Review: Fire Maidens of Outer Space

In this ultra-cheap sci-fi B-movie, scientists discover that the 13th moon of Jupiter might be habitable for human life so they hop in a rocket (stock footage, of course) and blast off. Upon landing on the faraway moon, they see a fella in a black monster mask and tight off-the-rack black clothes (complete with very visible zippers) assaulting a pretty woman(Susan Shaw) in a short Roman-style toga. They run the monster off and follow the woman to her city--the viewer has to use their imaginations here, as the "city" consists of about two rooms with large Roman columns and lots of curtains. There they meet Prassus, the only man on Jupiter's 13th moon, who explains to them that he is the last survivor of Earth's Atlantis, and is now the father of this race of women (the fire maidens of the title) that are all apparently his own daughters. It's never explained why no men have been born or who their mother was--or if it is, I missed it. 

But let's be real here, the movie is an excuse to have five guys surrounded by women who don't speak much, wear short skirts, and dance around a lot. It's a 1956 male fantasy brought to life. That's not to say that it's offensive, but that it's so thin you can see right through it. Getting to 80 minutes is quite the achievement, considering the near-total lack of plot. There's a meteor shower mid-journey, the threat of the black-clothed zipper beast, and a third act coup that sees one of the women tied up and nearly burned alive. 

All of this is brought to fruition by Cy Roth, an opportunistic filmmaker who started as an assistant director in the 1940s on productions for poverty row outfits like Monogram and PRC. By the 1950s, he'd cobbled together enough cash to make a few movies himself, all on a shoestring budget. This, his third film, is the last movie he made. 

The role of the lead goes to Anthony Dexter, who had starred as Rudolph Valentino in a 1951 biopic about the silent film actor, but who now, just a few years later, was leading poverty row films such as this one and The Phantom Planet.

In multiple cities including Harrisburg, PA and Washington DC, Fire Maidens of Outer Space opened in 1956 on a double bill with the Bela Lugosi chiller Bride of the Monster, directed by Ed Wood. The Ed Wood feature might have been the better movie, becuase at least it featured Bela and Tor Johnson. Not to say that Fire Maidens of Outer Space is without any charm at all, but those charms are fleeting and Cy Roth doesn't have the grizzled B-movie chops to fill his script with enough drama, excitement, or intrigue. As such, the thrills are exhausted long before the final credits roll.