BY JERRY ROBERTS

April 21, 2002

Let’s talk for a moment about smoking . . .

Smoking is dirty, nasty, and smelly, causes lung cancer, emphysema, and shortens your lifespan. By that logic the actors in Fire Maidens of Outer Space should have been dead before the shoot was over. I kid you not, these actors smoke more cigarettes in 90 minutes then most chain-smokers do all day. This logic appears to have come from the 50s notion that smoking was not only cool, but actually good for you. But cool or not, it isn’t much fun to watch especially when those participating have no desire to do anything else.

Now let’s talk about interpretive dance . . .

Done right, one can make it graceful and beautiful. Done wrong one resembles a chimp with a sore foot. But right or wrong it isn’t much fun to watch especially when those participating have no concept of time restraints.

There you have the two key ingredients of Fire Maidens of Outer Space a movie that is one part smoking, one part interpretive dance and a whoooooooole lot of padding. Normally, movies this bad anger me, but I find it difficult to muster up the energy to rage against a movie that doesn’t really care to muster up the energy to do much of anything. If I haven’t made it clear that next to nothing happens in this movie, then let me reiterate that next to NOTHING happens in this movie.

Fire Maidens of Outer Space is a 1956 spare-parts actioner from Cy Roth, whose budget for the film is probably the same haul you’d get from breaking into a payphone. Stock footage is employed for most of the action scenes, the costumes come right off the rack, the earth interiors are made with plywood and office furniture and the Jupiter sets look like they were cobbled together by a high school drama club that was pushing a deadline.

The movie opens with two horn dog scientists who (between smoke breaks) discover a 13th moon orbiting around Jupiter (there are actually 16) and get some folks in London *shrug* to quickly assemble a crew to go and check it out. But first, indulge me while I dwell on those two scientists and their observatory. I don’t know who their real estate agent was but he must have been pretty slick to sell them land for an observatory right next to the freeway. I would guess that they bought it cheap because the place doesn’t seem to have a front door judging by the fact that you can clearly hear the traffic outside.

Anyway, aside from their lack of knowledge in the real estate game, they trade glib remarks and call their secretary down so that they can gawk at her heavenly body, have her take down a message and then watch her wiggle her behind as she ba-booms back up the stairs. These bozos celebrate their discovery (of the moon) by having a smoke. Now, I’m not a smoker but I always thought that men back then celebrated with cigars. These guys celebrate with a cigarettes - in fact, cigarettes seem to be their answer to everything. What do they have at weddings? whiskey!?. I’m not being picky but I’m just trying to make it clear that a movie this lazy is not a stickler for details.

Boarding the V2 rocket (which, on the inside, looks like a boiler room with office furniture), the band of lethargic astronauts stock-footage their way through the stratosphere. They apparently have no room for space suits but they have plenty of smokes on board. For the trip to Jupiter, director Cy Roth has to throw in an action sequence, otherwise we see a bunch of Arian dullards in pressed suits lounging around in their boiler room spacecraft having one Montclair Moment after another. The big action sequence actually involves an assault on the ship by a hail of something that looks like Fiddle-Faddle. Dodging the precocious popcorn, and in fact in control of everything else on this ship, are two levers that move in two directions – forward and back. The guys on the ground aren’t any brighter as they all stand around at mission control watching the mission on the speaker. Folks, these are the people that you wanted HAL to ice.

When they land, they claim to have touched down on their destination but I think they must have gone in circles because the planet looks a heck of a lot like the Pacific Northwest. But never mind that, what is of importance is what they find next. They hear a woman screaming in the woods nearby and realize that it’s a cutey in a short skirt being mauled a creature wearing a leotard and a facial mudpack.

After their daring rescue she takes them back to her home, a fortress lorded over by a John Banner look-a-like in his bathrobe *shudder*. Gramps claims to be the only male inhabitant of this world called “New Atlantis”. I would also argue that these guys aren’t the first earthlings to set down on this planet because judging by the make-up and the perfect English dialects, it appears that Max Factor and Henry Higgins have already been there. Oh and apparently Borodin dropped in too because their numerious ceremonial dances are nearly ALL accompanied by strains of "Strangers in Paradise"

Roth doesn't worry about details for this movie but he does take the time to shoot the girls from the ground up so that we get a gander at their undies (Roth, you sly dog). Furthering the notion that this movie is actually just a sexist male fantasy, the girls are submissive and banter stupid inane sentences like “Men at last!” and they run around a lot, running blindly behind the men. There’s a lot of running in this movie (actually its more of a polite trot).

Did I forget Mudfoot outside? He is the only apparent threat to the girls on “New Atlantis” (I mean besides second-hand smoke and sheer boredom). Let’s see, six astronauts, an old man and 30+ babes in short skirts . . . and they can’t rid themselves of a creature in a spandex suit. I would contest the logic of this movie if, in fact, I ever thought that it was striving for logic in the first place.

Turns out that Gramps isn’t the one in charge, seems that the girls are and intend on putting our heroes out to stud to repopulate their world (eeeeeee-yeah, that'll happen). Did I mention that they worship fire? Roth has them dance around their fire altar doing a ceremonial ritual looks somewhere between a sorority hazing, a cult dance, and a cheerleader rehersal but nothing leaning toward eroticism. It is about this point that the creature breaks into the compound and tries to kill the girls but not before the astronauts take a break from smoking just long enough to take him out (kill him, I mean). So grateful are the girls that they release the heroes and send one of their numbers with them. They promise to return but typical males that they are, they never do. And if you STILL aren't convinced that this is a sexist romp, consider the final shot of the captain and the alien princess looking lovey-dovey at one another followed by a shot of their cigar-shaped craft lifting off into the stratosphere (try and visualize that one).

I mention these things but keep in mind that all of this is spread out over two hours. The moments in between are long stretches of padding. They involve: dancing, running, smoking, running, dancing, smoking, running, smoking, dancing, so-on, so-fourth, ad-nauseum etcetera also and back again. I’m no expert but I always thought that padding was used for the small moments during a lull in bigger moments. I didn’t know that it was possible to construct a movie that consisted of 75% padding but Roth has managed to do the impossible. Personally, the only thing that needed padding was my television set so I didn’t put my foot through it.

Thank you Roth, you’ve outraged a pacifist. Pathetic twerp.