Men are from Earth, Women are from Venus: Queen of Outer Space

Now Playing: Queen of Outer Space (1958)

Pros: Shot in glorious Cinemascope; Exotic Zsa Zsa Gabor is campy gold as a Venusian scientist
Cons: Talky, set-bound and slow moving; Recycled props, costumes and plot make it seem hang-dog and threadbare in spite of the lush cinematography

Has it really been a year since the last “So Bad It’s Good” blogathon hosted by Rebecca at Taking Up Room? I’m no astrophysicist, but it seems like time is speeding up as this blue marble we call Earth makes its shaky way around the Sun.

Last year I wrote about some would-be occupiers of Earth, the pop-eyed Killers from Space. The year before that, it was all about the megalomaniacal Brain from Planet Arous that wanted to install itself as Earth’s ruler, as well as sample some of the planet’s sensual pleasures by taking over the bodies of unsuspecting earthmen.

Carrying the theme forward, this time around I decided to upgrade from putative rulers to actual space royalty. Ruling Earth is one thing, but the entirety of outer space is a whole other ball of wax. If anyone is up to the task, it's the stylish and accomplished women of Venus, as depicted in the 1958 B space opera Queen of Outer Space.

But before we get into the details of the Venusian royal court, a bit of background. Queen of Outer Space came out at the height of Cold War mania, occasioned by the Russians’ launch of Sputnik 1 the year before, beating the good ol’ U.S. of A. into space.

In retrospect, it's hard to see what all the fuss was about.

At a time when our rockets kept blowing up on the launch pad, it seemed like the Soviets could do no wrong, and were set to make space a Red domain. But if there was an existential struggle between the so-called free world and scary communism going on, you wouldn’t have known it from watching Hollywood sci-fi. Instead, it was the war between the sexes that achieved escape velocity and was being bitterly fought in outer space.

Incongruously for an era characterized by stay-at-home moms and Father Knows Best paternalism, B movie astronauts kept encountering female-dominated societies in their space explorations (and often the crews of the Earth spaceships included women -- see my post on women astronauts in ‘50s sci-fi.) 

• 1953: In Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, the comedic duo blast off for the red planet, take a detour through New Orleans, then end up on Venus, where the beautiful female inhabitants have banished all males.
• 1953: An expedition to the moon (which includes a female navigator) finds breathable air in a lunar cavern, giant moon spiders, and a menacing group of leotard-clad Cat-Women of the Moon.
• 1954: After a devastating Martian war between the sexes in which the females emerged victorious, Nyah, the Devil Girl from Mars, is dispatched to Earth to collect male specimens to help repopulate her home planet (see my review here).
• 1956: Upon landing on the 13th moon of Jupiter, an expedition discovers the beautiful Fire Maidens of Outer Space, their old male guardian, and a ratty beast-man, the remnants of the lost civilization of Atlantis.
• 1958: It’s deja-vu all over again as yet another Missile to the Moon lands, discovers breathable air, giant spiders, and yes, another tribe of scheming Moon women.

Next to space Amazons, giant spiders were the biggest threat to '50s B movie astronauts.

Queen of Outer Space was the culmination of the ‘50s space Amazon trope, with the added attraction of exotic Zsa Zsa Gabor looking absolutely fabulous in her stylish space outfits.

Publicity for previous films had bragged of casts made up of “Hollywood Cover Girls” (Cat-Women of the Moon) or assorted beauty contest winners, but Queen of Outer Space stood out by having an authentic Hollywood glamor queen heading up the troupe.

Zsa Zsa was a Celebrity with a capital ‘C’ who appeared in films and TV, but was best known for her extravagant social life. By 1958 she had already been married 3 times, but the Hungarian man-eater was only getting started -- she would chew up and spit out 6 more husbands before she was through (!!). 

With images of glamorous Zsa Zsa front-and-center on the poster and various publicity stills for the film, you might think that she was the Queen, but you’d be mistaken. The titular character was actually portrayed by Laurie Mitchell, a beauty queen turned B movie regular who also played an alien femme fatale in Missile to the Moon, released the same year. But even with her royal title, there was no competing with Zsa Zsa, as Mitchell’s character wore a weird bejeweled mask for much of the film (we'll get to that a bit later).

The participants ready themselves for the talent portion of the 'Queen of Outer Space' competition.

Synopsis

In the far off, far out year of 1985, a spaceship is being readied for take-off. The crew, consisting of Captain Neal Patterson (Eric Fleming), Lt. Mike Cruze (Dave Willock) and Lt. Larry Turner (Patrick Waltz), is assigned to take top space scientist Prof. Konrad (Paul Birch) to a remote space station, where some sort of trouble is brewing.

The crew grumble about the boring nature of the mission, but it becomes anything but routine when enroute to the station, they see a laser-like beam slashing through space. As they watch on the viewscreen, the beam hones in on the space station, which blows up in spectacular fashion.

The ship then gets caught up in the mysterious beam, but instead of blowing up, it accelerates to the point where the instruments can’t keep up. They crash land on a planet with breathable air and lush vegetation. From the instrument readings, the Prof. deduces that they’ve landed on Venus.

Frontiers of Science
Capt. Neal Patterson: “You don't just accidentally land on a planet 36 million miles away!”
Prof. Konrad: “It would appear that all things are possible in space.” [IMDb]

The crew and the professor build a camp and take turns keeping watch, but inevitably Mike dozes off and they’re suddenly surrounded by raygun-toting female Venusians who look like they stepped off the set of the original Star Trek show and time traveled back 10 years.

The men are taken to the royal palace where they are introduced to Queen Yllana (Mitchell) and her retinue on the ruling Council. Patterson explains that they were on a peaceful mission, but the Queen seems highly suspicious, and her guards are openly contemptuous of men.

The earthmen are held captive while Yllana and the Council decide their fate. Chief Venusian scientist Talleah (Gabor) is secretly opposed to Yllana’s tyrannical rule, and visits the crew to enlist their aid. She explains that Yllana led a revolt against Venus’ war-like men, killing most and imprisoning the few that could be of some use to the planet’s new female-led regime.

The earthmen argue over who made the wrong turn and got them stuck on a planet populated by beautiful space Amazons.

Yllana was horribly disfigured in the revolt, and as a result became deranged and determined to use her powerful new Beta Disintegrator to rid the universe of hated men. Will Talleah and her band of dissidents successfully team up with the earthmen to prevent the Queen of Outer Space from blowing up Earth itself?

Foundations of Civilization
Prof. Konrad: “Perhaps this is a civilization that exists without sex.”
Lt. Larry Turner: “You call that civilization?”
Prof. Konrad: “Frankly, no.” [IMDb] 

Those of us of a certain age remember a time when sci-fi and fantasy movies were cobbled together quickly and cheaply to fill out drive-in double bills, as opposed to the current crop of would-be blockbusters that cost hundreds of millions and require small armies of CGI programmers and technicians to produce.

Here at Films From Beyond, we appreciate the ingenuity and resourcefulness of filmmakers who lack big budgets to tell their stories. Queen of Outer Space is nothing if not resourceful, like a down-on-her-luck diva proudly sashaying around town in her latest Goodwill fashion finds, daring anyone she meets to say something.

Zsa Zsa is ready for her close-up.

Queen’s hand-me-downs include the spaceship model and other props and sets from the 1956 B sci-fi epic World Without End (see my review here), as well as astronaut costumes recycled from MGM’s classic Forbidden Planet.

The producers also saved some bucks by avoiding location shooting and limiting special effects to the detonation of some smoke bombs and sparkly fireworks. As a result, Queen is mostly a succession of static set pieces with actors standing around delivering expositive dialog, trading quips, and scheming in grand soap opera style.

Queen was filmed in lush color Cinemascope, which is perhaps where most of the budget went -- that, and attending to Ms. Gabor's every need. In an interview with film historian Tom Weaver, Laurie Mitchell explained who the real queen was on the set:

“When it came to Zsa Zsa, she wanted this, she wanted that, she wanted glitter in her costumes -- she wanted certain things which were very, very expensive. An actress she wasn't, but in those days she had some sort of name, and so they wanted her for the picture. She used to yell -- she’d want a certain color hair, she didn’t want the other girls to have the same color hair and so on.” [Tom Weaver, I Talked with a Zombie: Interviews with 23 Veterans of Horror and Sci-Fi Films and Television, McFarland, 2009, p. 198 - 211]

Makeup secrets of the Queen
"Then there were the days when he [makeup artist Emile LaVigne] had to make my face up to look burned, for the scenes where the 'vicked kveen' is unmasked. Putty and black and blue marks and everything, to make it look like my face was eaten up by radiation. Emile, the darling, he should rest in peace, he’d put the makeup on me right on the set.
…
I remember saying that, ‘God forbid’ -- God forbid there should be a person like this. Watching it go on … it could cause nightmares! Emile would say, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get it off,' and every day, he used cold cream, or … whatever he got it off with. Oh God, they took so many pictures. They would be right there with their cameras, every day.” [Ibid.]

We dare you to click on this image and unmask the Queen of Outer Space!

The director and chief Zsa Zsa wrangler was Edward Bernds, a B movie veteran who was more used to handling court jesters than imperious celebrities -- among his 100+ credits are more than a few Three Stooges and Bowery Boys vehicles (he also directed World Without End which supplied Queen with many of its props).

Queen’s script also has a distinguished, if not exactly royal, pedigree. Legendary screenwriter and Academy Award winner Ben Hecht, who was involved in one prestige picture after another in the ‘30s and ‘40s, contributed the original story, “Queen of the Universe,” upon which Charles Beaumont’s script was based.

Beaumont had only a handful of writing credits by this point, but would soon launch himself into a very productive screen and TV writing career, contributing to such series as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone, as well as adapting such horror classics as The Haunted Palace and The Masque of the Red Death before his untimely death in 1967.

Talleah's motto: Working hard is no excuse for looking frumpy.

Queen of Outer Space is not a shining star on either man’s resume -- it’s talky and stagey and not a lot happens for long stretches. But then, it’s gloriously gaudy with its upscale Cinemascope treatment, and some of the dialog will have you either slapping your forehead, guffawing, or smiling in wry bemusement (or even all three at once).

And finally there’s Zsa Zsa, the Venusian scientist with the heavy accent who looks equally mahvelous cooking up formulas in her lab or flirting with randy earthmen. Zsa Zsa may have been difficult on the set, but it’s a good thing the production stuck with her, because who else could have saved Venus, the Planet of Love, from a demented, man-hating Queen?

Origins of Love
Capt. Neal Patterson: “We may not have a chance to talk later. We may not even live through the day. But, I just want to say, while I have the chance: I love you.”
Talleah: “Loff - I've almost forgotten. But, if it is the varm feeling dat makes my heart sing, ten I too loff you.” [IMDb]

"I loff you too Dah-link!"

Breaking the Space-Time Barrier

World Without End (1956)

I have a confession to make-- I have a weakness for "classic" sci-fi with wise-cracking astronauts piloting needle-nosed spaceships to the Moon, Mars or other planets and discovering lost civilizations while battling various and sundry mutant creatures along the way. I'm talking about Rocketship X-M (1950), which won the movie version of the space race when it was rushed into distribution 3 weeks ahead of Destination Moon (1950), becoming America's first "realistic" depiction of manned space flight to hit the theaters. I'm talking about Flight to Mars (1951), Queen of Outer Space (1958), and It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958).  I'm talking about far-out voyages to planets of every size and description:  Angry Red Planet (1959), The Phantom Planet (1961), and Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962). I'm even talking about stinky lunar cheese like Cat-Women of the Moon (1953), Missile to the Moon (1958) and 12 to The Moon (1960).  And then of course there's the big daddy of them all, the greatest space opera of all time by the biggest, grandest studio in history: Forbidden Planet (MGM, 1956).

These films grabbed the headlines of the day -- broken sound barriers, satellite launches, rocketplanes flying to the edge of space --  and propelled them out of earth orbit into new frontiers of great, imaginative adventure. For a kid like myself born at the beginning of the space age, this was irresistible stuff-- it was one thing to read about rockets, spacemen, and bug-eyed monsters, and something else again to see it on the big screen (often in glorious cinemascope and technicolor). Adults might worry about rockets delivering atomic warheads, but space age kids saw them as the ticket to brave new worlds and civilizations. (Now, decades later, the bloom is definitely off the space rose, with only one shuttle flight left to go and some serious questions about whether a dithering, debt-ridden U.S. will abandon manned space flight altogether.)

If you were to pick one sci-fi flick to represent the era in a time capsule, you could hardly do better than World Without End. It packs just about every space opera / sci-fi element you can imagine into its crisp 80 minute running time: a gleaming, silvery-sleek spaceship; time travel; astronauts in military fatigues and bomber jackets; atomic war; an advanced underground civilization; alluring babes in revealing outfits; giant spiders; one-eyed humanoid mutants… all in glorious, colorful Cinemascope.

In the year 1957, America's first ambitious manned space flight is an orbital reconnaissance mission to Mars -- no cautious sub-orbital flights to start things off for this fictional America! The mission is headed by the distinguished Dr. Eldon Galbraithe (Nelson Leigh). John Borden (Hugh Marlowe), Herbert Ellis (Rod Taylor), and Henry 'Hank' Jaffe (Christopher Dark) round out the crew. As they fire the ship's engines to take them out of Mars' orbit and head home, Galbraithe makes a comment about Mars "sliding off into the distance." Borden wryly responds that "it'll be there when we come back." Suddenly and without warning, the ship hits some kind of field disturbance-- the ship and crew are battered around as it accelerates out of control, seemingly engulfed by fire. Gauges and dials spin wildly, and then the crew blacks out. When they wake up, they discover that they've landed on a rocky, snow-covered plateau (see the clip below). The acceleration gauge broke at the max readout of 100 miles per second-- Jaffe, the navigator, wonders if they weren't going even faster (maybe somewhere in the ballpark of 186,282 miles per second?)

Wherever they are, gravity feels about the same as earth's, and they discover to their delight that there's plenty of oxygen in the atmosphere. They grab supplies and weapons and head out to explore their new environs. Fortunately, it's only a short hike (very, very short) from the cold, arctic-like place where they crash-landed to a temperate area with trees and other flora (the transition is so abrupt it almost looks like a continuity error). However, the fauna is another story. In the space of only several minutes they're set upon by German Shepherd-sized spiders (unconvincing rubber props), and their camp attacked by disfigured, primitive humanoids dressed in animal skins and howling like dogs.  In defending themselves, they kill one of the humanoids ("mutates" according to Doc Galbraithe), and observe that the ugly cuss seems to have been born with only one eye. The place seems so earth-like, and yet, the earth they left didn't have giant spiders and mutated cavemen…

Attack of the giant rubber spider

They soon come upon a graveyard with a very interesting headstone indicating the grave's occupant died in the year 2068. These being very educated, scientifically trained men, they quickly put two and two together. Galbraithe recalls talking to another scientist shortly before the mission about Einstein's theory of relativity and time dilation. The ship's instruments indicated they were going over 100 miles per second before they broke. Galbraithe points out that they could have been going 10 or even 100 times that speed. His reluctant conclusion: "While we were blacked out for what seemed like minutes to us, the slow centuries were passing on earth."

The crew doesn't have too long to mull over what's happened before they're attacked again by the relentless mutants. Escaping into a cave, they discover a smooth metal door in one of the cave walls. Before you can say "exponential time displacement," they're standing in what looks like a modernistic office reception area, complete with potted plants. Jaffe discovers a lens behind one of the plants-- "Hey, we're being spied on!" he exclaims. A disembodied voice warns them not to touch anything. What's a poor, confused space-time traveler to think?

It seems they've discovered the last bastion of civilized man in post-atomic war earth-- an intricate underground city populated by gentle, almost anemic men in silvery tunics and skullcaps, and beautiful, lively women in low-cut mini-dresses. Jackpot! They meet with the underground city's council (all men of course), and learn of the atomic war in 2188 that killed off most of humanity and left a world full of surface-dwelling mutants and underground-dwelling "normals." Now, in the year 2508, civilized man has harnessed the heat of the earth's core for energy and learned how to recycle metals (a veritable environmentalist's dream).

So, considering the 20th century men's predicament, what's there to complain about? Jaffe, the only member of the crew to leave behind a wife and son, is hopeful that the tunnel people can help them figure out how to reverse the time displacement that's stranded them in the future. Borden is skeptical: "They have no guts." It appears the tunnel-city isn't much of a paradise after all. Much is made of how listless and bloodless the men are. Galbraithe tries to convince the council that the radiation levels are low and the surface is livable, but the council is uninterested. He can't even get a single volunteer to hike with them back to the ship to salvage supplies. Disappointed, he tells the others: "Underground life seems to have drained all the courage out of these people… safe and comfortable, that seems to be all life means to them!" Jaffe reports that the few children he's seen are weak and listless. "Safe and comfortable" may well spell the doom of civilized man.

World Without End shows its cold-war heart and soul in the conflicts between the 20th and 26th century men. The one villain among the tunnel dwellers, the treacherous Mories (Booth Colman), just happens to be the most passionate pacifist. He tries to turn the council against the 20th century interlopers, decrying their weapons and their crude ways (not to mention the way they look at the women). "We're sick of weapons and war!" he declares. He tries to get Galbraithe & company booted out of town by killing one of the council members and pinning it on them. But the plot is exposed and Mories himself is driven out to the surface, to be quickly dispatched by yowling mutants. Clearly, if the world is to be remade in the image of the good ol' U.S. of A., then Mories and his pinko, pacifist kind must go.

Assorted mutants gather to watch the final battle

And remade it is. With the help of the chastened tunnel people, our heroes fashion a space-age bazooka, and literally carve out the new world with well-placed shots that scatter most of the mutants to the four winds. In the coup-de-grace, manly Borden challenges the cruel mutant chief, the one-eyed Naga, to a fight for supremacy. He prevails by staying on Naga's blind side. In this primitive culture, whoever defeats the leader becomes the leader. The film ends with what looks like a documentary on the Peace Corps, as the 20th century protagonists help the natives build a new community on the surface, and teach the now revitalized children English in an open-air school.

Writer-Director Edward Bernds worked his way from radio in the 1920s, to sound work on early "talkies," to directing shorts, to finally directing features in the early 1950s. His other sci-fi credits include Space Master X-7 (1958), Queen of Outer Space (1958), Return of the Fly (1959), and another time-travel epic, The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (1962; the best feature-length Stooges effort by far).

Hugh Marlowe lent his square-jawed presence to a couple of other '50s sci-fi classics: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956).

World was Aussie Rod Taylor's first substantive role in a feature film. Rod has had steady work ever since, doing drama and comedy with equal aplomb. His notable sci-fi and suspense credits include The Time Machine (1960) and Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). Most recently, he played Winston Churchill in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009).

In an interview with Tom Weaver, veteran film and stage actor Booth Colman confessed that his memory was somewhat hazy about the production:

I can't remember very much about it: It was a quickie, it was done in eight or ten days I would say. The Australian actor, Rod Taylor-- I think it was his first job here. He subsequently went over to MGM. And the director, Edward Bernds, was a very nice man. I saw the picture recently because someone gave me a tape of it, and... it's just a quick job of the day. I'm sure it did very well, I'm sure they made a lot of money on it. The actors didn't [laughs]!  (I Was a Monster Movie Maker: Conversations with 22 SF and Horror Filmmakers, McFarland, 2001)

World is a somewhat schlocky, yet energetic and entertaining cold war / atomic / space age artifact. Its worst moments aren't so much the poorly-realized special effects (the lifeless rubber spider is just plain bad even for the era), as much as the long stretches of cold-war propaganda dialog and some perfunctory, cringe-inducing romantic scenes between the lusty astronauts and the scantily clad tunnel women. Its best moment comes in the cemetery, when it becomes clear to the men that they've been marooned in time on an utterly alien earth.

World Without End is available on a "double feature" Warner Home Video DVD along with Satellite in the Sky (1956). The restored print is just beautiful.


"We've unleashed the power of the atom... and now this!"