Queen of Outer Space - Production Notes

Production Notes

The Three Stooges and The Bowery Boys director Edward Bernds recalled that after famed producer Walter Wanger was released from prison for shooting agent Jennings Lang in the groin for having an affair with his wife Joan Bennett, Wanger could only find work at Allied Artists. In 1952 Wanger brought a ten page idea for a screenplay by Ben Hecht called Queen of the Universe that was a satirical look at a planet run by women. Several years later, with the idea of science fiction films being more common, Allied Artists revived the project with Wanger replaced on the film by Ben Schwalb who was then producing the Bowery Boys films. Screenwriter Charles Beaumont didn't think there was much in the Hecht screenplay, but Schwalb suggested spoofing the idea and had former Three Stooges screenwriter Ellwood Ullman touch up Beaumont's screenplay. Allied Artists retitled the film Queen of Outer Space as they thought the original title sounded more like a beauty pageant.

The film recycled many ideas such as a planet ruled by women from other science fiction films of the era as Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, Cat-Women of the Moon (both 1953) and the British Fire Maidens from Outer Space (1955). Queen of Outer Space also recycled many props and costumes, most prominently the C-57D crewmen's uniforms and Altaira's wardrobe from Forbidden Planet (1956), models, sets, and special effects from Bernds's World Without End (1956), the usual stock footage of an Atlas and a rocketship model used by The Bowery Boys in Paris Playboys (1954) that was co-written by Bernds and Ullman. The facial makeup of the deformed Queen strongly resembles the effect of being hit by a pie thrown by The Three Stooges.