Anything you Yanks can do, we Brits can do worser! Although there are honourable exceptions such as "Forbidden Planet" and "Destination Moon", American science fiction films from the 1950s generally have a bad reputation. And deservedly so. They were notorious for their low budgets, melodramatic plots, poor standards of acting and, above all, for their feeble special effects. Some of them, most notoriously "Plan 9 from Outer Space", are regularly ranked among the worst films ever made.
The phrase "Outer Space" seems to have been code language for "so bad it's funny"; there was another, equally abysmal, film from around the same period called "Queen of Outer Space". "Fire Maidens from Outer Space" was Britain's entry in the international competition to come up with the "worst movie ever made". It concerns an an Earth-like atmosphere Anglo-American expedition to the 13th moon of Jupiter, which has an Earth-like atmosphere and is therefore considered a likely place in which to find extraterrestrial life. (In 1956 when the film was made, only twelve moons of Jupiter had been discovered, the same number as I learned when I was at school in the early seventies. The real thirteenth moon, given the name Leda, was discovered in 1974).
When the astronauts arrive on the thirteenth moon, they discover that it is indeed an Earth-like place. So Earth-like that the countryside looks just like the English Home Counties. The moon has a human population consisting of one old man and a bevy of attractive mini-skirted girls, the "fire maidens" of the title, all apparently his daughters. Jovian fashions seem to have been about a decade in advance of those on Earth; in 1956 few Earthling maidens would have dared to wear their skirts that short, but by 1966 they had become a common sight on the streets of terrestrial cities. If anyone wonders what humans are doing in such a remote part of the Solar System, the explanation is given that they are descended from the inhabitants of Atlantis who migrated when their continent sank beneath the waves. (Why they didn't just migrate to a drier part of Planet Earth is never explained).
There is little point in trying to set out the rest of the plot as it all gets very silly, although inevitably romances develop between the hunky astronauts and the beauteous fire maidens. There is something about a "monster" (for which read "man in a very unconvincing rubber suit") whom the astronauts have to kill, and Hestia, one of the fire maidens and the fiancee of one of the astronauts, nearly gets sacrificed to the gods by her elder sister Duessa, jealous that Hestia has found a boyfriend before she has. (On the thirteenth moon, apparently, marrying before an older sibling is regarded as a capital offence).
I had always assumed that films like this one would of necessity have a cast made up of unknown, otherwise unemployable actors who lacked the skills necessary to obtain parts in more prestigious productions. I was, therefore, surprised to see some names I recognised among the cast, especially Susan Shaw (a relatively well-known British actress of the fifties) as Hestia. Perhaps her contract required her to accept any part she was offered. Like Shaw, Paul Carpenter also has some much better entries on his filmography, but in most of those he only had minor roles. He was only regarded as a leading man in B-movies, "Undercover Girl" being another example, although even that is not as awful as "Fire Maidens".
The musical score mostly consists of extracts from Alexander Borodin's "Polovtsian Dances" repeated ad nauseam; I doubt if any living composer would have wanted their music associated with a film like this, but Borodin's was safely out of copyright by 1956. (That rumbling noise you can hear is the composer turning in his grave). The acting is uniformly poor, the script makes little sense and the dialogue frequently risible. The scenery is just as wooden as the actors. I normally try to find some redeeming qualities in even the poorest of films, but "Fire Maidens from Outer Space" completely lacks them. For the first time in several years I have come across a film which fully deserves the minimum mark. 1/10.
The phrase "Outer Space" seems to have been code language for "so bad it's funny"; there was another, equally abysmal, film from around the same period called "Queen of Outer Space". "Fire Maidens from Outer Space" was Britain's entry in the international competition to come up with the "worst movie ever made". It concerns an an Earth-like atmosphere Anglo-American expedition to the 13th moon of Jupiter, which has an Earth-like atmosphere and is therefore considered a likely place in which to find extraterrestrial life. (In 1956 when the film was made, only twelve moons of Jupiter had been discovered, the same number as I learned when I was at school in the early seventies. The real thirteenth moon, given the name Leda, was discovered in 1974).
When the astronauts arrive on the thirteenth moon, they discover that it is indeed an Earth-like place. So Earth-like that the countryside looks just like the English Home Counties. The moon has a human population consisting of one old man and a bevy of attractive mini-skirted girls, the "fire maidens" of the title, all apparently his daughters. Jovian fashions seem to have been about a decade in advance of those on Earth; in 1956 few Earthling maidens would have dared to wear their skirts that short, but by 1966 they had become a common sight on the streets of terrestrial cities. If anyone wonders what humans are doing in such a remote part of the Solar System, the explanation is given that they are descended from the inhabitants of Atlantis who migrated when their continent sank beneath the waves. (Why they didn't just migrate to a drier part of Planet Earth is never explained).
There is little point in trying to set out the rest of the plot as it all gets very silly, although inevitably romances develop between the hunky astronauts and the beauteous fire maidens. There is something about a "monster" (for which read "man in a very unconvincing rubber suit") whom the astronauts have to kill, and Hestia, one of the fire maidens and the fiancee of one of the astronauts, nearly gets sacrificed to the gods by her elder sister Duessa, jealous that Hestia has found a boyfriend before she has. (On the thirteenth moon, apparently, marrying before an older sibling is regarded as a capital offence).
I had always assumed that films like this one would of necessity have a cast made up of unknown, otherwise unemployable actors who lacked the skills necessary to obtain parts in more prestigious productions. I was, therefore, surprised to see some names I recognised among the cast, especially Susan Shaw (a relatively well-known British actress of the fifties) as Hestia. Perhaps her contract required her to accept any part she was offered. Like Shaw, Paul Carpenter also has some much better entries on his filmography, but in most of those he only had minor roles. He was only regarded as a leading man in B-movies, "Undercover Girl" being another example, although even that is not as awful as "Fire Maidens".
The musical score mostly consists of extracts from Alexander Borodin's "Polovtsian Dances" repeated ad nauseam; I doubt if any living composer would have wanted their music associated with a film like this, but Borodin's was safely out of copyright by 1956. (That rumbling noise you can hear is the composer turning in his grave). The acting is uniformly poor, the script makes little sense and the dialogue frequently risible. The scenery is just as wooden as the actors. I normally try to find some redeeming qualities in even the poorest of films, but "Fire Maidens from Outer Space" completely lacks them. For the first time in several years I have come across a film which fully deserves the minimum mark. 1/10.