Fire Maidens from Outer Space

Lore & Background

The plot follows a crew of five male astronauts who discover an Earth-like atmosphere on the 13th moon of Jupiter. They rescue a woman named Hestia from a monster and find New Atlantis, a dying civilization of seventeen people—all women except for one elderly man, Prasus. Prasus rules as a tyrant and hopes to keep the earthmen to mate with the women. The monster, a slender male hominid impervious to bullets, eventually kills Prasus and Duessa before being killed by the earthmen. Hestia returns to Earth with the astronauts, who promise to send husbands for the remaining women.

Reader's Guide

Fire Maidens from Outer Space has achieved notoriety as a benchmark for low-quality science fiction filmmaking. Contemporary reviews from The Monthly Film Bulletin and Kine Weekly criticized its implausible story and meager staging, noting that the film's main attraction was its lightly clad female cast. Retrospective assessments, including Halliwell's Film and Video Guide and Phil Hardy's Science Fiction (1984), have labeled it a strong contender for the worst movie ever made and a bottom-of-the-barrel piece of British science fiction. Its one claim to fame is its extensive use of classical music (mostly Borodin), a technique later used more effectively by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film was featured on the movie-mocking television show Mystery Science Theater 3000 in November 1992, cementing its status as a cult object of ridicule.

Did You Know?

• The film's music score features cues excerpted from the opera Prince Igor by Alexander Borodin.
• The monster is described as a slender, male hominid around six feet tall with dark, pitted skin, impervious to bullets.
• The film was featured as an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 in November 1992.
• Lito Carruthers is credited onscreen as Lighting Cameraman (Director of Photography), not as editor, and the Monthly Film Bulletin review does not credit him as editor.