ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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The infamous so-bad-it's-good space opera from director Edward Bernds, the man who gave us several of the "Three Stooges" movies. Zsa Zsa Gabor (a former "Miss Hungary") plays one of the Venusian women who defies the evil Queen of Venus (Laurie Mitchell) and falls in love with one of the four Earth men who land on their planet.



The queen hates all males because her face (which she hides behind a glittering mask) was scarred in a war the women once fought against the now-extinct Venusian men (and idea borrowed from "Abbott and Costello Go To Mars").

The captive Earth astronauts go nuts over the sexy dames, all of whom look just fine in their futuristic miniskirts. The mission commander is Eric Fleming ("Rawhide" and "The Conquest of Space"), and one of the crewmen is Paul Birch ("Not of this Earth").



The best thing you can say about this movie is that it gives the audience a look at numerous props from more worthy 1950s science fiction movies: the astronauts' uniforms and the Venusian women's outfits are all borrowed from "Forbidden Planet" (along with a few blasters), the spaceship is from "Flight to Mars", and the sets and the monster spider are from "World Without End" (the latter of which was also directed by Edward Bernds).

Amazingly enough, it was filmed in color and CinemaScope, one of the few 1950s sci-fi films that can claim this honor. In 1987 it was spoofed in "Amazon Women on the Moon", right down to the replicated "Forbidden Planet" uniforms.

The DVD features a wonderful commentary with Tom Weaver and Laurie Mitchell, with a wealth of info about the movie, as well as personal anecdotes from Miss Mitchell.

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Robert (Butch) Day]

Mexican lobby card:



The girls:


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Common Sense ISN'T Common

[Bud Brewster]

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This might not be the greatest sci-fi movie of the 1950s, but the folks who crafted this trailer were damn proud of it! (Or at least they acted like they were.)

You haven't lived until you've heard a deep voiced narrator proclaim, "Voluptuous Venusians give battle to spacemen from planet Earth!"

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_____________Queen Of Outer Space (Trailer)


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Custer]

I came across another poster:



It's entirely possible that it isn't from 1958... in fact, let me admit that it was manufactured by LoopyDave, on Deviantart here.

[Bud Brewster]

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This is terrific, Custer! Love it!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[scotpens]

^^ Frankly, I find the humor in that mock poster rather obvious and juvenile. "1950s haircuts"? Well, DUH. What else do you expect in a 1950s movie?

[Bud Brewster]

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An interesting IMDB trivia item for this sci-fi girlie show!
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In an interview, director Edward Bernds said that Zsa Zsa Gabor got very "testy" with the actresses playing the Venusian girls. They were mostly beauty contest winners, and were many years - and in some cases a few decades - younger than her. When she noticed that the crew was paying more attention to the tall, leggy, mini-skirted "Venusians" than they were to her, she became very difficult to work with. He said that Gabor gave producer Ben Schwalb such a hard time on the picture that Schwalb eventually wound up in the hospital with ulcers.

Note from me: Hell hath no fury like a Hungarian beauty contest winner scorned!


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Wikipedia's article about this movie has even better trivia items in the "Production" section than IMDB, so I thought I'd share them with you folks

As usual, the quoted items are in blue text.
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~ The Three Stooges and the Bowery Boys director Edward Bernds recalled that, after famed producer Walter Wanger was released from prison for shooting agent Jennings Lang in the groin for having an affair with his wife Joan Bennett, Wanger could only find work at the low-rent Allied Artists (formerly Monogram Pictures).

Note from me: I looked up an article about the incident and found this.

"The judge sentenced the disgraced producer to four months at the Castaic Men’s Honor Farm, just outside Los Angeles. It was his time behind bars that prompted Wanger to produce the hard-hitting 1954 feature Riot in Cell Block 11, an expose of the prison system corruption which he had evidently witnessed firsthand during his brief correctional sojourn."

Lord, what a name for a correctional facility!

~ Wanger brought a ten-page idea for a screenplay by Ben Hecht called Queen of the Universe that was a satirical look at a planet run by women. Allied Artists retitled the film Queen of Outer Space as they thought the original title sounded more like a beauty pageant.

Note from me: Ironic ain't it? IMDB says most of the Venusian beauties were beauty pageant winners!

~ The film recycled many ideas, such as a planet ruled by women, from other science fiction films of the era, such as Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, Cat-Women of the Moon (both 1953) and the British Fire Maidens from Outer Space (1955).

Note from me: The spoof of the spoof is fairly good, too. I couldn't find a full version of Amazon Women on the Moon, but here's the first few minutes.

__________ Amazon Women on the Moon - clip


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~ The Queen's guards wore uniforms that foreshadow (and may have influenced) those worn on the later Star Trek television series, coming in the same three Starfleet colors; red, blue, and gold.

Note from me: Star Trek meets Forbidden Planet!



~ Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 18% of 11 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 4.2/10.[4] Variety called it "a good-natured attempt to put some honest sex into science-fiction".

Note from me: Not exactly a high rating, but that comment by Variety certainly didn't hurt, did it?
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Brent Gair]

I just got this on Blu-ray. It looks stunning. How odd that it looks better than Forbidden Planet.

I don't know if this bit of trivia has been mentioned:

In the post above this one, the woman in red between Paul Birch and Dave Willock is actress Lynn Cartwright.

Many years later, Lynn Cartwright would play the elder Dottie Hinson (the Geena Davis character) at the end of A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN.

[Gord Green]

Wardrobe from FORBIDDEN PLANET is right!
Notice the girl on the right is wearing Altaria's dress.






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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[Bud Brewster]

[Bogmeister]

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_____________ Queen Of Outer Space (Trailer)


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In many ways, this is the prototypical 1950s journey into outer space, parodied much later in such fare as Amazon Women on the Moon (1987). It's not as effective as the better World Without End (56), lending itself to ridicule due to the juvenile plot — straight out of a young boy's fantasy of finding beautiful women on an alien planet.

But it also copies, to some extent, the ultimate fifties sci-fi film, Forbidden Planet — just on a much smaller scale of hardy spacemen venturing into alien terrain.

It's unusual in that the credits don't begin until 15 minutes in — which is after the 4-man crew blast off on what seems to be a routine mission into orbit and witness their space station being destroyed by an alien beam. Then, the unexpected — the energy beam hits them and they crashland on Venus, where the ship's captain (Eric Fleming) gazes around the lush vegetation and wonders aloud if it's a lifeless planet.





In some ways, this is also a follow-up to Conquest of Space (1955), which also had a space station and featured Fleming in a similar role.

But then it veers into ludicrous directions on Venus, with the introduction of mini-skirted young females and their despotic queen, who hides a serious facial disfigurement.

Zsa-Zsa Gabor plays one of the young women sympathetic to the newcomers and who defy the queen. The sight of these females running around in their skirts and high heels is what prompts most of the derision directed at fifties sci-fi nowadays. A sci-fi plot which fits a comedy like Abbott & Costello Go To Mars — they actually also go to Venus — is not great fodder for actual science fiction cinema.

But at the same time, it's not without entertainment value — and one can look at it as some kind of strange dream..

BoG's Score: 5 out of 10


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Bud Brewster]

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I gotta hand it to good old BoG, he was kind to movies like this one.

He compares it to much better films like Conquest of Space without actually equating the two, he lists its merits without exaggeration, and he even throws in a suggests at the end that we "can look at it as some kind of strange dream, to an extent."

It's easy to find fault with a movie like this, but acknowledging its meager virtues as well its flaws makes BoG's review more enjoyable to read.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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I was pleasantly surprised by the comments in the Wikipedia article under the "reception" section. What do you guys think of these remarks?
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Reception

In 1958, the film received generally positive reviews from critics in major newspapers and in trade publications.

Most reviewers, including Charles Stinson of the Los Angeles Times, approached the film in their assessments as an amusing, mildly erotic parody or spoof, not as a true science fiction offering or even a faintly serious space adventure.

In his November 13 review, Stinson characterizes the feature as "cheery frivolity" with "well-constructed cheesecake", all of which is visually punctuated by "luscious DeLuxe color". He even compliments Gabor's performance:

"Fortunately, Allied Artists' Queen of Outer Spaceis not science fiction, because if it were it would be horrid. However, it is an elaborate parody of science fiction and, as such, it is quite good, indeed. Naturally, the one and only Zsa Zsa Gabor is the principal attraction. She comes through superbly, demonstrating a nice touch for light, dotty comedy.

With hair gone moon-platinum, she floats about gauzily, tongue in cheek, flirting outrageously, satirizing herself and sighing deeply over the fact "zat de qveen vil destroy ze planet Earss unless ve stop her, Capt. Patterson."

Marjory Adams, writing for The Boston Globe, also recognized the Gabor vehicle as a "merry spoof of science fiction" that no one either on the screen or in theater audiences takes seriously, especially with regard to the actors' lines.

"The dialogue", notes Adams, "is of the sort which might be written by a high school freshman", adding that "the only unexpected twist is that Zsa Zsa isn't the queen."

Variety — for decades a leading trade publication in covering the United States' entertainment industry — simply deemed Queen of Outer Space as "a good-natured attempt to put some honest sex into science-fiction".

In Canada in 1958, Mike Helleur, a reviewer for Toronto's The Globe and Mail, compares the film's portrayal of life on Venus to "living backstage at the Folies Bergère", complete with light entertainment and rather scantily clad young women, who in this case take a "slapstick romp" through a Venusian queen's palace.

One of several oddities that Helleur notices in the film is Gabor's singular identity among all the planet's inhabitants met by the Earthlings: "She is the only girl in Outer Space with a Hungarian accent."
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All of the above opinions amount to a surprising number of left-handed compliments from film critics who usually trash science fiction films — even the ones we here at All Sci-Fi tend to hold in high regard.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Eadie]

The picture referred to by Custer (and missing) is "Venus Dahlink":


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Art Should Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.