point of view.