In the future world of 1985, space captain Patterson and his space crew take a space rocket into outer space to a space station. However a space beam strikes the space station and blasts it into space rubble. The space beam comes after the space ship next with the space crew barely escaping annihilation (in space) before crash landing on Venus. The space crew is then captured by a coterie of Venus women armed with ray guns and scoop neck mini dresses in a variety of pastel colors. And the most darling kitten heel booties.
Venus is under the brutal dictatorship of the cruel Queen Yllana, a masked woman with a lot of raging paranoia who accuses space captain Patterson and his space crew of being the the start of Earth's space war with Venus.
Yllana wants pace captain Patterson and his space crew killed but a beautiful courtier named Talleah and her friends are saying not so fast. They are super bugged by Yllana's brutal leadership and quite frankly they are super desperate for cock because damn, this space crew of men are not that great to look at but Talleah and her buddies are all over these lumpy average space men.
Queen of Outer Space turns into Phantom of the Opera when Patterson, alone with the queen in her bedchamber, removes her mask and...
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
Yllana's face is horribly disfigured due to radiation burns caused by men during a war between Venus and another planet! The exposure of Yllana's mutilated face sends off the deep end fer sher!!! She's aiming her space beam at Earth to blow it to space hell and back!
There's a lot of running around as space captain Patterson and his space crew attempt to escape with help from a very horny Talleah and her very horny friends.
The Venus women chasing the space crew and the horny women run around like... well, they run like girls. I mean, between super short skirts and heels, the Venus woman have to run that way women have to run when wearing super short skirts and heels. It looks very silly.
Despite having more practical footwear, space captain Patterson and his space crew are re-captured and are forced to watch as a totally unhinged Queen Yllana unleashes her space beam on Earth.
Except...
Well, it doesn't work. For some reason. There is no information that Talleah or Patterson has sabotaged the doo-hickey in some way. It just simply malfunctions at the right time to save Earth.
The space beam machinery goes totally haywire in a haze of smoke and shower of sparks. Queen Yllana runs into the damn thing, pulling levers, pushing buttons and screaming that she will not be defeated as the space beam thingy goes KA-BOOM! and blows up real good, doing Queen Yllana's complexion absolutely no good.
So Earth is saved thanks to space captain Patterson and his space crew doing absolutely nothing.
Earth can't send another ship to bring back space captain Patterson and his space crew from Venus for another year. So space captain Patterson and his space crew get to spend a year getting their brains fucked out by a planet full of hetero normative horny Venus women.
The part of Talleah is played by Zsa Zsa Gabor. Talleah is the only Venusian woman who speaks with an Hungarian accent. In her 1991 autobiography, Gabor recalls a memorable line of her dialogue in the film
"I play Talleah, a scientist who is against all of Queen Yllana's cruelties and wants to see her banished. The highpoint comes when I declare, 'I hate that queen'—a line that even to this day causes a great deal of mirth among many of my gay friends."
Queen of Outer Space is a silly, silly movie. But was it intended to be? Did producer Ben Schwalb and director Edward Bernds mean to make a sci-fi movie parody? Or is it just a bad sci-fi movie?
Intentional or not, Charles Stinson of the Los Angeles Times sees the film as "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, as, 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'."
Queen of Outer Space is really dumb fun.
Next up is a film I had never heard of before called Wild, Wild Planet.
Wild, Wild Planet is a 1966 Italian film originally titled I Criminali della Galassia or 'Criminals of the Galaxy'.
So what is this damn movie about? OK, I'll take a crack at it.
Dr. Nurmi is a mad scientist engaged in secret bio-engineering experiments of evil. In addition to his work in mad sciencing, Dr. Murmi's hobby is kidnapping important world leaders for use in his experiments of evil.
Among Dr. Murmi's collection of kidnapped people is one Lt. Connie, a security specialist at space station Gamma One.
Mike Halstead, commander of space station Gamma One, is pissed. Lt. Connie's his girl, dammit! And he knows Dr. Murmi is up to experiments of evil even if this superiors can't quite see that.
The film ends with a lot of punching and a flood of fruit punch Kool-Aid for some reason.
Wild, Wild Planet has some cool stuff like the zippy little future cars that scurry across Italy's roadways. The space ship models are not much above 1950's movie effects. The weirdest shots are the wide shots of the future city where the cars are clearly just toy cars moving around a track; there is no effort via lighting or forced perspective or any other camera tricks to make these shots remotely look real.
There is a sequence with astronauts on a space walk and the cord suspending the actors can clearly be seen.
And the print on TCM has a scene with a bad scratch in print negative in the lower right of the screen.
There are a couple of scenes set at a future theater which features performers in unitards and cloaks dressed as giant butterflies.
Wild, Wild Planet is a confusing mishmash lacking in sufficient wildness to justify including the word "wild" in the title once, let alone twice.
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