Weird and Wonderful

Today, Turner Classic Movies is showing goofy, campy science fiction movies! Here are a couple I've been intermittently watching so far:

Queen of Outer Space - 1958

And she's not even the Queen - Laurie Mitchell is!

Storyline

Three American astronauts are on the first manned mission to Venus, and when they arrive, they find the planet to be inhabited solely by women with high heels and short dresses. Unfortunately, they are immediately imprisoned, for the queen who rules Venus hates men... Suspecting the astronauts to be spies, she now plans to destroy the Earth. So now it's up to the three men (and some friendly Venusians) to overthrow the wicked queen and save the Earth. (Source: IMDb)

(Spoiler Alert: American astronauts are drawn by a mysterious force to the planet Venus, which they find to be inhabited only by beautiful women and their despotic queen.)

Hey, now, c'mon! It stars Zsa Zsa Gabor!! She's older than the other Venusians, so she wears gauzy, flowing, floor-length designer evening gowns, while the other girls flounce around in mini-skirts and mini-dresses (yowza!) that are oddly reminiscent of Star Trek uniforms...  All the astronauts are young, red-blooded young dudes (their uniforms remind me of the ones from Forbidden Planet), except for Professor Konrad and he's only interested in science and stuff...

Great Quotes

Captain Patterson: You don't just accidentally land on a planet 36 million miles away!
Professor Konrad: It would appear that all things are possible in space.

One of the astronauts, referring to a nuclear device that can blow up entire planets, says: "How could a bunch of women invent a gizmo like that?"

Look out, boys, they mean business!

Another astronaut (or maybe it's Prof. Konrad?) asks Zsa Zsa, who tells them the Venusians defeated an entire planet inhabited by men: "How did you manage to overcome all the men?" 

She replies: "They didn't take us seriously!"

Professor Konrad: "The future of Earth may depend on Capt. Patterson's sex appeal."

(images: the uranium cafe & belladonna - see links below)

http://theuraniumcafe.wordpress.com/2011/10/

http://belladonna.org

The Cyclops - 1957

Storyline

Duncan "Dean" Parkin as the Cyclops

Susan Winter undertakes an expedition to a remote area of Mexico, hoping to find her fiance, Bruce Barton, whose plane crashed there three years ago. The area is suspected to have a good supply of uranium, so Susan has promoted this to wealthy Martin Melville to get money for her expenses. In addition to Melville, she is accompanied by guide Russ Bradford and pilot Lee Brand in his small-engine craft. But the plane crashes, stranding the four in an isolated valley, which they soon discover is highly radioactive and inhabited by mutated life forms - giant insects, enormous lizards, and a 25-foot-tall human male with a deformed face, just one eye, and only brute animal instincts to feed and protect its turf... (Source: IMDb)

Okay, so the survivors finally get their crashed plane to start (???) and, after fatally stabbing the Cyclops in his one eye with a flaming stick, fly away with the sneaking suspicion that the Cyclops was probably Susan Winters' missing fiance, ace pilot Bruce Barton, who has been horribly disfigured in his own plane crash and affected by the high uranium levels that caused giantism in the Mexican valley's other creatures. The End.

Yeah, it ain't great, but still qualifies as a good old-fashioned 1950s scary Saturday afternoon sci-fi flick (Spoiler Alert: The constant growling of the Cyclops is quite annoying)

Great Quotes

As they're being terrorized by the one-eyed giant, the four normal-sized people who are hiding in a cave just out of its reach begin assigning certain attributes to its constant growling and howling, remarking how it seems to be intelligent. Susan Winter (played by Gloria Talbot) says: 

"Intelligence just makes it more dangerous." 

 (You can say that again, missy!)

Later on, as the three survivors make their escape (murderous millionaire Martin Melville - Lon Chaney Jr. - has died at the hands of the Cyclops), pilot Lee Brand (Tom Drake) tells Susan and guide Russ Bradford (James Craig) that he's going on a scouting mission. 

Brand: "Don't worry - I'm one-sixteenth Indian."  

(Why the pilot goes scouting and not the guide, well, only the Shadow knows...)

(images: numm theory - see link below)

http://nummtheory.blogspot.com/2011/06/cyclops-1957.html

And that's why I love the movies!!