In the far-flung future of 1984, we find three anxious astronauts loitering outside their commanders office. Waiting to find out what they're next assignment will be, all three men are convinced it’s the prized expedition to Mars; but when finally called in, they’re disappointed with another "milk run" shuttling the famous Professor Konrad (-- the always likeable Paul Birch) to his most famous creation, Space Station-A, orbiting some 20,000 miles above the Earth. Unable to hide his frustration, Captain Patterson (-- the even more likable Eric Fleming), and his crew are reprimanded by their Commander who reminds them how every mission is important, and this one has the utmost urgency. For it seems there’s some kind of trouble brewing up there, and there’s no time for explanations because they have to launch immediately. Beyond that, Konrad will fill in the details along the way.

Vital or not, while working through the pre-flight check for the impending blast-off, Cruze (Dave Willock), the ship's radio-man, is still belly-aching about their baby-sitting assignment, not realizing Konrad is already on board. And as Konrad assures him it’s "a mission of grave importance," the famed scientist proceeds to try and light a cigarette. Quickly stopping him, Patterson warns that the slightest spark could ignite the liquid-oxygen tanks below. Totally pants'd, Konrad apologizes for his foolishness. (The GREAT Professor Konrad. Uh-huh. Sure...) Meanwhile, the fourth member of the expedition is still down on the tarmac saying goodbye to his girl. And as Turner (Patrick Waltz) gives the rigmarole about how he might never come back to the dashing blonde (Joi Lansing), he then tries to vacuum her face off (-- sorry, I can’t quite call it a kiss). Up above, in the cockpit, Patterson watches this disgusting display and orders his navigator to shut it off and get his keester on board. Busted, Turner leaves as she blows him a kiss. Once he's inside, they all strap themselves into their custom Barco-loungers and start the countdown. We then cut to some NASA stock-footage of an Atlas rocket launch and the expedition is soon underway. And as far as stock-footage rocket launches go, this one is very impressive -- but inside, the astronauts have either grown extremely constipated, or are not adjusting very well to the resulting G-forces. 

When the ship reaches orbit, as they plot a course for the station, Konrad finally begins to elaborate on his top-secret mission. It seems we’re not alone and there are "deadly neighbors" lurking nearby in outer space -- meaning the Earth is in peril! Almost on cue, Turner raises the alarm as his sensors indicate something is shooting at the space station! On the monitor screen, they watch in helpless horror as each laser-blast comes closer to the defenseless orbiter. When the ray finally strikes home, the satellite explodes! -- And then the deadly ray turns on the ship! Evasive maneuvers prove fruitless as the vessel is soon caught in the beam. Luckily, it’s only a tractor beam, which seizes the ship and begins to tow it at a great rate of speed toward its unknown destination. Unable to take the pressure, the passengers pass out as the ship rockets off toward the unknown...

Now, if you're watching the movie along with me, you, like me, are probably seriously scratching your heads at this point because something seems awfully familiar about what we've seen so far. And then it finally hits you: Patterson and his crew are wearing the exact same space-uniforms, side-arms and hats from Forbidden Planet. And the interior of their ship looks an awful lot like the one in World Without End. Waitasecond! That IS the interior of the ship from World Without End! And by the time the ship launches, your head’s bleeding and your fingers are bloody stumps from all the scratching as you say "That ship doesn’t look like the rocket that launched. In fact, it looks just like the rocket from Flight to Mars!" Unfortunately, this won't be the only acute case of recycled déjà vu we’ll be suffering while watching this film.

In truth, the story of Queen of Outer Space's conception and production is probably more interesting and harrowing than what eventually wound up on screen. Producer Walter Wanger had been making films since the silents and his first big talkie was the Marx Brothers inaugural vehicle The Cocoanuts; and thru the '30s and '40s his résumé blossomed with many seminal genre films with likes of Stagecoach and Scarlet Street. When the '50s rolled around, Wanger was interested in the resurgent science-fiction boom and commissioned a script from Ben Hecht, who had written for the likes of Howard Hawks (His Girl Friday) and Alfred Hitchcock (Notorious) and served as an uncredited ghostwriter on everything from Gone with the Wind to The Thing from Another World. Hecht turned in ten page treatment called Queen of the Universe, a satire about a planet run entirely by women and how badly they louse it up. And it was while Wanger was shopping this proposal around for financing when things first started to go awry. 

Married to actress Joan Bennet since 1940, Wanger was convinced she was having an affair with her long time agent, some mook named Jennings Lang. And so convinced was Wanger of this infidelity that he started stalking them both, and on the afternoon of December 13, 1951, he took two shots at Lang with a pistol, while Lang was standing outside Bennet's parked car, hitting him in the thigh and in the groin. Fortunately for Lang, and Wanger, the wounds were not fatal. Unfortunately for Wanger, he chose to shoot Lang right across the street from a police station. Pleading temporary insanity, Wanger wound up only serving four months for his crime of passion. But after he got out, the only studio that would touch him was Allied Artists, and it was there that he got back on his feet with the classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Riot in Cell-Block 11, based on his time in stir. As for Hecht's treatment, it eventually fell into the hands of Ben Schwalb, who had produced animated shorts and Bowery Boy features for Sam Katzman and Columbia. Turning the treatment over to Charles Beaumont to expand into a feature, the new scribe junked most of the satire for standard sci-fi fare of that era. Still not satisfied, Schwalb wanted more laughs and brought in his gag-man, Elwood Ullman, who along with eventual director Edward Bernds had collaborated on several Three Stooges shorts. So, with the script punched-up to within an inch of its life, shooting finally commenced. And as a former Columbia man, I'm sure it was Schwalb who pushed to recycle all the props and costumes to save as much money as possible. Add all that up, and it should be no surprise that Queen of Outer Space is kind of big, sloppy mess. We've seen plenty of that evidence already, but the best/worst is yet to come. I mean, We haven't even gotten to the planet of the Glamazons yet. Read on: Bochino! Bochino!

After a while, things settle down but the ship silently drifts on until its seized by a planetoid’s gravity (-- borrowing another sequence from World Without End --) and crashes into some snowy mountains. When the crew comes to they make a few startling discoveries: First, the radio is destroyed, and second, they don’t need any pressure suits because, wherever they are, it has the same oxygen and gravity as Earth. (And if they find a half-buried Statue of Liberty, I’m stopping this review right now!) Konrad has a hunch as to where they might be but first wants to explore a little more before he can be sure. Making their way off the peak, the explorers find themselves in a strange world of plastic alien vegetation. Then, after studying one plant, Konrad concludes they’re on the planet Venus (-- okay, What exactly is he a professor of?) but the rest of the crew protest that that’s impossible (-- and for the record, so do I!)

Disturbed by the total lack of ambient sound on the planet, that soon changes when an annoyingly loud energy discharge roars overhead. Konrad takes that as a good sign, meaning there must be some kind of intelligent life on Venus. (Waitasecond. Intelligent life? On Venus? Oh-no. Watch out for Beulah!) And as Turner worries about deadly little green men, like he read about in the comics, they make camp and bed down for the night.

Later, Cruze dozes off during his watch -- allowing them to be surrounded by a pack of good looking legs in plastic pumps and mini-skirts. When the sentry wakes up, surrounded by a gang of ray-gun toting women, Cruze thinks he’s hallucinating at first but then goes for his gun -- which is blasted out of his hand and disintegrated. This commotion wakes everyone else up, but they're all quickly captured and hauled off. And as they're marched into a great, matte-painted city, to the crew’s surprise, it turns out these Venusian women savvy English, but it does them little good. Once inside, they draw an irritable crowd and another woman attacks them -- screaming hateful epitaphs, until she is restrained. When Patterson wonders aloud what that was all about, Turner suggests that she probably just hates men. And with that, Konrad makes an astute observation: Where are all the Venusian men?

Herded into the main tribunal chamber, they hope to get an answer. While they wait for the ruling council, the Earth men and Venusian women exchange much ogling at each others nooks and crannies. Stuck on a planet with [apparently] no other men, slime-ball Turner’s in heaven. When Patterson asks Konrad what he thinks of that possibility, the professor professes that a civilization with no sex is no civilization at all. (Har! Har!) Suddenly, several masked women enter through a curtain and take their seats behind the dais. At the center, the mysterious Queen Yllana (Laurie Mitchell) orders them to state their business. Stepping forward, Patterson apologizes for crashing on their planet, but if they’d just help them repair their ship, they’d be more than happy to leave. Unimpressed, Yllana goes ballistic and accuses them of being spies, sent from Earth to prepare an invasion. Patterson swears they are on a peaceful mission, but the Queen says that’s impossible: they’ve been monitoring the Earth for years (-- that's how they know English --) and find the denizens very belligerent; therefore, they must be neutralized and expunged with extreme prejudice!

Meanwhile -- in the city science lab, Talleah (Zsa Zsa Gabor) stares blankly at some bubbling equipment. When her friend Motiya (Lisa Davis) reports to her of the Earthmen’s capture, Talleah says she must talk to them, and then resumes her staring. (Get used to that expression folks. It's all she's got.) 

Back at the tribunal, Yllana brands the men liars and spies; and if they won’t fess-up, promises them the horror of TORTURE! But first, she gives them time to think about it before answering. In their holding cell, as the other men try to formulate an escape plan, Konrad expounds on the monstrously evil vibe coming from Yllana and believes she’s the one who destroyed the space station. Turner scoffs that women could never invent, let alone aim, such a device. (Har! Har!) When the cell door slides open, Talleah brings them some food and a quick Venusian history lesson. Translating from her thick accent, we can confirm that they are on the planet Venus. And it seems Venus had been at war with the planet Mordu, and this conflict nearly destroyed both worlds. Eventually, Venus won but at great cost. And in the aftermath, the women, led by Yllana, took over the planet, sparing only a few men who were banished to one of Venus’s moons while all the rest were "disposed of." Talleah then claims that she wants to help them escape. Seems some of the girls aren’t real happy with this new society and want to bring the men back. She also warns that Yllana, who has nothing but hatred in her heart, has developed a new and even deadlier weapon, and if she gets her way, "Der Ert vil be destroyeded." (-- I mean, The Earth will be destroyed.) So for all their sakes, the Queen must be dethroned. But how?

When word comes that Yllana wants to have a private meeting with Patterson, Konrad feels that must be her Achilles Heel and tells the Captain to turn on the charm and schmooze the Queen into submission. Of course, Turner thinks he should go, feeling he has more sex appeal. (Lord? Please let him get eaten by a giant plant or something.) Patterson promises to try to do his best. (You’d better mister. Der Ert is depending on your sex appeal.) And as he’s escorted out, Talleah goes into a jealous snit.

In the Queen’s private chamber, Patterson and Yllana play the game of Who’s Seducing Whom. Eventually, he gets the upper hand because even Queens can get lonely. When he asks to take her golden mask off, she shies away and turns cranky again. Queen Bi-Polar then turns on a view-screen, revealing her new Beta Disintegrator that will be used to destroy der Ert. (Dammit, now she’s got me doing it.) Using a little applied psychology, Patterson deduces some man once did something really bad to Yllana -- Is this why she’s denying all love and substituting hatred? Her defenses broken, she swoons, and as he takes her in his arms, Patterson pulls the mask off -- but quickly recoils in horror! Yllana's face was burned and disfigured -- badly, by radiation in the war with Mordu and this has fueled her irrational hatred of men. Asking if he could still lover her, she tries to kiss him. When he winces and turns away, the Queen calls for her guards. And after he's drug off, Yllana looks into a mirror and in a surprising touch of pathos, breaks down into mournful sobbing at her hideous visage.

Once Patterson is back in the cell, the boys are sprung by Talleah and two of her friends. With only two days left before Yllana blows up der Ert, they formulate a plan to destroy the Beta Disintegrator with the help of Talleah’s rebels. What follows is a hilarious Scooby Dooesque chase scene as they try and avoid the Queen’s guards. (I’m telling you, Stormtroopers are more observant than these gals.) Making their way outside the city, the fugitives take refuge in a cave. Safe for the moment, because the Queen’s sensors can’t detect them under all that rock, they explore deeper into the caverns -- where Turner is jumped by a giant spider. (WOHOO! Thank you, Lord. Go spider! Eat him! Bite his head off!) Turner is saved (Poop!), and the spider is crispered with a ray-gun.

Still yet another recycled prop from World Without End. And that same unfortunate-looking giant spider would be pressed into action, yet again, a few years later in another Edward Bernds sci-fi pot-boiler, Valley of the Dragons.

That night, after they all pair up (-- except for poor, lonely Konrad), while Turner and Cruze try to vacuum the faces off their girls, Patterson and Talleah make small talk. Asked why she came with them, she answers there is no life without love, or children, and was kind of hoping that maybe his men and her friends could start civilization over some place else. Probing further, she asks if he ever had a gal back on der Ert. When he says no, the conversation really starts to heat up. Patterson comments on her beauty; she’s glad he finally noticed, and then they start vacuuming each other’s face and swap some spit. With all that necking, the unattended campfire starts to die down. Each man pulls rank, telling the other to get more firewood, until cranky Konrad volunteers and ventures outside -- and runs smack into a passing patrol! He retreats back into the cave but they spotted and follow him. Trapped, they try the oldest trick in the book as the men give their girls the ray-guns and fake their own capture. Amazingly, Talleah manages to get the bluff past the pursuing guards and demands to take the prisoners to the Queen.

Meanwhile, Yllana is admiring her giant, day-glow Tinker Toy set -- sorry, her Beta Disintegrator. Commanding her engineers to hurry up with the preparations because her blood is up, she then receives word of der Ert men’s capture over the intercom and orders them to be brought to her quarters immediately. Once they're delivered, Talleah tells the rest of the guards to stay outside and takes the prisoners in herself. Inside, Yllana gloats that she will force the men to watch the destruction of their world, and then she will kill them all -- very slowly.

Not so fast! For when Talleah turns her ray-gun on Yllana, the revolution has officially begun! With the Queen captured, they demand she suspend work on the Beta Disintegrator and to issue an order that all the men be brought back from exile. When Yllana can’t believe this degree of treachery and disloyalty, Talleah reads her the riot act about peace without contentment is no peace at all (-- blah blah, we aren't getting any, blah blah etc. etc.) After pitching her fit, Yllana throws herself onto her bed. But it was all a ruse as she secures a hidden ray-gun from underneath a pillow. She manages to get one wild shot off before they all gang up on her and tie her up. Once she's subdued, since their earlier ruse worked, Patterson decides to try another hair-brained idea. Donning one of the royal dresses, Talleah then takes Yllana's mask and puts it on. Taking it in, Patterson swears they could be twins. (But I think the goulash-accent is going to give you away there, Einstein.) After gagging the captive and tossing her behind a screen, Talleah calls the guards in. But as she starts to order them around, Yllana manages to kick the screen over. With that, the guards free her and everybody’s captured again.

Now royally pissed off, Queen Yllana orders them all to be taken to the Beta-Disintegrator for front row seats and an unobstructed view of der Ert's destruction. As they're marched out, she offers Patterson one last chance to be with her. When he refuses, Yllana informs Talleah that she will die last. Herded in front of a giant view-screen showing a tranquil and unsuspecting Ert, the men watch helplessly as the machine is powered up and primed to fire. But when Yllana punches the big red firing button, the machine fizzles out! It seems Talleah's fifth column is more widespread than we thought and has gummed up the works. And while the Queen rushes into the control room to try the manual override, Talleah’s cohorts jump the guards and a hilarious melee ensues. This scrum-pile-up continues until the Beta Disintegrator violently self-destructs, taking Yllana with it (-- rather gruesomely, I might add), and all hostilities cease.

Several days later, after Talleah is installed as the new leader of Venus, the Venusian men are now on their way back down and der Ertlings ship has been repaired, meaning they will be leaving shortly. As Cruze and Turner resume face vacuuming their respective ladies, the new Queen asks Patterson, Why must they go. (Yeah, why go?) The answer: sorry, honey, duty calls. But then Talleah receives some good news. Having established contact with der Ert, Patterson and his men are ordered not to risk a journey home in the repaired ship. Instead, a rescue party will be dispatched to retrieve them -- the catch being it'll take at least a year to get there. As everybody else resumes swapping some spit, we then cut to Konrad, surrounded by five doting women that take turns kissing him on the forehead, who happily exclaims "A whole year!"

Now, what makes this film so dang funny is that it is SO politically incorrect. Unleashed in 1958, the absolute zenith of the "martini machismo" that had gripped the country that decade, this interstellar battle of the sexes is filled with so much innuendo, misogynistic ideals, and macho posturing it is absolutely hilarious to behold and endure. With some real howlers lurking in the patchwork script concerning man's sexual prowess and a women’s libido, it was Birch’s final line and "spit take" that had me laughing the loudest. Apart from the sexual snits and mostly vain attempts at actual comedy, the film is your typical sci-fi fair of the era of its origin. Sharing a lot of similarities plot-wise with the likes of Missile to the Moon, Catwomen of the Moon and Fire Maidens from Outer Space, despite it’s recycled parts, this film still falls into a category I like to call "sanitized" science fiction. Awash in bright primary colors, every brightly lit room and death-ray is immaculately clean in this alien world. And though their technology is very aesthetically pleasing, it's not very practical or grounded in scientific feasibility. And of course, all the Venusian women are long-legged beauties, wear mini-skirts and saddled with high heels.  

The cast for the most part is fine. I always liked Fleming's take as Gil Favor in Rawhide, and he delivers the goods as the square-jawed hero. And more importantly, he also treats his leading lady with kid gloves. Ms. Gabor was hired for her looks and nothing else, and her inexperience shows badly. Yes, she does look smashing in that dress slit up to her nether regions but she couldn’t act her way out of a wet paper bag. When not choking on her accent, trying to get her lines out, watch and boggle as she just blankly stares around, and then tenses up before delivering her next line. Luckily, the script doesn’t call on her to do a whole lot except fill out her wardrobe and swoon over Fleming. Faring much better, Laurie Mitchell does a real good job with the damaged Yllana. I think there was a real and really interesting character there that could and should have been expanded upon. Alas, the script wimps out on her and she has to resort to the stereotypical shrilly villainess; but thanks to her performance, Yllana's ultimate and overly-grotesque demise still packs a wallop. On the Warner DVD commentary, Mitchell claims that she got along fine with Gabor, but other sources claim that the difficult star might have been more trouble than she was worth. According to Bernds, most of the other Venusians were beauty contest winners, and when the crew paid too much attention to them, the more "testy" his leading lady became. In fact, he states that Gabor was such a pain in the ass that Schwalb wound up in the hospital with stomach ulcers.

Aside from its temperamental star, the only real knock on the film is that everything, and I mean everything, else in it is recycled and it shows badly. The sets (which seem constantly on the verge of falling over), the props, the costumes (-- the uniforms and most of the dresses were pilfered from Altaira's closet in Forbidden Planet), and even the script borrows heavily from everyone’s earlier work. Bernds own World Without End gets the hatchet the worst -- a pretty good film all by itself, and is one of the first "Omigod we’re still on Earth" scenarios.

Admittedly, I've danced around a couple of sore spots on the battle of the sexes that this film brings to the surface and pummels relentlessly. Yes, Queen of Outer Space is wrong, so very, very wrong in it's portrayal of women, but its portrayal of men as hormone crazed idiots isn't very flattering, either. In the end, I believe that everyone should be treated the same -- but the path to get there should not be paved by any kind of mandated political correctness. I mean, just because I laugh at a sexist joke, or a cheesy B-Movie, does that make me male chauvinist pig? I hope not. We have a long, long way to go before everyone feels the way I do; but if you use this film as a measuring stick, you can't deny that we have come a pretty far piece already.