apt. Neal Patterson and his crew of astronauts are hoping to land a plum assignment for their next mission—Earth's first orbit around Mars. Instead, they are given a milk run. The eminent Professor Konrad needs a ride up to a space station he designed, a station derisively referred to by the astronauts as a "bus depot in space." Nevertheless, orders are orders, and the three disappointed U.S. astronauts suit up and duly launch. Once in space, Konrad tries to cheer the trio of spacers by revealing that there has been ominous activity out in the station's vicinity, and that Earth itself
may be in danger.
The crew barely has time to absorb this threat, though, when things go drastically awry. First, the station is attacked and destroyed by a mysterious energy ray. Then the beam is turned onto the rocket itself. Patterson is injured and the ship careens off course and out of control, until the autopilot can set down safely on an unknown world.
It turns out that the four men are on Venus, but despite past scientific theorizing that held the planet to be uninhabitable, they find Earth-standard gravity and air awaiting them, not to mention a lush and
teeming jungle that looks suspiciously like its plants are made of construction paper. What's more, Venus is entirely populated by shapely young women ... and run by a queen who sees Earth's men as a threat to her people's very survival.
A future world that has thankfully passed
Queen of Outer Space is fully equipped with all the hallmarks of '50s camp flicks—ray-toting women in high-heeled shoes and short skirts, shrill electronic sound effects, primitive special effects, screamingly laughable pseudoscience and wooden acting. Edwards Bernds' direction is entirely earnest, and modern viewers will howl at the deadpan performances of the film's cast.
Zsa Zsa Gabor plays Talleah, a scientist determined to overthrow her planet's evil queen. It is she who holds the film together, bringing a bodacious and determined dignity to the silliness erupting all around her. In his capacity as hero and love interest, Eric Fleming as Captain Patterson can only just keep up with Gabor. She seems to generate all the chemistry between them through sheer force of will.
As with most films from this period, a primary element of the viewing experience is in seeing firsthand how much U.S. culture has changed since the '50s. The cast is all white, and the story flops around the queen's rejection of male behavior in the form of war-making without ever making her
into a feminist hero. Ultimately the queen is an outcast and an aberration. The physical deformities she gained in her planet's last manmade war have damaged her psychically, too—her anti-male position is shown to be irrational and deranged. Meanwhile, the oppressed beauties among her subject population have been languishing without male guidance and attention.
No matter how seriously it seems to take itself, Queen of Outer Space's chief charm is in its unintended humor and its status as an artifact of an era whose time, thankfully, has passed.
