Hey Barbie.

There are certain places you expect to see Barbie.

Toy aisles. Childhood bedrooms. Very expensive collector cabinets owned by people who dust more than I do (which wouldn’t be difficult).

One place you do not expect to see Barbie is in the background of a 90s Italian psychosexual thriller.

And yet, in 1995, it happened — and in the most incongruous of ways…

Strange Story of Olga O. delivers one of the most hilarious bits of set dressing I’ve ever spotted, and revisiting the film felt like the perfect opportunity to immortalise it here. In the middle of all the film’s chaotic, Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh-indebted erotic violence, inside the manky loft of one of the film’s seedy villains, there’s a Barbie sign casually displayed on the bed’s metal headboard…. right next to a shackled blow-up doll.

There’s something perfect about the contrast. Barbie — global symbol of polished, plastic, aspirational femininity — set against a grimy loft littered with beer cans, ripped pin-up images torn from magazines, and a blow-up doll.

I suppose sometimes the most memorable moments in a film aren’t the shocking ones, but the strange background details that make you pause the film and say, out loud, to absolutely nobody:

“…Why is there a Barbie sign there!?”