Queen of Outer Space

The quintessential space-explorers-discover-a-planet-inhabited-entirely-by-beautiful-women 1958 Allied Artists B-Movie (for other examples, see Cat Women of the Moon, Fire Maidens of Outer Space, or Missile to the Moon).

Captain Neal Patterson (Eric Fleming) and his space crew of Lt. Mike Cruze (Dave Willock), Lt. Larry Turner (Patrick Waltz) and Professor Konrad (Paul Birch) leave on a mission to do something pertaining to a space station. Upon arrival however, they witness the station being destroyed by a mysterious ray. They are then caught in the ray themselves, and crash land on Venus. Setting out into the jungle, the four are beset upon by minidress-clad beautiful women armed with rayguns. They are taken to the palace of tyrannical Queen Yllana (Laurie Mitchell), and thrown in prison, where they are given the scoop; in the midst of a nuclear war between Venus and a planet called 'Mordor' (no, really), Yllana led an uprising in which she wrested control of the planet from men and banished said men to Venus's moon (which Venus has in this movie). She believes that the astronauts are spies gathering intelligence for an attack on Venus by Earth, and plans to destroy Earth with the same ray that destroyed the space station. Luckily for the men, it seems that there's a rebel faction, lead by Talleah (who is played by Zsa Zsa Gabor), who long for the return of the company of men and are thus plotting to depose Yllana, and are willing to aid them.

Joi Lansing has an uncredited role as the Earth girlfriend of one of the astronauts.

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This film provides examples of:

• 20 Minutes into the Future: The film takes place in 1985. You know, back when they had Big Wheel space stations and rocketships to Venus.
• Aliens Speaking English: The Venusians speak English because they have been monitoring our "electronic waves". Strangely the Venusians who first capture our heroes speak (albeit accented) English to their leader, yet use Gratuitous Foreign Language when addressing the Earthmen.

  Brunette Venusian: (into communicator) We have found the intruders.

  Lt. Turner: They speak English!

  Redheaded Venusian: Go, go, go!

  Prof. Konrad: I believe we better accept the invitation.

  Lt. Turner: Well, you heard what the babe said. Bacchino.

• All Amazons Want Hercules: This is actually more justified than other Lady Land examples, as the absence of men has been imposed by Yllana and her followers, rather than a feminist culture that evolved over time. So the reason gorgeous dames are throwing themselves at our heroes is because they want love or babies.
• Artificial Gravity: After crashlanding on an unknown world, the astronauts turn off the artificial gravity to get some idea from the reading which planet they are on.
• Artistic License – Space:
  • The surviving men of Venus have been banished to a moon orbiting Venus...of which there are apparently several, which you can't see from Earth because of the dense atmosphere.
  • Apparently, a planet's size determines the breathability of its atmosphere.
• Beneath the Mask: Literally. After Patterson removes Yllana's mask and sees her scarred face, she taunts him over whether he still wants to embrace her. He is unable to. Outraged she has him removed by her guards, breaking down in tears once he's gone.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Some creature that looks like a cross between a beetle and a spider ambushes one of the astronauts in a cave.
• Big Red Button: Averted as the Beta Disintegrator has a tiny red button. I guess the queen isn't Compensating for Something.

  Yllana: One touch of a tiny red button, and Earth will become a wasteland!

• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The Venusians who first capture our heroes include women of every color. Hair color, that is. Both Yllana and Talleah are of course blondes.
• B-Movie: Released as a double feature with Frankenstein (1970).
• Bound and Gagged: Yllana is tied up and gagged, so Talleah can steal her mask and impersonate her. But when her guards enter the room, Yllana kicks down the screen she's been hidden behind, exposing the deception.
• Bring Him to Me: Queen Yllana accuses the astronauts of being spies for an impending attack and sentences them to death, but later sends her guards to bring Patterson for a private audience. His crew suggests that Yllana fancies him and urge their captain to play along. Turner is more than willing to volunteer in his stead, but Patterson girds his loins and faces his duty. It doesn't turn out the way he expects.
• But Now I Must Go: Once the Starfire is repaired the astronauts must depart to Earth, much to the disappointment of Queen Talleah and her followers. Then a message from Earth tells them the decision has been made not to risk using a damaged spacecraft; instead they are ordered to wait for a rescue mission that could take up to a year to arrive. Our heroes are not particularly bothered by this news.
• Camp: Zsa Zsa Gabor in a painted-on gown and heels exclaiming "I hate dat qveen!"
• The Casanova: Lt. Turner is introduced smooching a gorgeous blonde moments before the mission. He spends the rest of the movie leering shamelessly at all the eye candy. At the end of the movie he's quite happy to stay with his girl on Venus rather than return to My Girl Back Home.
• Computer Equals Tapedrive: Justified as they are specifically said to be loading a tape onto the rocket's autopilot.
• Covert Pervert: While fleeing Yllana's guards, the rebels find a lot of excuses for Security Cling and Holding Hands. Not that the men are complaining.
• Decapitated Army: Once Yllana dies, Talleah becomes queen and everything ends happily ever after. Never mind that Yllana had a ruling Council and soldiers who shared her misandrist views, which should have led to a Civil War.
• Delegation Relay: When the fire starts going out, the astronauts keep passing the buck on who's going to stop kissing and relight it again. Eventually Konrad says he'll fetch more firewood as he's the only one who "isn't busy".

  Motiya: We don't really need any more wood.

• Disintegrator Ray:
  • The Beta Disintegrator. Wouldn't Alpha Male Disintegrator be more appropriate?
  • Odeena is hauled before the queen, who shoots her In the Back with a Ray Gun that turns the victim into a puff of colored smoke.
  • When Turner is attacked by the giant spider creature, it's shot and bursts into flame. By the time he's crawled out from under it the creature has turned to dust. Good thing overpenetration isn't a problem with these rayguns!
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: When Patterson tries a Kirk Summation, Yllana responds bitterly, "Is that understanding, or pity?"
• Does Not Like Men: Yllana, who blames all men for the war that lead to her disfigurement.
• Doomsday Device: The Beta Disintegrator projects "nuclear energy" to destroy space stations and planets.
• Dramatic Unmask: Patterson tears off Yllana's mask while seducing her, only to recoil in horror because her face is hideously scarred by radiation burns from the war.
• Eating the Eye Candy

  Cruze: Well, what now?

  Konrad: My guess is they want to look us over.

  Peterson: That's fair enough. Larry's sure looking them over.

• Everybody Smokes: Averted; Captain Patterson reprimands Konrad as he's about to light up when they're refueling with liquid oxygen.
• Eyes Never Lie: When asked if she believes the Earth men, Motiya says his eyes indicate he (Lt. Turner) is telling the truth. Given that Turner was eyeing her hungrily, they no doubt were.
• Fanservice: The Amazon Brigade in their miniskirts and Zsa Zsa Gabor in her side-split dress Show Some Leg and run about in high heels.
• Gendercide: Yllana killed off the Venusian men, except for the useful scientists and mathematicians who she banished to a nearby moon.
• Girly Run: Which rather offsets the menace of being chased by a man-hating Amazon Brigade armed with disintegrator guns.
• God Save Us From The Qveen!: Yllana is a tyrannical ruler physically and psychologically damaged by man's warlike ways. Even though no-one on Earth knows that the Venusians even exist, she's so paranoid she's convinced the Earthmen intend to invade her planet and so she intends to destroy Earth first.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: Talleah emerges in a figure-hugging gold dress to show she's become the new Qveen of Venus.
• Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks filled with colored fluids and bunsen burners left on for no apparent reason are shown in Talleah's laboratory to cue the audience that she does science stuff, given that she's wearing a side-split dress instead of a Labcoat of Science and Medicine.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Talleah gets a bit miffed when Patterson is brought to see the qveen (the men crowing about it in front of her doesn't help). They conclude that dolls are the same on any planet.
• The Grotesque: The Queen of Outer Space is a Queen Without A Face.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy:
  • Cruze falls asleep on guard duty, enabling the Venusians to sneak up on them. On seeing himself surrounded by a bevy of beautiful babes toting rayguns, his first instinct is to assume he's dreaming and go back to sleep again.
  • While hiding in a cave the astronauts are too busy snogging hot babes to post a guard. Only Konrad (the only one who's left out) leaving the cave to look for more firewood prevents them from being taken by surprise by a search party.
• Hallucinations: Cruze's first response on waking up and seeing them surrounded by babes toting rayguns is that he's been away from Earth too long.
• Hell Is That Noise: The astronauts are startled by a strange electronic warbling, which is apparently the sound of the aircraft used by the Venusians.
• He Went That Way: The Venusians are about to find our heroes hiding in Talleah's laboratory, when Odeena rushes in shouting in Venusian and pointing elsewhere. The soldiers rush out, but they soon find they've been tricked. Odeena is then hauled before Yllana who has her Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard: Yllana is determined to destroy the Earth, but the rebels have sabotaged the Beta Disintegrator. When she runs inside and starts throwing levers, it explodes and kills her.
• Holding Hands: The beautiful babes of La Résistance when fleeing Yllana's guards. As least they have a better excuse than usual for this trope, as these are the first men they've been able to grab hold of for some time.
• Hot Wind: The blast from the rocket taking Lt. Turner into space tussles the blonde hair of the ditzy dame he left behind.
• Homing Laser: The Beta Disintegrator appears to be this, as beams keep coming at the space station from completely different directions! Finally one locks on and the space station is toast.
• Human Aliens: When our heroes realise they've crashlanded on Venus, they speculate on what form of intelligent life might inhabit it. Insectoid Aliens? Little Green Men with eyes on stalks? They're later captured by a society consisting entirely of hot babes in miniskirts and high heels.
• Hysterical Woman: One Venusian babe attacks our heroes in a man-hating frenzy as soon as they're brought into the council room.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: Gender-Inverted Trope; Yllana makes it clear to Patterson that his crew can be interrogated to get to the 'truth' of their mission, or he could become her Hot Consort as its Lonely at the Top now she's banished all the men. In fairness Patterson is entirely willing to go along with this Scarpia Ultimatum until he takes her mask off. She does not take his subsequent rejection well.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: The thousands of women who yearn to be free of Yllana's tyranny because they cannot live without love form La Résistance. Clearly Situational Sexuality isn't working for them. Even the Queen implies that she's willing to be merciful if Patterson is willing to love her. Unfortunately it appears that Beast and Beauty is not a Gender-Inverted Trope.
• Kavorka Man:
  • Cruze is a bit startled when Kaeel tells him how attractive he is. It helps when there's only four men on the entire planet.
  • Poor Konrad is the only man who doesn't have a girl, but the final scene of the movie shows him being glomped by all the other women who don't have a man. And he's got a whole year of this to look forward to.
• La Résistance: Talleah and her cohorts were already plotting to overthrow the qveen, so they form an Enemy Mine alliance with the Earthmen.
• Lady in Red: Talleah is introduced in a white outfit (presumably a nod to her being a scientist), but changes to red when going to meet the only males on the entire planet.
• Lady Land: Since Yllana killed or banished all the men.

  Cruze: Professor, what do you make of all this? There's nothing but women.
  Konrad: Perhaps this is a civilization that exists without sex.
  Turner: You call that civilization?
  Konrad: Frankly, no.

• Ludicrous Speed: Expressions vary from "happily constipated" as they're taking off, to "strapped-to-an-operating-table-and-anal-probed" as their rocketship hurtles (well, wobbles actually) towards Venus at over a hundred miles a second.
• Men Are Strong, Women Are Pretty: The girls of La Résistance hand all their Ray Guns over to the Earthmen, even though they should be more familiar with them. They only get them back for a Trojan Prisoner gambit.
• My Sensors Indicate You Want to Tap That: When fleeing the queen's guards, one of the women says, "Yllana's detection devices are relentless. They might even track us down by our heartbeats." Cruze, huddled with her, says, "Boy, I'm really givin' her a target right now."
• Mysterious Veil: The queen's White Mask of Doom is compared to this. Turns out she wears it for another reason.
• Never Trust a Title: She's actually just the Queen of Venus. Mind you, it was originally Queen of the Universe before Executive Meddling had the title changed because it sounded like a beauty pageant.
• No Guy Wants to Be Chased: Averted by Patterson, who expresses disappointment that the women of Earth aren't as forward as Venusian women in expressing their affections.
• No Seatbelts: Averted; the chairs deploy into couches and the crew and passenger are strapped down, which is just as well when their spaceship later goes out of control.
• Our Doors Are Different: A closet door in Talleah's laboratory closes in a T-shape.
• Readings Are Off the Scale: After the rocket crashes, the crew note that the speedometer's needle is at the far end of the scale at 100 miles per second — they can only speculate how fast they might actually have been traveling.
• Out of the Frying Pan: Our heroes flee aerial bombing into a cave that radar and infra-red sensors can't penetrate, only to be attacked by a Giant Spider creature.
• Retro Rocket: The Starfire. Except when it's on the launchpad.
• Security Cling: The rebels seem rather eager to do this. Poor Konrad is the odd man out, as there's only three of them.
• Scooby Stack: Albeit a horizontal version. As Yllana is Evil Gloating over the impeding destruction of Earth, she doesn't see Kaeel appear in a nearby doorway, followed by Motiya, then several other rebels all lining up alongside them. They exchange a Face, Nod, Action with Talleah, then rush in to rescue everyone once the Beta Disintegrator starts blowing up.
• Sound In Space: The Death Ray trying to hit the Space Station.
• Space Clothes: Minidresses and high heels. Such a likely choice of clothes in a society with no men. And such a practical choice of clothes for traipsing around in jungles and swamps.
• Space Station: The unimaginatively named Space Station A (though even its designer admits it's just a bus stop In Space). It forms the classic wheel design, is shown spinning fast enough to give everyone on board space sickness, and took 22 years to build from the moment the first man stepped into space in the far-future of 1963.
• Standard Female Grab Area: Though the men get hauled around like this as well.
• Trojan Prisoner: When they see guards have tracked them to the cave, the astronauts realise that Resistance Is Futile as the guards could simply starve them out. So they hand their rayguns back to La Résistance, who pretend they've just captured them. It works surprisingly well as Yllana has the prisoners brought to her private chamber instead of the Council room. Talleah orders the guards to wait outside and they capture the queen when she turns up for some Evil Gloating.
• Underestimating Badassery: How Yllana went From Nobody to Nightmare.

  Patterson: How did she manage to overthrow the men?

  Talleah: Tey didn't take hair seriously. Tey vere preparing for var. After all, she vas only a voman.

• Useless Protagonist: Ironically it's the rebel women who save the day by sabotaging the Doomsday Device, not our heroes. In fact the presence of the astronauts only makes things worse, fueling Yllana's paranoia and hatred. You could argue that they served as a catalyst for the rebellion, but it would have happened anyway.
• Venus Is Wet: The Venusians live in a jungle, despite the rocketship landing on an icy planet so the movie can use Stock Footage from Flight to Mars.
• Video Phone: The electronic televiewer.
• What We Now Know to Be True: Used to Hand Wave the Hollywood Science.
  • "Isn't Venus's atmosphere unbreathable?" "Yes, I formulated those theories myself. Obviously I was wrong."
  • And this line...

    Professor Konrad: That's what I would have said. But it appears all things are possible in space.

• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: While her soldiers want to shoot the Earthmen and traitors on the spot, Yllana has them brought to the Beta Disintegrator, so they will be Forced to Watch the Earth's destruction. Talleah she declares will die last and slowly.
• Women Drivers: Cruze expresses skepticism that a bunch of dames could have invented the ray gun that shot them down. Turner then asks how they could have even aimed it. "You know what women drivers are like." Even Cruze walks off in disgust at this lame comment. Mind you, that would explain why the beam was bouncing all over the place.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: When the one of the men comments that the whole planet must have lots of gold deposits Talleah doesn't understand why gold is important.
• You Have 48 Hours: The queen plans to use her Beta Disintegrator to destroy Earth in two days.
• You're Insane!

  Yllana: You will be interested to hear that the weapon will be ready to fire in a few minutes. Well, Captain? No comments?

  Patterson: I think you're out of your mind!

  Yllana: (to Professor Konrad) A person like you must appreciate this achievement. One touch of a tiny red button, and Earth will become a wasteland! Even the mountains will crumble into dust.

  Prof. Konrad: It's monstrous. Will nothing keep you from going through with this?

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