Queen of Outer Space is a 1958 American science fiction film shot in DeLuxe Color and CinemaScope. Produced by Ben Schwalb and directed by Edward Bernds, it stars Zsa Zsa Gabor, with Eric Fleming, Laurie Mitchell and Lisa Davis in featured roles. The screenplay by Charles Beaumont, about a revolt against a cruel Venusian queen, is based on an idea supplied by Ben Hecht and originally titled Queen of the Universe. Upon its release, the film was promoted by Allied Artists and distributed to some locations as a double feature with Frankenstein 1970 starring Boris Karloff.
Plot
In the year 1985, Captain Neal Patterson and his spaceship crew, Lt. Mike Cruze and Lt. Larry Turner, are assigned to escort Professor Konrad to an Earth space station.
While en route, the space station is destroyed by a mysterious interstellar energy beam, which also damages their rocketship, and causes it to crash land on a planet that Konrad reveals to his shocked companions as Venus. The four men are later captured by an army of aggressive, beautiful women with ray guns. The men are brought before the governing council where they learn the planet is under the dictatorship of the cruel Queen Yllana, a masked woman who has had most men killed, keeping only male mathematicians and scientists on a prison colony moon orbiting Venus.
In a detainment area in the queen's palace, Konrad tells the men that he believes that the beam not only destroyed the space station and caused their rocket ship to crash on Venus but it may have originated from Venus. They are later aided by a beautiful courtier named Talleah and her Venusian friends Motiya and Kaeel. The women long for the love and attention of men again and plot to overthrow the evil queen to reestablish the "old order".
The masked queen later has her guards bring Patterson to her bedchamber, where she seduces him. Patterson forcibly removes her mask, revealing a horribly disfigured face received during a war between Venus and the men of another planet "10 Earth years” earlier. Later, in a fury, the queen decides she must destroy Earth in order to protect her world and preserve her power. In the presence of Yllana’s armed guards, Talleah and the crewmen can only watch as the queen aims the energy-beam "disintegrator" at Earth. Just after Yllana activates the weapon, Talleah's allies spring from hiding and a melee begins. Sabotaged by the rebels, the disintegrator immediately begins to malfunction and finally explodes, killing Queen Yllana.
Talleah becomes the new leader of Venus, and turns her romantic intentions towards Patterson. At a subsequent ceremony, she announces that Patterson's rocketship has been repaired and that he and his crew can return to Earth. Talleah's technicians have also repaired the "electronic televiewer", which contacts Space Command on Earth. Patterson is ordered not to attempt a return, and to remain on Venus for at least a year until a relief expedition from Earth can arrive.
The crew are elated to follow orders, and celebrate in a flurry of hugs and passionate kisses with the Venusians.
Cast
Production
thumb|upright|Theatrical advertisement from 1958
The Three Stooges and the Bowery Boys director Edward Bernds recalled that, after 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). In 1952, 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. Several years later, with the idea of science fiction films being more common, Allied Artists revived the project with Wanger replaced on the film by Ben Schwalb, who was then producing the Bowery Boys films. Screenwriter Charles Beaumont did not think there was much in the Hecht screenplay, but Schwalb suggested spoofing the idea and had former Three Stooges screenwriter Ellwood Ullman touch up Beaumont's screenplay. Allied Artists retitled the film Queen of Outer Space as they thought the original title sounded more like a beauty pageant. The model was also used by the Bowery Boys in Paris Playboys (1954), which was co-written by Bernds and Ullman. It is noteworthy, too, that the queen's guards wore uniforms that foreshadow (and may have even influenced) those worn on the later Star Trek television series, coming in the same three Starfleet colors; red, blue, and gold.
In her 1991 autobiography One Lifetime is Not Enough, Gabor recounts a memorable line of her dialogue in the film and cites the production costs for creating the highly tailored fashions worn by her character:
Curvaceous Joi Lansing appears uncredited in a flashy but brief role the as Turner character's girlfriend.
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: