User Reviews

This movie was shown repeatedly on TV between 1957 and the early 60s. Anyone who saw it in the 50s remembers the soundtrack and the hot Fire Maidens! It was a silly low-tech movie, yes, but it was no worse than any other implausible sci-fi flick of that pre-spaceflight era. This movie is what it is, and what it is, is a pleasurable escapist marshmallow. See it if you can - you'll get a few laughs out of it.

Science fiction has long held an honorable place in the entertainment industry. Gulliver's Travels was written as a satire on Society in Swift's period, but its theme is essentially science fiction. The books of Jules Verne are noteworthy for featuring much of the scientific knowledge about submarine and space travel current at his time. A broadcast of H.G. Wells "The War of the Worlds", which started with an announcer unwisely declaring that the Martians had landed, caused a major panic in the 1930's; and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's, "The Lost World" was later made into a remarkable film featuring the dinosaur era. But the rapid evolution of films of this genre in recent years is most clearly seen in the case of space travel. When I was young space travel still seemed several generations away, and films featuring it were mostly low budget and quite unsophisticated. Today we have only to think of Independence Day or the Star Trek saga, to realise how completely this situation has reversed. Only very high budget films with extremely sophisticated special effects have any credibility with young people today. Such films do not have a great appeal for me, but I can really enjoy the nostalgia of re-watching some of the early films I first saw when a youth. Their appeal is probably limited largely to people of my age (and perhaps to film historians), so such films are likely to become increasingly difficult to see as time passes. We should be grateful to the Space TV channel (and occasionally one or two of the others) for dusting off some of them for us to watch again.

I found one recent TV revival of this film to be a really delightful piece of nostalgia. Viewers were left in no doubt that it was pure nostalgia right from the opening shot which is in black and white and shows a passenger in a propeller driven airliner settling into his seat and lighting a cigarette. For my generation this quickly brought back memories of traditional Saturday afternoon cinema matinees. In the U.K. town where I then lived admission cost 9d (about the equivalent of 10c Cd today). Clearly at such prices the films shown were all very low budget productions that are easy to criticise today, and obviously viewers much younger than myself are unlikely to share my delight at the rare opportunity to see such films again. This film is not currently listed by Amazon, and I am not sure if it was ever available in video tape format, so there is clearly little ongoing demand to view it. Audiences today have a relatively sophisticated appreciation of space travel and would never accept the scenario of a spacecraft landing on a planet of Jupiter and finding gravity, climate and vegetation very similar to that at home, followed by the further improbabilities associated with finding English speaking inhabitants who were somehow transported there from Atlantis when this terrestrial continent sunk into the sea. However at the time that I first saw this film I would have judged the probability of successful space travel in my lifetime as extremely low; and it is important to appreciate that to my contemporaries, once we had accepted the basic improbability of space travel, all the other assumptions in the script shrank into insignificance. A few of its many incongruities have been identified in other viewers comments, but it can be quite fun to watch this film with the aim of listing as many more as possible.

Once the space travel premise had been accepted, we were left with a whimsical and rather appealing little story which flowed very smoothly. The fire maidens danced gracefully to well known ballet music and there was nothing to really jar in this marshmallow soft tale which passed an afternoon very smoothly. This may be why the Fire Maidens are still remembered nostalgically by many of us whilst most of the numerous other similar low budget epics produced around this time faded into obscurity within a few weeks of their first Saturday afternoon showing. Their audiences were not sophisticated cinema goers but chiefly adolescent teen youths for whom a cast of nubile young women was a prerequisite; and a decade or so after this film was released it became almost obligatory for such low budget films to find an excuse for requiring them to shed their raiments at some point in the story. Perhaps, for all but today's teenage youths, one of the attractions of the rare revivals of this film is the fact that it predates this requirement.

It is fascinating to see how such a story could be filmed with virtually none of the special effects we always expect today. In fact, apart from some non-burning flames and a grotesque head mask suitable for a Mardi Gras parade, it is hard to think of any. The shots of the rocket ship, both on the ground and when taking flight are quite impressive, and it is almost charming to see a long wooden ladder being used to board this relatively sophisticated looking spacecraft.

If you do not remember it and have the chance to see this film, my advice is put your critical faculties aside, sit back, and enjoy it. I doubt if it will soon be possible to buy a copy, but I would urge that a DVD version should be made available. It should not only sell to filmgoers of my generation but also become a valuable part of the film library in every training college or cinematographic club, where it would become recognised both as an interesting precursor of today's space travel films and as a noteworthy example of an ultra-low budget production.

The total of Jupiter's known moons presently stands at 79. Number 13 was discovered in 1974 and named Leda, which presumably means that this film is set in the mid-1970s; although no Atlantean civilisation relocated from Earth was noticed by its discoverers and no manned spaceflight there has yet been attempted (possibly because it is only 6 miles across).

After emerging from the V2 in which they made their three-week trip from Earth, the crew wander about deepest Hertfordshire for a bit before returning to what appear to be standing sets from previous historical productions at Elstree Studios at Borehamwood. The memorable use of excerpts from Borodin's 'Prince Igor' (acknowledged in the credits) pre-dates the use of Strauss in '2001'; but 'Fire Maidens from Outer Space' also shares with Kubrick's film the presence of Maya Koumani. (Prominently featured in the opening credits and as one of the dancing Fire Maidens, Ms Koumani later gets some dialogue, whereupon she is identified by name as what sounds like 'Nyssa'. In '2001' she appears as Dr Stretyeneva, one of the Russian delegation that meets Dr.Floyd at Space Station V.)

Interestingly enough, although there isn't the usual woman among the five-man crew (which includes the reassuringly familiar faces of Paul Carpenter, Sydney Tafler & Harry Fowler) - presumably because there'll be plenty of them were they're going - two of the six senior staff shown gathered round the radio at Mission Control are women.

Okay now let me get this straight, the people of Atlantis escaped their sinking continent by blasting off into space where they colonized the 13th moon of Jupiter so 3000 years ago. Now only a dozen or so are left and they are all young, attractive women and just one middle aged man who claims to be the father of all of them. As a certain pointy eared TV character might say, "Fascinating captain." This movie has got to be the culmination of many male fantasies all rolled into one. A bunch of guys from Earth land on the on the planet, which has breathable atmosphere and plenty of sunlight despite being hundreds of millions of miles further from the sun than Earth. They encounter a bunch of miniskirted, barefoot, submissive women (one of whom even exclaims "Men at last!" so you know what has been on their minds!) and get a chance to play hero by defeating a monster called The Creature (a man in a black bodysuit and a monster mask). Unique to say the least. Actually I found myself liking it because of its very ineptness. The photographer never lets us forget the girls sex appeal since the camera is often on ground level giving us a good look at their legs and there is also a long interpretive dance scene. I would say they don't make them like this anymore but the truth is the do, you can find movies similar to this on USA Network every Saturday night at 3 AM.

It appears that my evaluation of this film may differ from a vast majority of comments made about it. That's okay. Obviously, other viewers gave their honest opinions and I fully understand and respect their point of view. Be that as it may, allow me to say that I honestly enjoyed this movie. For several reasons. First, I think that in order to fully appreciate a film like this a person really needs to have experienced the time period in which it was made. Things were different and more basic back then. For example, this was an era without personal computers, cable television, cell phones or anything like that. Slide rules were used instead of hand-held calculators and Sputnik hadn't yet been launched. The drug epidemic, Vietnam and the sexual revolution had not yet occurred either. Mini-skirts hadn't been invented and all women wore their skirts below the knee. As a result, young men had to use their imagination to a greater degree. And nothing is better for a young man's imagination than watching a dozen flirtatious "fire maidens" performing a dance routine in alluring attire. If that sounds "tame" then let me just say that it was an innocent time. And this film captures that charm and innocence. Now, don't get me wrong, this is a 1950's era, grade-B, science fiction film all the way. It has bad acting, cheap sets, a thin plot and terrible special effects. I realize all of this. But it was never intended to be taken seriously. It was simply meant to be enjoyed for what it was--a pleasant diversion at a local drive-in on a Saturday night. And what could be a more enjoyable diversion than watching "Hestia" (Susan Shaw) and a dozen beautiful "fire maidens" being rescued from a deadly monster by British and American astronauts on the 13th moon of Jupiter? All it takes is a little imagination.

I just saw this at the Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival 31. I have a few observations to offer.

This movie certainly falls within the realm of "there go eighty minutes of my life that I'll never get back again". In fact I have two quite earnest theories about this movie that may account for at least a part of its overall horribility.

It is quite obvious that the film was only minimally scripted. There were all the hallmarks of improvised dialog, but not in an artsy experimental cinema kind of way. More like "OK, We've got this sound stage for an hour, but no dialog written. Action!" My other suspicion is that the studio contracted for a film of a specific length, and the director was actively trying to pad it out. This is quite obvious. Another commenter mentioned product placements for Longines watches, but not every time we were subjected to real-time half-minute closeups of clocks were we looking at a Longines.

Finally, If I ever hear Borodin's "Stranger in Paradise" again, I'll strangle myself! It was played at least twelve times, I'd swear.

I've officially named the villain "Mr. Tiki-Head" for reasons that will be obvious if you have the misfortune to view this dreadful excuse for a movie.

I first saw this film back in 1992, on ITV. I wanted to see it because I had read in Phil Hardy's Aurum Film Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies that the film's one major claim to fame was its use of classical music, such as Borodin (and, of course, Stanley Kubrick would use classical music in 2001: A Space Odyssey - mind you, did Stanley Kubrick ever see this film?). Anyway, watching it makes me to admit that it really is a laugh. It begins at an oh-so important space centre in Britain (I think - or was it America?)where the announcer says a 12th moon of Jupiter has been discovered and there are signs of intelligent life on it (!!!!!!!?????????). So, off goes Anthony Dexter (not that chap who played Rudolph Valentino again - well, the late Dennis Gifford said he did!) along with loads of Britishers in the stock footage of a rocket (tsk, tsk, tsk)- and funnily enough, they are not even sitting down in accelerator couches but most are standing up! No mention is made of G-forces - but then again, what's a little gravity amongst friends? Well, Anthony Dexter is sitting down and he is pulling and pushing a lever backwards and forwards to make the rocket go where he wants it to go (Gordon Bennett!). They pass through stock footage of asteroids then land on the 12th moon of Jupiter - which looks more like the green fields of England! Wow, I am impressed! They encounter descendants of the lost civilisation of Atlantis (well, how did they get there?) as 12 beautiful young ladies, who dance well, plus an old bloke and some unfortunate bloke monkeying around in a extremely tatty monkey suit! He's the monster, by the way. The monster gets destroyed and the Atlantean descendants get accepted by Earth society. The End.

Most of us go into these low-budget, no-name, 1950's sci-fi things with similar expectations: it's going to be lame, but good for some unintentional laughs. 'Fire Maidens' maintains that mediocre standard proudly. (It was apparently funded by Big Tobacco, because most of the earthlings are constantly lighting up, and a Chesterfield pack shows clearly in one scene. ) Less prominent is any evidence of realistic dialogue or acting talent, especially among the titular characters. However, they are adept at wearing flimsy clothing and dancing to the tune of "Stranger in Paradise", which somehow found its way to the 13th moon of Jupiter. Meanwhile, back on Earth, the staff at 'mission control' is a hoot--in all their scenes, they're standing in exactly the same places around a desk, like mannequins, although at times one may light a cigarette. The script-as well as Jupiter's sunlight, breathable air, posh habitats, and conveniently-English-speaking fire maidens- are every 1950's adolescent boy's outer-space fantasy. While it IS hokey, it's still kind of sad that most audiences today require nonstop conflict, combat, darkness, gore and mayhem in order to be entertained. Progress? Maybe a trip back to a simpler time isn't so bad.

I've read many comments on this film over the years, from fully fledged movie critics & amateurs alike. Apart from a few exceptions, it is universally slammed. Surely these ultra-critical critics have missed the whole point - Fire Maidens From Outer Space is exactly what it was meant to be, quite simply an extremely low-budget piece of escapism which requires no deep thinking, or analysis, on the part of the viewer. It was obviously made on the frayed edge of a shoestring budget, but it still manages to convey a charm all of its own. I remember seeing the film as a child, not long after its release in the UK when, I think it was on a double bill with a Superman film (can anyone confirm this?) and saw it again on TV in 1963. Even watching it today, it is perfectly clear that it has lost none of its original distinctive innocence and charm. Obviously it has many flaws, and as these have been catalogued many, many times, it is pointless to repeat them here and now. However, one comparison I must dispute most strongly is that with Plan Nine From Outer Space. That particular Ed Wood effort was plainly irritating, and is scarcely watchable all the way through, in one sitting. Fire Maidens From Outer Space certainly doesn't come across as irritating or tedious, and is just a bit of fun. Anyway, I don't care what anyone thinks or says, I will always be fond of this film, in all its innate glory, or not, as the case may be.

Despite inept dialogue, cramped sets, second-string acting, penny-pinching special effects, and time-wasting "B"-picture shuffling, this low-budget, sci-fi yarn is not all that unentertaining. Decided assets include: (1) The plot, neatly combining the Atlantis legend with Theseus and the Minotaur; (2) a bit of effective Minotaur make-up by Roy Ashton; (3) a few flashes of directorial skill by Mr Roth; and (4) not least, a bevy of really beautiful fire maidens led by the very charming Susan Shaw (one of my favorites, I must admit) and the agreeably villainous Maya Koumani.

Camp followers will also enjoy the zippy music score comprising a few snatches of Khachaturian's "Saber Dance" with generous excerpts from Borodin's "Polovetsian Dances". If you close your eyes, you can almost imagine yourself listening to the soundtrack of M-G-M's Kismet.

True, Dexter makes a wet hero, and Carpenter is even more soppy, but who cares?

The copy I found on YouTube was an Olive Films restoration, and I could clearly see what was going on. The laughs start with a line in the opening credits; "All outer space characters are fictional". The film's plot concerns a trip to the 13th moon of Jupiter, which has an atmosphere just like Earths', and male and female inhabitants.

Longines must have paid for part of the film, as they are mentioned at least three times, their clocks get four closeups, and there are three closeups of their wristwatches. There is a constant use of "Strangers in Paradise" as background music whenever the female inhabitants of Jupiters' 13th moon do their versions of interpretive dance. The filmmakers let the viewer get too good a look at the "creature" that roams the woods; it's nothing more than a skinny man wearing a bad Werewolf mask with a tuft of hair on top and eyeholes to look out of.

The acting is uniformly dreadful. When the creature appears near films' end, the astronauts can't stop themselves from smiling/grinning. The main female character in the scene looks to be biting her lip to keep from laughing. This slow moving, silly, British film gets a 3/10 rather than just a 1/10 because it did make me smile on a day I was not feeling like doing so.

Somebody else mentioned the shocking level of product placement for Longines watches (and we thought that placement was new in the movie "2001"). What nobody else here has touched on is that dreadful loooooonnnnngggg scene in the observatory in England near the start of the movie where the secretary spends about 20 minutes (well, almost) just walking down the long stairs to bring a report to the chief astronomer, and then spends almost as long going back up (including opening and shutting the safety gate on the stairs...) Yes, truly a movie in which the concept of editing was only a slogan!

The rest of the comments above by previous commentators say it all, but I must point out that in the early days of analogue ship controls, all piloting functions appear to be digital, carried out by switching the positions of just two levers (in binary sequence?) to do everything - take off, land, dodge meteors, change course, etc... Even better, when the crew report in after quite a long flight, we cut back to the control centre on Earth, and yes, nobody has moved from their pre-launch positions! (Were their shoes nailed to the floor?)

In Britain, we don't get to see MST3K, so I watched this as a late-night stinker, and loved it. I shared the movie with friends on tape, and still feel that it's amongst the funniest B movies I have ever seen, right down there with Plan 9, and without the excuse that it was made by Ed Wood Jr!

Like nearly all these films, A lost group of traveling men, here astronauts, stumble upon a glorious and most unexpected find upon Jupiter's 13th Moon: a group of scantily clad young lovelies looking for husbands (yes it's another CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON rehash). Along the way they must overcome a deadly meteor shower and a weird misshapen creature (a tall guy wearing a mask) which roams the moon. If you like this type of film (CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON, MISSILE TO THE MOON, QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE), you'll likely enjoy this one too even though it actually somehow manages to look cheaper and more low budget than any of those. Some rather unexpected musical accompaniment does enhance a dance ritual scene.

You know, in spite of how bad this one is I really like it. It's one of my fav of the older MST3Ks, because of the sheer cheese factor and the very funny riffing on this travesty by the SOL crew. The sad thing is they took a few bits of interesting plot(they didn't even know if Jupiter had a 13th moon in the 50s!) and padded it out with the most ridiculous things - bad dancing, loathsome men leering at pretty girls, a really stupid 'monster'(which they never explain the origins of), men smoking and sitting around, an inexplicable cup of poisoned wine, and a sacrifice that never quite happens. The science part of this sci fi movie is almost non-existent. The 'astronauts' don't wear spacesuits; the ship is retarded looking and wouldn't even get off the ground; two levers control every function on the ship; the moon is identical to Earth in every way; the Atlanteans speak English with no explanation; and not only is the trip way too fast when they communicate with Earth there is no time lag whatsoever even though they're millions of miles apart. The Stranger in Paradise soundtrack is so repetitive that it makes you want to stick an ice pick in your ear after awhile so you don't have to listen to it anymore. Lots of padding, male chauvinism, girls in skimpy costumes, and innuendo. Horrible, to say the least. But wonderfully cheesy, which is why its so amusing in spite of all of these defects. MST3K just had so MUCH to work with! The movie isn't dull like so many Corman films, in spite of the padding.

A five man team of astronauts undertake a joint American-British mission to investigate the possibility of life on the previously undiscovered 13th moon of Jupiter. There they discover a civilization of babes who are supposed to be the last living descendants of the residents of Atlantis. Oh, and they also realize that there is a "creature" roaming around that the lovely ladies fear.

"Fire Maidens from Outer Space" just goes to show you that the Brits can deliver cheesy goods just as "well" as Americans when it comes to this sort of low budget genre entertainment. We of course don't take it seriously, although it's largely played with an endearing sincerity from the majority of the actors. That "creature" is certainly good for laughs; Richard Walter plays the role in a crude mask that seems to have no means of vocalization, yet the thing is always heard howling and snarling. The sets are designed as frugally as possible, and special effects are likewise economically done.

Anthony Dexter plays American scientist Luther Blair, our strapping hero, and receives amiable support from Paul Carpenter, Harry Fowler, Sydney Tafler, and Rodney Diak, who play his comrades. Owen Berry is a hoot as gnarly old man Prasus, Jacqueline Curtis is alluring as the jealous Duessa, and Susan Shaw is positively GORGEOUS as Hestia, the female lead.

"Fire Maidens from Outer Space" has its clunky charms, just like many other movies of this kind, but the unqualified highlight is when the Fire Maidens perform interpretive dance to the strains of music by Aleksandr Borodin.

Written, produced and directed by American-born Cy Roth, whose other theatrical credits include "Air Strike" and "Combat Squad".

Five out of 10.

Caught this on one of the UK TV channels. This film boasts stalwarts of British films for that time, including Harry Fowler and Sydney Taffler, all decent, serviceable actors in the right production; unfortunately this isn't it.

The props and sets are atrocious; telephones substitute for interplanetary communications equipment, and the astronauts are decked out for a jungle expedition not a space trip.

A SciFi movie having a hokum, sexist storyline is nothing new, and in fact the norm for the mid-1950's; however the film is additionally let down by the sets, direction and screenplay. The dialog is beyond atrocious, and even fans of bad films will have a hard time making it through to the end of this. As usual for British films of the time, Canadian actors substitute for Americans; I guess Lionel Murton and Cec Linder weren't available.

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.

I just love this movie. I can watch it over and over and get enjoyment out of it. I first saw it in 1956 as a child and watched it many times over the years. The musical soundtrack is so captivating. Susan Shaw is very cute. It reminds me of the early Universal Pictures Horror Movies that I can watch again and again. This movie and The Mole People and Zombies of Mora Tau are my favorites from the time period. Please watch it and see if you agree with me. Many of the current movies cannot hold my interest and I have to force myself to sit through them. This movie has a certain charm and holds my interest. It is a low budget but they did a great job with the funds they had at the time.

Okay, so it's ultra-cheap. However, any movie that can inspire the MST3K crew to such high peaks of mocking has to be worth something. Who can forget all of the sitting, the wonderfully cheap controls, the smoking, the phone receiver held upside down to be used as a microphone, the sitting, the interminable dancing to "Stranger in Paradise," the smoking and the screen's wussiest monster?

By the way, did I mention the sitting and smoking. I quit five years ago, and this movie makes me want to light up just to have something to do during the smoking scenes.

This movie is solely about five guys who sit around for a long time in a rocket ship headed towards Jupiter's thirteenth moon. Where they find human life, well, rather many "attractive" women, an old man, and The Creature (a horrible costume, if i may say so). The MST3K version made me laugh hysterically and made the movie much more entertaining that it otherwise would have been. if you have an interest in this movie, i suggest getting the MST3K version. It's worth the watch. Too much interpretive dance if you ask me. The Creature could definitely use a little love. The special effects and definitely short of special...then again, we must remember the time period, but come on, the rocket could have been a little better.