Mercilessly yet accurately parodied by the titular segments of 1987’s Amazon Women on the Moon, the sci-fi spectacle of 1958’s Queen of Outer Space stands today — shoulders back, girls! — as a camp curio. After all, it stars everyone’s second favorite Hungarian beauty, Zsa Zsa Gabor, now known more for playing herself (i.e. The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear) and/or a real-life bride (nine trips at press time) than actually acting.
In the year 1985, a group of square-jawed astronauts is sent on a mission to Venus, to determine whether Earth is in mortal danger from the cloud planet. Turns out, hardly! Thought to be uninhabitable, Venus houses a bevy of beautiful women — the shapely kind for which the term “wowza” was coined. Most of them are friendly; their wicked queen is decidedly not. Contrary to audiences’ expectations and beliefs, her highness Queen Yllana is not played by Gabor, but Laurie Mitchell (Attack of the Puppet People) — because I’m guessing Gabor wouldn’t dare appear with a face that looks that looks dipped in boiled goulash.
Queen of Outer Space comes form-fitted with many a sci-fi trope and prop — do look out for the giant rubber spider — but plays like a Miss America pageant in glorious CinemaScope … and not-so-glorious misogyny. In accentuating beauty above all else, it portrays women as trophies to periodically hold one’s sperm. As the horniest of the men, Patrick Waltz (The Silencers) fires off lines like:
• “How’d you like to drag that to the senior prom?”
• “You know how women drivers are!”
• “How could a bunch of women invent a gizmo like that?”
• “How can a doll as cute as that be such a pain the neck?”
• “She’s jealous! Twenty-six million miles from Earth, and the little dolls are just the same.”
How much of that was just the character is up for debate, but so many clues suggest director Edward Bernds (Return of the Fly) and screenwriter Charles Beaumont (TV’s The Twilight Zone) were charter members of the ol’ “barefoot and pregnant” brigade. If anything else within the colorful fun of Queen hits a sour note, it’s that an uncredited Joi Lansing (Marriage on the Rocks) appears only in the prologue. —Rod Lott