Queen Yllana and the Camp of QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE (Blogathon and the Beast)

I've been waiting for the perfect opportunity to talk about Queen of Outer Space and I finally found it, boys!

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This might be the best movie I've ever seen.* It's perfect, start to finish, and I'm going to talk about how great it is, and the campiness of Queen Yllana, for my post for the 2023 CMBA Fall Blogathon: Blogathon & the Beast. 

Click through to read all the posts, the blogathon started November 6th and runs through to the 10th!

Briefly, Queen of Outer Space concerns a group of male astronauts who are sent on a space mission that ultimately crashes them on Venus when an energy beam destroys their ship.

Now let's dive in!

They're captured by a group of Venusians—all women—and taken to Queen Yllana, who rules over Venus. She has killed just about every male astronaut who's landed on her planet, save the scientists and smarties, who are held captive on a moon orbiting Venus. 

After trekking around the planet, they're captured by a group of beautiful women in golden, red, and blue minidresses and taken back to a base where Queen Yllana is waiting with her Council. 

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Here's what you need to know about Queen Yllana: she has a complete face mask with eye slots and a mouth hole and whispy, sparkly pieces of metal that flow from the top of her mask like a crown. When she meets the astronauts, she says that she is "ruler of the city of Kadir and queen of this world," and that they all speak perfect English because they've studied the electronic waves from Earth for years. 

Queen Yllana doesn't want to let them go, or help them fix their spaceship, because "The people of earth have always been aggressive and warlike," and when the CAPTAIN disagrees, she reminds him that, "When my guards found you, your first reaction was to kill." 

They're found guilty of trying to invade and destroy and carted off to a holding cell, where one of the astronauts utters this winning line: "How could a bunch of women invent a gizmo like that?" 

Let's clear this up: this movie is deeply full of sexist comments like this. The male astronauts don't think the women have lived here peacefully or fulfilled without men; and it doesn't help that some of the women, led by Zsa Zsa Gabor's Talleah, only want to free themselves of Queen Yllana because they miss love and men. 

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As Talleah tells the men, "Don't underestimate the Queen. Ten Earth years ago, our world became  involved in war with the planet Mordo. It was a terrible war. We fought with weapons of great power, and we still were nearly defeated. Finally, Mordo was destroyed. However, the war was won at great cost. Most of our cities were destroyed, and now they are lost to the jungle. We suffered greatly. And that is when we women took over. We were led by a masked woman called Yllana." 

She's been masked since Talleah has known her, "but she is said to be very beautiful." And she led a revolt in Venus, which once contained both men and women, because "She said that men caused the ruin of this world, and it was time for women to take it over. She became our queen with an absolute power over life and death." 

All the men were killed, except for the useful ones, the scientists and mathematicians. They were sent to the satellite Tyros, which orbits Venus. 

But above all, the men want to know how on earth Queen Yllana overthrew the men of Venus. Talleah tells them plainly: "They didn't take her seriously. They were preparing for war. After all, she was only a woman." 

And Queen Yllana has a plan: she's going to destroy the Earth, much like the spaceship, because there's been too much scientific progress, and she fears that the men are going to come and prepare for war once again. 

Of course, the men think that they've got to seduce Queen Yllana to make her fall in love and forget her plan to destroy the Earth. "No one, man or woman, is completely invulnerable," Professor Konrad tells the rest. "Remember the legend of Achilles' heel." Then Talleah runs off, screaming that she hates Queen Yllana, and the menfolk chalk it up to jealousy. 

In Queen Yllana's private room (which is gorgeously decorated, by the way), Captain Patterson comes face to face with the Queen of Outer Space and tries to seduce her. She still has the face mask on.

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She tells him, "The moment I saw you... In the council chamber... I felt a weakness most unbecoming to a queen." 

He tells her, "But not unbecoming to a lovely woman. Take off your mask."

She won't, and she suddenly realizes his gambit. "Did you promise your men you'd sweep me off my feet? Use your male magnetism to win freedom for all of you?" she asks before showing him the Beta Disintegrator, which can destroy the Earth. 

Captain Patterson's last-ditch attempt to stop Queen Yllana is this: "I understand you better than you do yourself. You're denying man's love, substituting hatred and a passion for this monstrous power you possess... You're not only a queen. You're a woman, too. And a woman needs a man's love. Let me see your face."

Then he pulls it off:

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Revealing massive scarring from chemical burns underneath. "For that you will die," Queen Yllana promises him, before having him dragged off before he can react. She then walks over to her mirror and dissolves into tears when she sees the scarring for herself.

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Back in the holding cell, the menfolk are all, "Well, a man's touch did nothing, now what?" 

Now what is this: Talleah sends two of her friends to sneak the men to her laboratory. They are gorgeous women and the other men can't help but flirt heavily with them even while death is on the line. In Talleah's laboratory, she tells them that she heard the Beta Disintegrator is going to be used to destroy the Earth in two days, and they're all helping them because "We have no life here without love... children." 

They then take off for the jungle, where the Beta Disintegrator is hidden, to try and stop Queen Yllana. There's more jungle canoodling, revelation of romantic feelings, and Talleah's wink wink nudge nudge that "if we can't change the civilization here, I thought perhaps we can go someplace and start one on our own." Captain Patterson, she says, "is dependable in everything."

Eventually, they decide that they're going to go back and make Queen Yllana think that Talleah and her friends caught them in the woods, to get close enough to the Beta Disintegrator and destroy it. It works until Talleah, for some reason, drops the ruse and says she doesn't want a reward, she wants to kill the Queen. 

"Women can't be happy without men," Talleah says. The astronauts say: "I don't think you're a tyrant. I think you're just a woman who's been hurt, hurt so badly you can never repay it." They tell her to drop her plans, free the men on Tyros and go along with what they say. She tries to draw a blaster gun on them. They detain her. She says that only the orders can come from her. Talleah decides to dress up as Queen Yllana, put the mask on and give the orders in her stead, but then Queen Yllana gets free and takes back control. 

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And just as it seems all hope is lost and Queen Yllana is going to blow up the Earth... 

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...the Beta Disintegrator malfunctions and she is killed in the explosion (and subsequent fire, which features a burning prop corpse which seems very out of character for the movie violence/gore standards of the time, but what can you do?). 

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Talleah is named the new Queen of Venus and she repairs the spaceship, allowing Captain Patterson and the men to return home. Her team has also fixed the 'television' that allows them to talk with Earth, and just as everyone's wallowing about having to give up their love, the Space Command tells the team that they're to remain on Venus for at least the next year. 

And they all live happily ever after... except for Queen Yllana. 

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*This was 100% hyperbole.