Frightening similar to the killing in Sanford, Fla., in February of an African American teenager is the plot of the 1951 independent film, “The Man from Planet X”. Did director Edgar Ulmer plan a parable on race relations in 1951? Who knows but this gem from United Artists is quite provocative with the earthlings taking the attitude, “If it doesn’t look like me, destroy it.” One of the characters in the film observes: Too bad we never got to know him. He may have been a nice person. That pretty much sums it up.
So before he became famous film director Peer Bogdanovich cobbled together a Soviet sci-fi space adventure with Mamie VanDoren and similar babes in clam shell bras and skin tight pants on a California beach. The result is the amusingly bad 1969 movie “Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women”. Dubbed dialogue allows for some amusing banter amongst the Soviet cosmonauts visiting a planet inhabited by the voluptuous ladies. “If you don’t like it here why don’t you get on a bus and go home? I would if I could find one,” is the response.
In Allied Artists’ campy 1958 hit “Queen of Outer Space” the stateside astronauts are smitten by the beautiful ladies who are sole inhabitants of Venus. Zsa Zsa Gabor plays a “scientist” who is smartly attired. In fact Venus ladies are ready to party in revealing cocktail dresses except for the evil “queen” who is horribly disfigured. Costuming must have been inspired by Vegas musical reviews. The male lead is Eric Fleming from “Rawhide” and he catches the Zsa Zsa roving eye. Painfully atrocious acting. Edward Bernds, a mainstay of cheesy movies, directed this mess which was probably filmed at the Allied Artists sound stage.
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