If you want some great, rip roaring 1950's sci-fi. . .then boy are YOU in the wrong place. However, if you want to see exactly what was wrong with the 50's both culturally and cinematically then Queen of Outer Space is your movie.

Filled to the brim with bad actors, cheese sets, crappy dialogue, and bad FX, this movie is without a doubt represents everything that was wrong with the 1950s.

Beginning on earth in what is suppose to be the year 1984 (as seen from 1958), the movie introduces us to our square jawed, two fisted, stone faced, all American hero, Captain Neal Patterson (Eric Fleming) and his faithful side kicks Lts. Mike Cruze (Dave Willock) and Larry Turner (Patrick Waltz). They depart earth on a mission to carry standard movie scientist Prof. Konrad (Paul The Day the World Ended Birch) to and orbiting space station. But before they can dock the station is shot down by a cheep cartoon ray. That same ray then picks up the shuttle and sends it hurtling through space.

After a painful shot of an obvious and poorly made model shuttle crashing into and icy set our heros wake up to discover they are on Venus. Seams all we learn about Venus in school is wrong and our sister planet is, in fact, inhabitable. Okay, why not? After rummaging around a painted cardboard set our heros are captured by. . .women! Looks like women really are from Venus.

No, I'm kidding.

To top it off the women are wearing shot skirts, slim blouses, laser gun holsters (that accent that small, small waist), high heals from Fredricks of Hollywood and (like all movie aliens) speak perfect English. Why? Beats me. The only answer I can come up with is this: "If they spoke they're own language that would mean screenwriter Charles Beaumont would have to come up with said language, and actualy have writing skill. Or he simply didn't care.

Well our heros are carted back to the seat of the Venisian government where they mean the overly figments and kabuki mask bedecked Queen Yllana (Laurie Mitchell) and her "posse"of servant girls. It seams that Venus suffered a small atomic war which devastated the planet. Yllana lead a revolt against all men and imprisoned them on an orbiting satellite. She thinks that the earth men are spies and orders them all dead. Except for Captain Patterson, whom she has a asks to see in a private meeting.

In the queen's chamber Patterson turns on the charms and tries to get Yllana to let the men go. He also discovers her plan to wipe out earth with a super weapon called the "Beta disintegrator". Unfortunatly he makes the mistake of ripping off her mask and finds that, in the above mentioned atomic war, she was horrible disfigured by radiation. Repulsed, he rejects her advances, which only causes her to order all 4 of them executed. All looks bleak, will our heros survive?

Unfortunatly for me, yes. While imprisoned the men meet up with Talleah (Zas Zas Gabor, three words that spell "doom" in my book) who is the leader of a band of women rebels who just want they're men back. As one character puts it "Women can't be happy without men."

No, I didn't make that line up. Its actually in the movie. It should tell you just what we are dealing with here. Shall we continue?

Talleah and her marry band of space chicks fall madly in love with our "heroic" astronauts which leads to some tedious and almost unwatchable scenes of the couples falling in love. Barf. Finally, after about two hours of mind numbing crap (and the movie's only 80 minuets long!) the rebel women disable the Beta disintegrator which explodes and takes Yllana with it. Talleah is crowned queen, the couples swap some spit. The end.

Ya know, I've seen lots of movies. I've seen dumb movies, I've seen macho movies. But this is the first honest to God sexist movie I've ever seen. The entire attitude of this movie is so archaic and  so. . .50's that it caused my mouth to drop open. The whole plot of this movie hedges on the primes that women are never satisfied and never will be satisfied unless they have a man in they're arms. It just makes me want to wretch. And this is the kind of unholy sexist crap that my parents had to put up with. It just makes me respect my elders.

This movie's attitude towards women is the major strike against it. All other minor strikes come from the acting. If Capt. Patterson looks familiar its because you would later see him on the T.V western Rawhide. Lets just say his acting has improved by light years since this movie. As the Cap, Fleming plays his role as if showing an expression would have caused his face to explode, raining deadly shrapnel on the rest of the cast and crew.

Zas Zas Gabor. What more is they're to say? Well, maybe the fact that she doesn't have the acting skill God gave a trained dog. There.

As the evil queen Laurie Mitchell plays her role like. . .an evil queen. There's no personality to her character, no depth ether. Its too bad since Queen Yllana just might have some dramatic potential. If her character hadn't been written by a chimp that is.

Finally we have Lts. Turner and Cruze. Unfortunatly they provide the comic relief for this movie, and like all comic relief I pray for them to meet with a horrible fiery death by ray gun or ungainly rubber monster.

And, wonder of wonders, a giant spider does show up about 10 minuets before the movie ends. But Captain Patterson kills it before it can do any damage. Darn.

By the way,  can anyone explain to me why Prof. Konrad doesn't get a chick? Huh? Anybody? Never mind. Its not worth it.

Just like this movie as a matter of fact. If you are some how able to find it its just not worth your rental dollars. The acting is painful and the script makes it worse. I could call Charles Beaumont's characters cardboard, but even cardboard cut outs have the illusion of depth. Thanks to the bad acting and worse writing the characters are as flat as a pancake with a battleship dropped on it. Unless you have some morbid fascination with bad acting and want to see the dark underbelly of the 50's then you should run as far away from Queen of Outer Space as possible.

RATING (OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)

NOW THIS IS A BAD MOVIE.

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