CAT-WOMEN OF THE MOON

1953/ Director: Arthur Hilton/ Writers: Al Zimbalist, Jack Rabin

Cast: Sonny Tufts, Victor Jory, Marie Windsor, William Phipps, Douglas Fowley, Carol Brewster, Susan Morrow, Suzanne Alexander

For this double feature I decided to write about two pretty good old time sci-fi flicks that are almost identical in their storylines. I even fear I am going to accidentally muddle the two together if I am not careful and wonder now if just one review for both films would suffice. But there are a couple differences that make these two moon mission films unique from one another. The theme is a familiar one for the 50’s and 60’s. A group of men, with maybe one female in the gang, are stranded somewhere, an island, lost civilization on the far side of a secret mountain or a planet like Venus or even the earth’s moon, and there they encounter an all female race of something similar to Amazons. The race may or may not be dying off and what men there are, if any, are kept as slaves and the occasional stud service. Some similar films would be Abbot and Costello Go To Mars (they actually went to Venus in the film) Invasion of the Star Creatures, The wild Women of Wongo, Mesa of Lost Women and quite a few others. The plots are usually the same and some recurring themes would be a young and cocky guy who is fast with the wisecracks who feels he has died and gone to heaven and hits on anything that breathes, a greedy opportunist who wants to pilfer the wealth the Amazon type women horde and a romance between the queen and the group leader. The virility of the male leader awakens feelings in the queen she has not felt in a long time and clouds her better judgment which usually dictates she execute all the outsiders. There is usually a power struggle as well within the female society between the old school led by the queen and a group of usurpers who are simply wanting for the right moment to strike, such as when the queen is weakened by her feelings of love for a big hunk of man. Both Cat-Women of the Moon and Missile to the Moon contains almost all of these essential ingredients and despite being cheese fare they are actually well made and enjoyable movies.

Cat-Women of the Moon is the story of the first manned mission to the moon and among the crew of five is one woman Helen (Marie Windsor) who seems to the object of romantic interest of the by-the-book mission commander Laird (Sunny Tufts)and the number two man the hot headed and chauvinistic Kip (Victor Jory). Kip wastes little time in putting the moves on Helen as she is nursing him after an accident on the ship caused by a rouge meteor. The behavior of Kip is so callus and unprofessional that it could only happen in an old film like this. And obviously while Helen affirms she is Laird’s gal she likes the little cat and mouse game with manly Kip as well. Women in films from the 50’s and 60’s always liked overt sexual harassment as a form of prolonged foreplay and even a prerequisite to marriage. If the guy does not stalk her and harass her then he must not love her. Also on board is the young buck Doug and the shifty Walt. This crew was a result of the space program’s earlier selection processes and it would improve greatly by the time of the Gemini and Apollo missions. For an as yet to be explained reason Helen, the navigator, decides to land the ship n the moon’s uncharted dark side. There is little conflict with the crew over this and soon the ship is settled on the moon’s surface and the crew are out in their space suits exploring the Lunar terrain. Along with all the other normal gear necessary to explore the moon Kip takes along a loaded pistol. You never know right?

Helen leads them to a cave where they soon find there is enough oxygen to not  only allow them to remove their space helmets but all of their spacesuits as well. Of course I do not mean they are standing around in their underwear, they have their uniforms on but I am not so sure it is a good idea to remove your entire spacesuit in an unexplored cave on the moon. The cave has oxygen and that is good, but it also has huge black spiders and that is bad. The spider is a huge puppet that moves pretty darn slow luckily. Helen freaks out and runs and the runs decided to go and box with the damned thing. It never occurs to Kip to use the gun he brought along and after being hit the face a few times by the guys the spider disappears. Soon they realize their spacesuits have vanished (see, bad idea) and soon they meet some of the slinky Cat-Women who look pretty sexy in their black leotards. Kip bullies them with his gun of course but soon the crew are being led to the underground kingdom of the dying race of moon women led by Queen Alpha (Carol Brewster). As it turns out Helen’s mind has been controlled for sometime by the Cat-Women who need a spaceship to escape the moon’s decaying atmosphere, the remaining bit being contained in the cave. Young Doug falls in love in a matter of moments with good hearted Lambda (Susan Morrow) and Walt is soon on the trail of valuable minerals contained in the cave walls. Helen is not always under the spell of the Cat-Woman and Lambda has reciprocated Doug’s love in the same short span of time and warns the crew of their deadly fate if they do not escape soon.

Overall this is a pretty fun movie and one worth a couple watchings if you are a refined cheese lover. It is well made for the time and the lunar landscapes look pretty decent. The movie is also known as Rocket to the Moon but that can be easily confused with our second feature which is Missile to the Moon. If for nothing else this movie worth a watch for the sexy gals in it. I feel they are much sexier in their black cat suits than the bevy of beauties in our second feature are. But it is well known that I am a sucker for gals in cat suits. And with that we can now move on to our second feature Missile to the Moon byt the man who brought us She Demons and Frankenstein’s Daughter Richard E. Cunha.

MISSILE TO THE MOON

1958/Director: Richard E. Cunha/Writers: H.E. Barrie, Vincent Fotre

Cast: Richard Travis, Cathy Downs, K.T. Stevens, Tommy Cook, Nina Bara, Gary Clarke, Michael Whalen, Laurie Mitchell, Leslie Parrish

1958’s Missile to the Moon is usually considered to be a remake of Cat-Women of the Moon. I guess back in 1958 a remake was not as big a deal as it is now since there was only couple real decades of film making to swipe ideas from and in the sci-fi department the picking were no doubt thinner than lets say the western or crime categories. He title is a little strange really in that I suppose there is some difference between a rocket and a missile but, as stated above, Cat-Women of the Moon was also released under the title Rocket to the Moon and so maybe there was some copyright issues involved with the title. I cannot find anything online to verify that useless theory but maybe there is something out there if anyone wants to research this. In fact the very same puppet spider used in Cat-Women reappears here to menace the astronauts in perhaps the very same lunar cave. But there are a few differences in the storyline and way the film is made that makes Missile to the Moon a stand alone movie. Missile to the Moon tries to be slightly more serious in tone than Cat-Women and that only adds to the cheesy quality of the film. Both films have their charms and some people prefer one over the other. I am simply torn and recommend the films as a double feature one night and you must make up your own minds.

The crew is about the same as the first film but with some variations in the characters. We again have five people and one of them is a female. However in this case it is not a government backed mission but actually a private mission run by civilians Dirk Green (Michael Whalen) and Steve Dayton (Richard Travis) who are running out of time to prove that the big rocket he built in Dirk’s backyard can blast off and make it to the moon. One night while discussing the issue after a military officer has informed them that the government will be taking over their project (since NASA is less capable of building a spaceship than a couple hobbyists) a couple escaped juvenile delinquents make it across the barren, hostile desert to the launch pad of the rocket and decide it would be a good idea to climb aboard and hide in the spaceship until things settle down. One kid is Lon (Gary Clarke) who is the incorrigible punk and the other is the mixed up rebel without a cause but basically nice kid Gene (Tommy Cook from How to Make a Monster). To make a long story short the lot of them wind up blasting off to the moon. Seems Dirk is not happy with the government’s intervention in his project and he now has a qualified crew: Steve and his untrained girlfriend and two escaped convicts who never even graduated high school and whom he helped in the decision to become overnight astronauts by pointing a gun at them.

One twist in the plot is that old guy and leader Dirk is killed off on the trip to the moon by when a battery crushes his skull. This leaves only four people to explore the moon later and only one, Steve, who bows what the hell he is actually doing. After roaming around a not too bad looking lunar surface for a while the gang wind up I a valley inhabited not only by lumbering rock monsters but contains sage brush and desert plants, the type you find in back-lot studios around Los Angeles. They panic at the site of the slow moving rock people and wind up in a cave with puppet spiders and luscious moon girls. This time they are not dressed in black leotards but in swim suits and togas. The moon maidens are made up of various beauty pageant contestants in one sequence they march out before the camera as though they were walking out before a panel of judges. Over all the film at this point really becomes indistinguishable from Cat-Women (if it has not already). Gene falls in love with a moon girl but the romance is doomed. Lon wants all the diamonds he can carry back to earth and his greed costs him his life by slow moving rock monsters that an old lady in a wheelchair could escape from. The moon women are a dying civilization and Queen Ledo wants Steven to become her King but everyone escapes at the last minute and make it back to Earth safely.

Both movies are full of goofs about the moon and space travel that we in our enlightened age know all about. But that is real fun of a film like this in the first place. Who knew back then, for certain, that throwing a book of matches from the dark side of the moon to the light side (as in Cat-Women) that it would not burst into flames. Well, probably anybody that went to two years of college at least but the films are lots of fun and not bad looking. They epitomize the white guy in the lost civilization of hot babes sub-genre more than most any other film did hat I can think of off the top of my head. As stated the films influenced many other movies that followed in the 60’s and still to this day what red blooded male would not like to be the sole source of DNA for a lost race of sexy gals in black leotards?

This entry was posted on Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 3:26 pm and is filed under Camp and Cheese Classic, Science Fiction-Fantasy . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.