Vegas in Space

I watched this movie because, if I recall correctly, it was on a worst 100 movies list somewhere. It was my hope that it would be soooo bad, it would be good. As it turned out, I almost couldn't get through it.

I've enjoyed other movies with drag queens (eg. Priscilla), and was hoping that the campiness alone would be the redeeming quality of Vegas In Space. As it turns out, the story about the making of the movie, which is both a triumph and a tragedy, is what is interesting.

In that respect, I am pleased that Doris and crew finished their apartment-made movie. It did provide a few laughs. I especially liked the 'set' where they landed their space ship. That, and the fact that I was able to endure the whole thing gives it 2/10.

Very cute film, with possibly the lowest budget ever. Many B movies try to make their low budget as realistic as possible, with Vegas In Space the idea was to make it look as campy as possible. Paper spaceships flying on strings over a table of perfume bottles which is supposed to represent the city of Vegas on the planet Clitoris.

The highlight is Queen Veneer (queen of Clitorian police.) This wicked little draq queen has all the other queens of Vegas shaking in fear every time she gives them the evil eye. "The only real crimes here are crimes of fashion, enough to keep me offended....and busy!"

Queen Veneer and Space Core's finest must find the thief who stole the jewels which keeps the planet's orbit stable. Who in Vegas could it be?? You also get a lesson in the history of "drag," dating back to the first dragladyke who thawed out during the "facial" age. Funny lines and wonderful dialogue make Vegas In Space one spacey, camped out funny movie!

"glamour first!, glamour last!, glamour ALWAYS!!!"

This is a film about which people tend to feel strongly: either very good, or very bad (just check out the voting summary for evidence of this). In my opinion, it's very good, but I stumbled into it at a gay film festival, so my first viewing was perhaps in just the right place at just the right time. Overall, I would have difficulty recommending this film to anyone but fans of the bizarre, fans of drag and fans of bad sci-fi. There is some very (intentionally) hilarious dialogue in this, much of which is made better by the effective delivery -- the cast doesn't do much nudge-nudge, wink-winking of the audience, which would have made the high camp and innuendo too heavy-handed to be funny. Instead, this comes off as a sort of drag homage to the campy formative years of modern science fiction, the same era during which both drag and gay rights came into their own. An attentive viewer will find nods to Star Trek, Lost in Space, Space: 1999, Battlestar Galactica, Red Dwarf and even the original Buck Rogers serials. Unfortunately, some terrible sound editing and not-so-hot line delivery requires the viewer to pay close attention or they miss what important plot-points there are (such as the women-only restriction on the planet, something a previous reviewer clearly missed as he criticized the crew's gender-change as having no storyline cause). Overall, this movie gets serious props for the costuming and the creative use of an obviously limited budget, the turning-on-their-ear of many of the sexist conventions of early sci-fi and for being in many spots a carefully crafted spoof of a genre. While it's definitely bad, it has fun being bad, and I have fun watching it. The song over the closing credits is fantastic.

You know that a film is not meant to be taken seriously when the cast list includes names like Doris Fish, Miss X and Jennifer Blowdryer. This no budget opus, shot in somebody's apartment with a hand held camera, is clearly meant to be a goof. A gay/camp/drag homage to Ed Wood, and to ALL bad grade Z sci-fi films, it was clearly made by people who think they're really clever. They are not.

The film tries so hard to be campy and bad that it succeeds beyond it's wildest dreams. Every single double entendre falls flat, as do all the other jokes, which seemed childish and forced. What makes Ed Wood films so charming now was Wood's total sincerity in his work, and the fact that he had NO IDEA that he was making bad films.

Vegas In Space was made by trendy hipsters who think their inside jokes and deliberately cheap production values are the last word in chic, downtown humor. That they are so impressed with their own fabulousness is painfully obvious and annoying.

To save the universe? Would you change sex? Alright, I give, but that's what the tag line says, so I'm just going along with what marketing offers.

Being that Troma distributes the film, you know it's going to take a turn for the low-budget, bizarre screaming for play on MST3K. And if the show was still around, I'm sure they would have eventually covered it.

So a crew of effemminitely burly "dudes" (as they refer to themselves quite often - yet I don't refer to myself as a "dude" or even girls as "chicks" - must be an '80's California thing) change into women to stop some sort of naughtiness about jewel thievery on a pleasure planet. So it's a plausible (if goofy) concept to get to the planet, and all of the men on the ship seem perfectly fine with becoming women, so I take it this is a pretty easygoing crew of galaxy savers.

And yet, when they get there, the more they stay, the crew seems less and less interested in saving the universe than they do in exchanging fashion tips. And while this may be all well and good for some, even in their new forms, I would think that saving the planet from destruction would be just a little more important than a song and dance number.

I never expected this to be a serious film (I don't think the filmmakers did, either), and given that they apparently did this all in one apartment is pretty impressive. And there are a few funny one-liners scattered throughout the film. But I think this was a film meant to highlight the leading actor/actresses more than anything else. It just seemed to run more and more out of steam by the time the movie was over, and the chase scenes... well, they were definitely there.

So as a "cheesy movie", it excels. It would be great to have a group of friends over and poke fun at it (even if the end scenes start to drag, and why does the crew never mention anything about an option to return to their original selves?). Otherwise, this is a film that has to be taken with a grain of salt. Or something.