In den Krallen der Venus

A spaceship with a four-man crew crash-lands on Venus. There they find the planet is inhabited solely by women, who take the men prisoner believing them to be the first wave in an invasion by Earth. The women are ruled by masked Queen Yilana, who hates men and blames them for the disfigurement of her face. Not all of the women on Venus are man-haters, though. A group of resistance fighters, led by Talleah (Zsa Zsa Gabor), plan to rescue the astronauts and overthrow Yilana.

I love this movie. It's so much fun. It has lots of cheesy appeal and comic value, both intentional and otherwise. It's so ridiculously sexist and outdated that you can't possibly take it seriously unless you have a stick up your rear the size of a redwood. Also, it's a '50s sci-fi movie so it has that charm about it. I love the colorful costumes, sets, and props. The cast is good. Zsa Zsa is memorably bad in the best way. Eric Fleming and Paul Birch play it straight, which helps make the whole thing that much funnier. Dave Willock is always a treat. But it's Patrick Waltz that gets the best (and most sexist) lines. A fun sci-fi movie that everyone should be able to enjoy on some level. Just take your serious hat off for awhile.

This is definitely a camp classic. The fact that Zsa Zsa Gabor tries to play this film as straight drama is worth a look at it alone. Also, this film is populated with a bunch of women who probably came straight off of a Las Vegas showroom and make Pamela Anderson look like Katherine Hepburn. Also, the special effects are some of the worst since the heyday of Ed Wood. This film definitely is one of those that fall into the category of being so bad that its funny.

When one starts watching this movie, one gets a feeling that this might be a fairly serious, good sci-fi film...then the rocket lands on Venus, and all credibility simply vanishes. First, we all know that Venus is shrouded in poisonous clouds and has a surface temperature that will melt lead, right??? Well, in this movie, Venus looks like a discount store with lots of potted tropical plants strewn around, and the intrepid astronauts never even break a sweat. The astronauts are then captured by a patrol of women in high heels (who also shout "Bagino!" over and over), and the familiar "men-encountering-love-starved-female-civilization" plot begins.

The movie does have some interesting twists: The deadly "Beta Disintegrator" with which the evil queen is planning to destroy earth; the queen's advanced acne-like skin condition; gloriously saturated color photography; Paul Birch as the bookish scientist who is uninterested in the nubile Venusian women; and of course Zsa Zsa Gabor, who gives an interesting performance as the Chief Scientist on Venus (!).

This movie is outrageously male-chauvinistic (even for the 50s) and has some of the dumbest dialogue in the cosmos. For those reasons--and to see Gabor in her most ridiculous role--you should watch this. However, I doubt that you'll want to watch it more than once.

Steve Rhodes (newsgroup review) sums it up best when he says, "'Queen of Outer Space' is a parody of science fiction films. Whether it meant to be so at the time is another question." This is prime material for MST3K (very similar to "Fire Maidens from Outer Space"), but they might be avoiding "Queen" because it almost makes fun of itself. It reeks of cardboard sets, silly dialogue, and more phallic symbols, hot babes, and sexual innuendo than you can wave a stick (or laser gun) at. The astronauts ride in Lay-Z-Boy chairs and Zsa Zsa Gabor is a real treat. Never taking itself seriously, it's the "Austin Powers" of the sci-fi genre.

The real question here is whether or not this film is funny because of what it shows us...acting, dialogue, sets...or rather because of how ineptly it shows us these things. For me the film is funny because it is trying to be funny in some parts but also very funny because it is crudely, cheaply, and horrificly made in many instances. Obviously casting Zsa Zsa Gabor in the lead role answers the question that this was intended to be a parody. Come on, she is not an actress but rather a fixture, albeit a charming, vivacious, buxom one. Three astronauts and a professor are on their way to a space station when some laser beams destroy the station before their very eyes and lead them to the planet of Venus millions and millions of miles away. All our scientific knowledge of Venus is wildly inaccurate as the gravity is much like that of Earth's and oxygen is prevalent. The men are taken at night by surprise by a band of armed, mini-skirt clad Venusians that bring them before the mask-faced evil queen. From there a Venusian scientist, played by Miss. Gabor no less, offers help to the men to escape. The rest is about the foiled escape and the eventual unmasking of the evil queen and her desire to obliterate Earth. The film has so much sexual innuendo and bad-trying-to-be-funny smug acting as to be a little annoying. The male leads are not very good. Eric Fleming as the man wanted by both Zsa Zsa and the queen is adequate. Paul Birch, typically a pretty good actor, does a shameless job in this film smiling constantly and his scene where the space station is destroyed and he is suppose to look disconcerted is a real hoot! Maybe this is what they were trying to do. The other two guys are very annoying with one stupid joke after another. One is a lothario-type making degrading comments about the fairer sex repeatedly. Even I tired of them after awhile. The women...well, they are heavenly. All of them are beautiful and Zsa Zsa is near the top of that heavenly spectrum. Beautiful Joi Lansing also has a bit part in the beginning. Journeyman director Edward Bernds directs with some style. I particularly like how he used color in the film. Visually, the film has lots of bright blues and reds that really takes much of your attention away from the bad acting and plot.