Fire Maidens of Outer Space

What’s with the flaky sub-genre of rocket voyage movies where astronauts discover ‘babes in space,’ on various heavenly bodies?  Two films from 1953 posited the silly notion that the first spacemen on another world would encounter a race of gorgeous Amazons. Universal’s comedy  Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, populated Venus with curvaceous Hollywood showgirls. A few months later, the 3-D production Cat-Women of the Moon did the same thing on the moon, only cheaper.

We’re presently awaiting a 3-D disc that will show off Marie Windsor and Victor Jory in full-on depth.
Meanwhile, out of nowhere comes a legendary title with a reputation among the lowest of the low, Fire Maidens of Outer Space, yet another threadbare production that wanted a piece of ’50s monster mania box office profits. We look to this deluxe disc release for a reason why it was needed, as we were more than satisfied with Olive Films’ 2013 Blu-ray.

Out of this World Shock Sensation! 

Fire Maidens was produced in England. Its main title repeats the credit ‘Cy Roth’ multiple times, as the producer, writer, director and presenter of the show, making sure that he’s given separate credits for the original screen story and for the screenplay. Cy’s show is one of the laziest film productions of 1956. All of the spaceship visuals are lifter from movies released by Robert L. Lippert. The space rocket en route to the 13th moon of Jupiter, and a meteor shower are stock shots from Kurt Neumann’s Rocketship XM. Shots of a V-2 missile flying sideways through clouds appear borrowed from Bert I. Gordon’s cheapie King Dinosaur.

No real attempt is made to create excitement or suspense through directing or cutting. Entire scenes are filmed from a single camera angle. Whenever director Roth cuts back to ground control during the long mission, we see the same six or seven scientists and military men, standing in roughly the same positions, wearing the same costumes. Director Cy Roth seems more interested in stretching the picture out to feature length. The hike from the spaceship to the Fire Maidens’ palace requires crossing three fields. For every trip back to the ship, we must watch as someone dutifully walks or runs through each of the three locations.

Some call it contempt for the audience. 

An overdubbed joke in Woody Allen’s spoof What’s Up Tiger Lily? implies that a female extra walking through the frame must be the director’s girlfriend. We really believe that’s exactly what happens in the film’s one pre-spaceflight scene, inside an observatory. A professor (Sydney Tafler) calls for his secretary, and the camera tilts up to a catwalk high above. We watch patiently as a woman in a pleated skirt slowly descends a flight of steps, opens and closes two gates, and sits to take about ten seconds’ worth of dictation. We then follow her as she retraces her steps, repeating the business with the two gates before climbing the stairs once again. The one-shot scene is pure padding. If it were meant as a joke, there’s no payoff.  ^*

TV’s Captain Video had a better spaceship set. Cy Roth’s astronauts fly to Jupiter while seated in ordinary office chairs. Life on another planet isn’t a big deal after all. Approaching the Jupiterian moon, the adventurers receive an English-language radio transmission from below, giving them landing instructions. Then they wonder about what kind of life might exist on this alien world.

After landing they step out into the unknown environment as if exiting a rowboat. The 13th Moon of Jupiter has an atmosphere identical to Earth’s. They can walk around in ordinary clothes. The landscape is a perfect match for rural England, with pleasant fields bordered by stands of trees and manicured hedges. Much later, more padding is added when the two leading men are imprisoned in an English-style castle, and search for a secret exit. They tap the walls for what seems several minutes, with no particular urgency.

When the explorers first arrive, they are invited into the walled palace of the Fire Maidens by a feeble old man named Prasus (Owen Berry). He relates an incomprehensible story about the lost continent of Atlantis departing Earth and resettling here on the 13th moon of Jupiter. Prasus seems more than a little confused. At regular intervals he raises his arms in homage to a portrait of a grand lady, identifying her as the grandmother of his daughter Princess Hestia (Susan Shaw). A little later he refers to her as Aphrodite. He also says that she’s the original Queen of Atlantis.  So … Atlantis was intact on Earth just three generations ago?

Hestia barely talks. She sets her cap for the scientist Luther Blair (Anthony Dexter), a smug, unlikeable guy who also happens to be the film’s leading man. Meanwhile the leading dancer Duessa (Jacqueline Curtiss) expresses her desire for the chaste married man Captain Larson (Paul Carpenter).  Adulterous Fire Maidens of Outer Space?  All Stanley Kubrick found in Jupiter orbit was a boring old Star Gate to the Other End of the Universe.

Careful when you answer questions about this movie on TV’s Jeopardy. The dozen or so ex- Atlantean women are not called Fire Maidens because they are made of fire, or shoot fire out of their noses or anything. But one of their dances takes place before a flaming hearth. We lost count of the film’s dance scenes. The narrative stops dead still for minutes at a time while the Maidens perform faux-Grecian choreography to the tune of Alexander Borodin’s Polovtsian Dancers, popularized as the easy listening standard Stranger in Paradise. One or two Relief Maidens consistently sit out the dancing, and instead strike plaintive poses against a nearby pillar. No musicians are present; what we hear is an uninspiring orchestral recording.

Despite other soundtrack samplings of Borodin’s Greatest Hits, the 13th moon of Jupiter never seems much of a Paradise. Neither does the romantic angle catch fire, thanks to Anthony Dexter’s unpleasant personality and limp direction. The accomplished actress Susan Shaw looks catatonic — her Princess Hestia typically stands and stares with a complete lack of expression. Is this moon The Planet Also Known as ‘Who Cares?’  Nobody seems concerned when the only male survivor of Atlantis kicks the bucket. Princess Hestia doesn’t react much when she’s invited to accompany the astronauts back to Earth.

The Monster?  Could be worse. 

For a monster, Fire Maidens of Outer Space offers up ‘The Creature,’ a phantom in black. Exactly what he is and where he comes from are never divulged. The Creature is seen mostly in long shots, partly obscured by garden vegetation. One or two close-ups show a face like pitted teakwood, sanded to a fine finish. His shiny black head has a protruding chin and forehead that make him look like an Easter Island statue, only shrunken by headhunters. The Creature growls and screams when shot. For a budget bogeyman he’s not half bad. The credited makeup man is by Roy Ashton, of Hammer Films fame. The very next year, he assisted Philip Leaky on Christopher Lee’s unique monster makeup for  The Curse of Frankenstein.

Although a credits disclaimer tells us that, ‘All Characters In Space Are Fictitious,’ on no level does this show function as an intentional comedy. Most everything that happens is absurd, but our reaction is to shake our heads in disbelief, not laugh. Cy Roth’s lack of commitment makes us appreciate the earnestness of a talent-challenged filmmaker like Edward D. Wood. As painfully desperate as it may be, Wood’s maladroit Plan Nine from Outer Space is the work of a sincere director doing his utmost best.

For reasons that even Bill Warren failed to uncover, Cy Roth’s movie is said to have been titled in England as Fire Maidens from Outer Space. It turned up on American television almost immediately after its theatrical release. Interrupted by dozens of commercials, it became an ubiquitous midnight offering, along with turnips like W. Lee Wilder’s The Snow Creature.

One might think that Fire Maidens would have bestowed the kiss of death on the Z-movie ‘Showgirls in Space’ formula. Yet two years later Allied Artists released Queen of Outer Space, produced in color and CinemaScope and starring Zsa Zsa Gabor. Its spacemen crack jokes constantly, but it isn’t supposed to be a comedy. Astor Pictures’ groan-inducing 1959 Missile to the Moon re-runs the screenplay for Cat-Women of the Moon, adding Gumby-like rubbery ‘Rock Men’ monsters to the mix. Almost thirty years later, producer Robert K. Weiss resurrected the sub-genre’s tacky charm for his comedy spoof  Amazon Women on the Moon.

Anthony Dexter had at least a little name recognition in the United States, having starred as Valentino in a 1951 biopic. But we never realized that several of the film’s performers had prestigious English credits. Sydney Tafler and Susan Shaw had leading roles in the classic  It Always Rains on Sunday, and Ms. Shaw also has an important part in another postwar classic,  Pool of London. As a child actor Hugh Fowler made a positive impression in Ealing Films, Cavalcanti’s suspenseful  Went the Day Well? and Charles Crichton’s  Hue and Cry.

Fire Maidens of Outer Space was once the kind of movie one expected to find on an old VHS tape, gathering dust in a closet. Watching this slick HD presentation, we feel like we’re in a film lab screening room in 1956. Listen closely, and you may hear Cy Roth shouting:  “Ship it!  Make sure my name gets on the list for Academy consideration — all categories!”