QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE

1958/Director: Edward Bernds/Writers: Charles Beaumont, Ben Hecht

Cast: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Eric Fleming, Dave Willock, Laurie Mitchell, Lisa Davis, Paul Birch, Patrick Waltz

Producer of many cheesy sci-fi yarns Walter Wanger had just finished serving a four month prison sentence for shooting his wife’s (Joan Bennet) suspected lover in the leg and crotch – only four months since he successfully pleaded temporary insanity -when he began to put together this project based on a story by Ben Hecht. Hecht’s original story was more of a farce but Wanger wanted it the story to be more serious and turned the production over to Ben Schwalb. Schwalb had worked for Sam Katzman on some Bowry Boy episodes and director Edward Bernds  had done some of those Bowry Boy films and some Three Stooges as well. I guess that is way Queen of Outer Space is sort of an odd little story at best. Many of the props and costumes seem to be left-overs from other sci-fi films – Forbidden Planet, World Without End, Flight to Mars – and the actors are playing it pretty straight but it is a cheese fest from the get go.

The film follows a story line that had already become familiar in previous sci-fi films of  the early 50′s – Cat Women of the Moon, Missile to the Moon (see my reviews at the link), Abbot and Costello Go to Mars, Fire Maidens from Outer Spce and others I will get around to here one day – and that is an adventure built around a group of male astronauts stranded on a planet of beautiful Amazon type women. The women are usually sexually frustrated and really seem to like Earthmen from the USA the best. Crew includes Eric Fleming and Paul Birch and the queen is Laurie Mitchell and her rival is prima donna Zsa Zsa Gabor. Story has it that Gabor was so difficult to work with that Ben Schwalb wound up in the hospital from stress and ulcers. The story’s action takes place on Venus -often the number choice for space amazon adventures – and there is a great spider in the cave sequence that usually accompanies these space maiden films. The color is nice and while the story drags for the most part it is worth the moments when the dialog gets really strange and to see the maidens drooling over the earth guys. The scene at the end where a flock of vivacious and nubile Venusian girls are pawing all over an ecstatic Paul Birch – as egg-head Professor Konrad – sums it all up. Fans of cheesy sci-fi, like myself, will love it. Others may be a bit confused by it all.

Until I watched the Sam Katzman (Earth vs the Flying Saucers, The Giant Claw, Zombies of Mura Tau) production of The Killer Ape with Johnny Weissmuller I had never seen a Jungle Jim feature in my life. Weissmuller began making the Jungle Jim features in 1948, the same year he played in his last Tarzan movie for RKO, Tarzan and the Mermaids. TATM is the only Weissmuller Tarzan feature I have yet to watch over (I of course saw it repeatedly on Saturdays afternoons as a kid) but I have it and need to get around to that some night. Some stories seem to suggest Weissmuller switched contracts from RKO to Columbia because Columbia agreed to let him wear clothes for his Jungle Jim character. Weissmuller was no longer the lean young man he was in Tarzan the Apeman, and had not been for sometime. Basically the Jungle Jim character, based on the Alex Raymond comic strip of the time, is Tarzan with clothes. At least in the one episode I watched here, and I will see others if I can find them, Weissmuller still seems a little too monosyllabic and spacey to be considered a man of civilized culture. He walks around the jungle with a knife and holding the hand of his pet chimp Tamba. But instead of a loin-cloth he wears a safari hat and uniform. You could almost image that it is a middle aged Tarzan who was giving a job by the local game commission because he is too old and heavy to swing through trees anymore. I saw a site that ranks the Jungle Jim movies, and along with The Lost Tribe, The Killer Ape is one of only two on the list to receive a one star rating. I guess I would be one of the few people to consider myself lucky to have began my exploration of the series with this feature.

I have done about three Weissmuller Tarzan features here at the Café and I am a huge fan of the films and in particular the early ones with Maureen O’Sullivan as Jane. I am not sure what the Jungle Jim series is all about yet. I do not know if he has a female partner or Boy type character but he does Tamba the chimpanzee who gets Jim out of many sticky situations as Cheetah ever did Tarzan. The story in The Killer Ape starts off with Jim and some of his park warden pals commenting on how strange the crocodiles have been behaving lately. Seems they have lost any will power and resistance and have become uncommonly docile. We are treated to some stock footage of “natives” beating crocs with sticks and paddles to confirm this. Jim is of course concerned about the wildlife’s health and welfare. We are made aware of this in the following scene where he pounces on a sluggish, land bound crocodile that startled Tamba and kills it with his hunting knife Tarzan style. Later a Mexican looking girl dressed in a South Pacific patterned skirt walks upon Tamba and throws a net over him and Jim runs to the rescue. In one of many attempts through out the film she tries to stab him but he subdues her by grabbing her wrist. Jim proves to Shari (Carol Thurston) and her tribe, the Wasulis, that Tamba is his pet by making him do a back flip. That’s is settled but Shari and her fiancée Ramada (Burt Wenland) still do not trust him very much. Shari’s brother Mahara (Paul Marion) seems to trust more when he warns them not to trap animals in The Canyon of the Ape which, according to local legend, is inhabited by a monstrous half man half ape creature with a really bad temper.

MORE OF JUNGLE JIM AND THE KILLER APE HERE >>

THE GIANT CLAW

1957/Director: Fred F. Sears/Writers: Paul Gangelin, Samuel Newman

Cast: Jeff Morrow, Mara Corday, Morris Ankrum, Louis Merrill, Edgar Barrier, Robert Shayne

The Giant Claw sports simply one of the worst, least frightening monsters in the history of movies. But don’t let that stop you from checking out this camp, schlock classic from director Fred F. Sears and producer Sam Katzman and starring Jeff Morrow and Playboy Playmate Mara Corday . The plot is not much different from the multitude of other big bug or animal movies coming out at the time. Mara Corday also starred in two other memorable big creature flicks, Jack Arnold’s Tarantula and The Black Scorpion (reviews coming eventually on both of these flicks). A bird as big as a “battleship” that comes either from the ice age of 17,000 BC or an antimatter universe hovers over the world and makes meals out of jets, airplanes and French Canadians. The giant “chicken” is one of the oddest looking beasts ever, and is simply a string controlled puppet whose wings always stay spread, even when it is nesting. My wife was utterly dumbfounded when she watched some of the film with me. I loved the movie and all its corniness and I am sure any regular reader of the Café will have a good time and more than a few unintended laughs at this movie full of quirky dialog and chessy special effects. One story tells of director Sears sneaking out of a screening of the film as the audience burst out in laughter each time the bird appeared on screen. The monster was added later and none of the cast had any idea what it was going to look like until they say the film themselves. Well we don’t watch this stuff to be wowed by the special effects or captivated by the story. I personally watch them to just escape and have a good time. And if you need a break from the routine I suggest you shake hands with The Giant Claw.

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