Fire Maidens of Outer Space

Science fiction has long held an honorable place in the entertainment industry. Gulliver's Travels was written as a satire on Society in Swift's period, but its theme is essentially science fiction. The books of Jules Verne are noteworthy for featuring much of the scientific knowledge about submarine and space travel current at his time. A broadcast of H.G. Wells "The War of the Worlds", which started with an announcer unwisely declaring that the Martians had landed, caused a major panic in the 1930's; and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's, "The Lost World" was later made into a remarkable film featuring the dinosaur era. But the rapid evolution of films of this genre in recent years is most clearly seen in the case of space travel. When I was young space travel still seemed several generations away, and films featuring it were mostly low budget and quite unsophisticated. Today we have only to think of Independence Day or the Star Trek saga, to realise how completely this situation has reversed. Only very high budget films with extremely sophisticated special effects have any credibility with young people today. Such films do not have a great appeal for me, but I can really enjoy the nostalgia of re-watching some of the early films I first saw when a youth. Their appeal is probably limited largely to people of my age (and perhaps to film historians), so such films are likely to become increasingly difficult to see as time passes. We should be grateful to the Space TV channel (and occasionally one or two of the others) for dusting off some of them for us to watch again.

I found one recent TV revival of this film to be a really delightful piece of nostalgia. Viewers were left in no doubt that it was pure nostalgia right from the opening shot which is in black and white and shows a passenger in a propeller driven airliner settling into his seat and lighting a cigarette. For my generation this quickly brought back memories of traditional Saturday afternoon cinema matinees. In the U.K. town where I then lived admission cost 9d (about the equivalent of 10c Cd today). Clearly at such prices the films shown were all very low budget productions that are easy to criticise today, and obviously viewers much younger than myself are unlikely to share my delight at the rare opportunity to see such films again. This film is not currently listed by Amazon, and I am not sure if it was ever available in video tape format, so there is clearly little ongoing demand to view it. Audiences today have a relatively sophisticated appreciation of space travel and would never accept the scenario of a spacecraft landing on a planet of Jupiter and finding gravity, climate and vegetation very similar to that at home, followed by the further improbabilities associated with finding English speaking inhabitants who were somehow transported there from Atlantis when this terrestrial continent sunk into the sea. However at the time that I first saw this film I would have judged the probability of successful space travel in my lifetime as extremely low; and it is important to appreciate that to my contemporaries, once we had accepted the basic improbability of space travel, all the other assumptions in the script shrank into insignificance. A few of its many incongruities have been identified in other viewers comments, but it can be quite fun to watch this film with the aim of listing as many more as possible.

Once the space travel premise had been accepted, we were left with a whimsical and rather appealing little story which flowed very smoothly. The fire maidens danced gracefully to well known ballet music and there was nothing to really jar in this marshmallow soft tale which passed an afternoon very smoothly. This may be why the Fire Maidens are still remembered nostalgically by many of us whilst most of the numerous other similar low budget epics produced around this time faded into obscurity within a few weeks of their first Saturday afternoon showing. Their audiences were not sophisticated cinema goers but chiefly adolescent teen youths for whom a cast of nubile young women was a prerequisite; and a decade or so after this film was released it became almost obligatory for such low budget films to find an excuse for requiring them to shed their raiments at some point in the story. Perhaps, for all but today's teenage youths, one of the attractions of the rare revivals of this film is the fact that it predates this requirement.

It is fascinating to see how such a story could be filmed with virtually none of the special effects we always expect today. In fact, apart from some non-burning flames and a grotesque head mask suitable for a Mardi Gras parade, it is hard to think of any. The shots of the rocket ship, both on the ground and when taking flight are quite impressive, and it is almost charming to see a long wooden ladder being used to board this relatively sophisticated looking spacecraft.

If you do not remember it and have the chance to see this film, my advice is put your critical faculties aside, sit back, and enjoy it. I doubt if it will soon be possible to buy a copy, but I would urge that a DVD version should be made available. It should not only sell to filmgoers of my generation but also become a valuable part of the film library in every training college or cinematographic club, where it would become recognised both as an interesting precursor of today's space travel films and as a noteworthy example of an ultra-low budget production.

If I had a dollar, no better make that five dollars in these inflationary days, for every time Cy Roth's name appeared on the screen during the opening credits for this film I'd have enough to make my own movie! A bunch of British astronauts take an exploratory trip to the 13th moon of Jupiter (a neat trick in itself since this was made in 1956 and Jupiter's 13th moon was not even discovered until the late 1970's!) and discover a race of mini-skirted sex kittens who are the descendants of the survivors of Atlantis who left Earth some 3000 years ago! There is only one man on the planet and he is quite old so the girls welcome the arrival of young, virile men. Now in real life the guys would probably dismantle the rocket and live happily ever after. But do they in this movie? NOOOOOOOOOOOO! They are veddy proper Englishmen and they just want to go home! ("I'm a happily married man." one of them even states with quite the stiff upper lip.) Oh, there is one other male on the planet, a weird mutant known as The Creature. This has got to be one of the most laughable monsters in movie history. A skinny guy in a black bodysuit with clearly visible zipper and an unmoving fright mask. Yow! Even Larry Buchanan's monsters weren't that bad! Susan Shaw and Jacqueline Curtis are the Fire Maidens who get the most screen time but in the crowd is Kim Parker who would go face-to-whatever with the FIEND WITHOUT A FACE in 1958. This movie used to run on late-late shows all the time. It desperately needs to be released on video for a new generation to see. Yes kids, once upon a time people actually paid 35 cents on Saturday afternoons to see stuff like this.

If you like Borodin's "Prince Igor," "Stranger in Paradise," or "Kismet," DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE, because you will never again be able to hear that music without dissolving into fits of uncontrollable laughter. Otherwise, go for it: it is every bit as bad as others have described and, in my humble opinion, makes "Plan Nine from Outer Space" look like a masterpiece.

My one memory of this appalling movie is of the spaceship's captain extinguishing his cigarette to announce "gentlemen, it's time for us to synchronise our LONGINES watches with the LONGINES master clock." At which point, the screen is filled with a shot of a very large, very ordinary looking wall clock with a prominent LONGINES logo on its dial. The camera lingers....and lingers....meanwhile, the viewer makes a mental note "must buy Omega next time."

FIRE MAIDENS FROM OUTER SPACE concerns the British / US "Expedition 13" to an apparent thirteenth moon of Jupiter. Once the stock footage V-2 rocket takes off, the adventure begins.

After a meteor shower, the crew zips right along, having plenty of time for shaving and smoking cigarettes, before arriving in the vicinity of Jupiter. The whole trip seems to have taken about fifteen minutes (Earth time). Untold horrors await as they land on the mysterious satellite.

But first, more cigarettes, please!

Thankfully, this orb is exactly like Earth, complete with grassy plains and trees! Can the titular maidens be far off? Nope. Ugly mutants too! The order of the day: Shoot first, and let lust be your guide.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, "ground control" sits around in what looks like a public restroom with a desk in it.

FIRE MAIDENS is an utterly absurd, sci-fi cheeeze-log from those fabulous fifties. As expected, it's all about the beautiful maidens, who just happen to be serving wenches, as well as synchronized dancers! Alas, the rest of this film is so criminally dull, as to cause our souls to wither and die.

Bring on the mutants! Kill the boring earthlings! Kill! Kill! Then, have a cigarette...