Pamper Yourself This Pride with 1991’s ‘Vegas in Space,’ the Fiercest Drag Film on the Planet Clitoris

On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark honors fringe cinema in the streaming age with midnight movies from any moment in film history.

First, the BAIT: a weird genre pick, and why we’re exploring its specific niche right now. Then, the BITE: a spoiler-filled answer to the all-important question, “Is this old cult film actually worth recommending?”

The Bait: Drag on a Dime (Wait, What’s That in Clitoral Gems?)

When “RuPaul’s Drag Race” premiered in 2009 on Logo, with the titular legend of the queer art form searching for America’s Next Drag Superstar via an ultimately triumphant unscripted series, it kicked off a slow but steady shift in drag’s broader reach into the mainstream.

Sure, conservative legislature has attacked drag performers via bans and censorship with particular intensity in recent years, but these days, drag queens (or at least, the drag queens who make it on “Drag Race”) can also become major media personalities — parlaying their fame into brand deals, red carpet appearances, and even casting spots on other reality series, scripted TV shows, and films.  

This week sees the “Drag Race” franchise reach its natural big screen evolution with “Stop! That! Train!”, a theatrical release that rests almost entirely on audience familiarity and existing buy-in with queens who the show has already platformed. Sure, there are plenty of celebrity cameos in the comedy (Sarah Michelle Geller, Lisa Rinna, and Joel McHale appear among others), but its actual stars are RuPaul herself and prior “Drag Race” super stars Jujubee and Ginger Minj.

It’s not the first mainstream studio comedy about drag, of course. The ‘90s saw some classics like “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar” and “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.” Plus, men disguising themselves as women is a staple plot point in major Hollywood comedies ranging from “Some Like It Hot” and “Mrs. Doubtfire” to “Tootsie” and “The Birdcage.”

‘Vegas in Space‘ (1991) ©Troma Films/Courtesy Everett Collection

But those films didn’t star professional drag queens (an iconic cameo from RuPaul herself in “To Wong Foo” as the Confederate Flag-wearing Rachel Tension notwithstanding), instead seeing actors like Guy Pearce and Patrick Swayze rock heels and wigs to cosplay as fabulous divas. Drag films centering actual professionals of the once underground craft had lower budgets and were rougher around the edges than the new “Stop! That! Train!,” which even today is nobody’s idea of an especially expensive production.

Just take “Vegas in Space,” a cult classic that doubles as a significant snapshot of San Francisco’s drag scene during the late 1980s. Distributed by Troma Entertainment in 1991, it took eight years for the movie’s main creative team — director Phillip R. Ford and star Doris Fish — to raise the money they needed to actually make the project happen. The result is something like a low-budget send-up of “Buck Rogers” sci-fi movie that’s set in a campy, utterly fabulous gender-bending world. The pair spent 18 months shooting it with almost all of the film’s production taking place in a single apartment.  

‘Vegas in Space’ (1991) ©Troma Films/Courtesy Everett Collection

The DIY, scrappy nature of Ford and Fish’s queer indie film is readily evident. Set on the planet Clitoris (really), a glamorous resort planet where only women are allowed to visit, “Vegas in Space” creates its luxurious environment using some obvious miniatures, light projections, and several sets that amount to cheap drapes arranged creatively. That charming and shaggy approach is fitting for such a campy and irreverent comedy, ultimately substituting polish for an equal mixture of artistic grit and careless joy.  

Taking place in the vague distant future, “Vegas in Space” follows Fish’s Captain Tracy as he and his lieutenants Mike (Ramona Fisher) and Steve (Lori Naslundmale), three male space explorers from an Earth ruled by a benevolent empress, take sex reversal pills to become women themselves and sneak onto the fearsome nearby planet ruled by their leader’s supposedly evil sister. Once there, the spies are investigate the disappearance of “Girlinia,” a rare gem stolen recently stolen from their home.

The investigation soon brings them into a twisted conspiracy theory playing out under the noses of the Planet Clitoris’ shady government. But the plot is just a loose framework for the film’s real appeal, which is its sly sense of fun, fabulous costumes, and genius use of its limited indie resources.

‘Vegas in Space’ (1991)©Troma Films/Courtesy Everett Collection

A passion project for the late Fish, who was one of San Francisco’s biggest drag queens at the time, “Vegas in Space” carries the artist’s fingerprints all over it. In addition to writing the screenplay with Ford, Fish designed the sets, costumes, and miniatures, while also doing the hair and makeup for the all-Drag cast. Sadly, Fish didn’t live to see the movie receive its well-earned cult appreciation, dying from AIDS mere months before her movie premiered. But for celebrating Pride Month in 2026, “Vegas in Space” endures as a testament to a truly great artist’s legacy and a reminder that drag had real value long before “Drag Race” put the community on global marquees. —Wilson Chapman

The Bite: Watching “Vegas in Space” in Las Vegas, Nevada

As a bisexual woman with a spotty dating record, Pride Month can sometimes make me feel less like a beloved community member and more like a secret double agent. In that sense, Princess Angel and I could kiki far, far too well.

That’s because every June, while all the full-time lesbians and gays I know are out celebrating their queerness seemingly around the clock, I often find myself distracted by whatever golden retriever man I’m currently dating. It doesn’t happen every year, but it happens a lot of years. Which is precisely how I found myself watching “Vegas in Space” while visiting a dude in Las Vegas… Nevada.

There I was, working on After Dark from his apartment while he finished his shift, taking in the ambiance of a legendary American city that somehow manages to feel both aggressively straight and aggressively gay at the exact same time. Vegas is full of bachelor parties, drag revues, Elvis impersonators, wedding chapels, showgirls, leather daddies, casino grandmas, and enough sequins to blind Liberace.

‘Vegas in Space’ (1991)©Troma Films/Courtesy Everett Collection

The real Las Vegas is a crusty fantasyland built on diehard commitment to performance, and so is Ford and Fish’s “Vegas in Space.” Still, I knew this free-on-streaming cult classic would have an uphill battle winning me over with a stale-sounding premise — seemingly caught halfway between the sexual politics of 1956’s “Forbidden Planet” and the disappearing genitals scene from that “Star Trek”-inspired episode of “Black Mirror.” If I wanted a babes-only cosmic adventure from the ’90s, I figured I’d rather watch “Spice World.” (Hey, that’s got aliens too!)

But somewhere between the “Pee-wee’s Playhouse”-like miniatures and the reveal that our heroes are traveling aboard the USS Intercourse (!!), “Vegas in Space” transformed into “an oasis of glamour in a universe of mediocrity.” You don’t need official LGBTQ status or a “special Clitorian intelligence alert” to understand why this gender-bending sex comedy is funny. And if you stop evaluating its script according to conventional (read: heterosexual) Hollywood standards, you’ll find yourself believing in Ford and Fish’s dream completely.

‘Vegas in Space’ (1991) ©Troma Films/Courtesy Everett Collection

What made me fall for “Vegas in Space” wasn’t the filmmakers’ ambition so much as the cast and crew’s overwhelming sincerity. Even while striving to make Planet Clitoris feel otherworldly enormous, the team nevertheless commits to rendering a world that’s unendingly playful and warm for audiences who may or may not see what they do as entertainment already worthy of mainstream veneration.

The fact that Ford and Fish attempted this with such limited resources only makes their ambition more moving. It’s genuinely difficult to be earnest and empowered at the same time. Most people choose irony, but “Vegas in Space” displays an absurd level of conviction. What’s more, the power of the creativity and inspiration on display here did indeed help me understand a lot more about the culture that I’ve spent years admiring through “Drag Race.” I could see the DNA of so many series challenges on screen in Ford and Fish’s movie, but more importantly, I could also see why this style of comedy always has such a giddy impact on me.

The subject is a slam dunk for me, too. I’ve always been drawn to stories about bizarre all-female societies, whether they’re found in sci-fi cartoons, “Rick and Morty,” or old-school British comedies like “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” (Note: Yes, I know that’s BOY MEDIA. I’m a BOY sometimes!!)

Mostly, though, I found comfort in watching people embrace both their masculine and feminine sides with such unapologetic imagination. (Even if the male-to-female transformation sequence occasionally had the cast sounding like that scene from “The Substance” and a farm animal mid-orgasm.)

‘Vegas in Space’©Troma Films/Courtesy Everett Collection

By the time the credits on “Vegas in Space” rolled, the guy I was seeing was headed back from work and I was no longer alone on Planet Clitoris. It’s strange to spend part of Pride Month accidentally cosplaying as a Vegas housewife. Maybe that’s why Fish and Ford’s movie landed so hard. “Vegas in Space” isn’t really about escaping reality. It’s about refusing to let other people define the role you’re supposed to play in the world you never asked to inhabit.

Then again, actually having spent some time in the Nevada desert, I’m not entirely convinced there’s a meaningful distinction between the so-called Beaver System and the Vegas Strip. Gay or straight, everybody loves slot machines. —Alison Foreman

“Vegas in Space” is streaming free on Fandango at Home via Prime Video.