Let's start with The Bad: this is a bad movie. About as bad as you can imagine. Cheap budget, bad acting, goofball story, absurdly bad special effects, the works. It doesn't get much worse than this. Now, The Good: actually, it does get worse than this, in that this movie is one of those classics that is so bad, it cycles back around to become wonderful. I'm a fan of bad movies -- not an indiscriminate fan, but when a bad movie has all the right elements, I can swoon big-time -- and man, I regard this movie as the best of the worst. Literally, "Fire Maidens of Outer Space" is my all-time favorite bad movie. This is the movie that got me into bad movies, in fact. I vividly remember that night, back in 1987, watching "Fire Maidens of Outer Space" on late-night TV as a teenager, alone in the dark and laughing myself completely silly. I regard myself as a minor scholar of this movie (what can I say, I'm attracted to obscurities), and I like this movie so much, I not only own an original half-sheet (22x28") poster for it, but given that this movie hasn't had a proper home-video release in 30 years or more (with the last being a crap-o-vision transfer on VHS), I had even seriously considered investing some personal time and money into starting up a concern with the sole mission of obtaining the rights and an original print, and creating and marketing a proper home-video release. So Olive Films saved me the effort. And this is a great transfer, all things considered. A truly proper home-video release. Clear, crisp -- a few scratches and pops here and there, but the prints for this film are almost 60 years old, and of all the sources that have crossed my path, I've never seen "Fire Maidens" look half as good as this. Bravo. And finally, The Ugly (and I say this reluctantly): this DVD/BD release is in anamorphic 1.66:1, which is narrower than the standard 16:9 widescreen TV aspect ratio. To accommodate this, there are vertical black bars on the sides, filling in the horizontal gaps. So far, not a big deal. I'm a fan of preserving movies' original aspect ratios, so this is great news thus far. But according to most common sources (including IMDB), this movie was originally shot in academy ratio, which is 4:3, the same aspect ratio as non-widescreen TVs. Which means, if true, then some of this movie's frame was cropped from the top and/or bottom in order to obtain this 1.66:1 aspect ratio. I did some video archaeology, seeing that I have two "public domain" (i.e., bootleg from broadcast video sources) copies of this movie on DVD -- where I compared stills between this official release and the bootlegs -- and sad to say, on the bootleg broadcast sources, there is slightly more footage on either the top or the bottom of the screen, depending on the scene. So it appears that in the process of this transfer, some of the vertical image has been cropped. But you know, while I normally get apoplectic about these types of details, I'm only mentioning it for the sake of being a completist. In fact, I might even be splitting hairs. Sometimes films were shot in academy ratio but then matted for projection in a wider aspect ratio, and then the extraneous portion of the frame was retained in video transfers. Comparing the two, side by side on my computer, there really isn't that much lost, maybe 10% total off the top and/or bottom. (And to muddle the issue, there is some extra image content in this Olive Films DVD/BD, on the left and/or right edges. Which means that while we've lost a bit of the top and bottom, we've gained some additional material on the left and right. This situation could be due entirely to the overscan settings on my TV, for all that I know.) I have to say, I'm just far too happy, finally being in possession of a good transfer of this movie in a high-quality home-video format that I can call mine, to let such a small issue ruin the fun. So there you go. If you like cheesy old sci-fi, or enjoyably bad movies, or Cinema Obscurité, then this high-quality transfer of "Fire Maidens of Outer Space" is a find and a half. Invite over your best-natured friends, have a few drinks, and fire up a late-night viewing. You can't go wrong. And if you're caught up in the debate of "DVD vs Blu-Ray?" note that there aren't any truly palpable differences between the two versions. Both have the same dearth of extras, and roughly the same picture and sound quality. I.e., this is not a movie that takes advantage of the BD format, except for the fact that the BD case takes up fractionally less shelf space, at the cost of fractionally more money. So what to do? If you're truly conflicted, I suppose you can always do what I did: get both.
