Cat-Women of the Moon

source: Cat-Women of the Moon

Trailer—Cat-Women of the Moon

Cat-Women of the Moon

A rocket zips along, hurtling its occupants toward their destination, while they relax in standard issue patio chairs. The interior of the ship resembles an old shed with a few instruments from a high school electronics class. Helen (Marie Windsor) checks her makeup, while the men do man things. Uh oh! An emergency nearly scuttles the mission! Thankfully, the rocket is able to land. Awesome spacesuits can only mean that our heroes are about to disembark. Adventure and danger await. CAT-WOMEN OF THE MOON is gloriously, deliriously ridiculous! From the giant, screeching spider-puppets, to the titular, feline females (played with gusto by The Hollywood Cover Girls), it's a rib-tickling extravaganza! The romance! The jealous rages! Let the lunar cat-dancing begin! Huzzah! Heavenly hooey with no meaning whatsoever!...

One might remember the parody "Amazon Women on the Moon". It made fun of all those 1950's films where astronauts travel to a body in the solar system and discover a race of women with no men (and therefore, no standards, to a 1950's Sci-Fi geek, a true paradise.) This was the first such film, and many of the elements Amazon did for fun were originated here. The moon with a breathable atmosphere, a crewman looking for a way to satisfy his greed only to lead to his demise. Fem-aliens who do exotic group dances like showgirls for no apparent reason. (Incidently, it is interesting in how standards for erotic have changed. these gals are much chunkier in the hips and smaller in the bosoms than their contemporary counterparts.) This film is cheesy fun, and if you approach it from that point of view, you can enjoy it. True, good Science Fiction was being made about this time, like "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and "War of the Worlds". But sometimes the cheese stands alone.

Mission Commander Sonny Tufts and his crew of space explorers brave the perils of a hostile Moon. They are threatened by a giant Moon spider and captured by telepathic lunar Amazons in black tights. A love triangle develops between Sonny, one of the Moon women, and a fellow crew person (Marie Windsor). Okay, so it's not a great movie, but it was originally filmed in 3-D, and the music is by Elmer Bernstein (who scored both `The Ten Commandments' and `Robot Monster'. What a career!). The 1958 film `Missile to the Moon' is essentially a remake, complete with the giant spider. The only improvement it makes is to give the girls more colorful costumes. Just for the record, the other films with all-girl alien worlds are `Queen of Outer Space', `A & C go to Mars', and `Fire Maidens from Outer Space'. The girls in `World Without End' are from Earth, and there are a few men, but they're wimpy compared to the astronauts who show up to romance them.

Bottom of the barrel sci-fi. It's about a manned mission to the moon with three guys and one beautiful woman. You have to love any movie where they land and the first thing the woman does is check her make-up and hair! On the moon they find a race of beautiful women who dress like cats. They treat the men like royalty but secretly plan to steal their rocket, fly to Earth and take over. It's just bewildering how bad this movie is. The sets are cheap and the special effects are the worst I've ever seen. The "giant" spider was so pathetic I broke out laughing :) Also there's an incredibly fake stabbing and an even worse faked slap. Really rushed ending too. Acting doesn't help. Top billed Sonny Tufts is lousy. Only Marie Windsor gives a good performance. She later admitted this was the only film she was ashamed of...and she was in hundreds of B movies! It's not unwatchable but it's pretty poor. A 1 all the way.

CAT-WOMEN OF THE MOON is one of those cheesy little science fiction flicks of the 1950s about a race of powerful women colonising outer space; they seemed to have designs on the Moon, Mars, anywhere else you can think of. This film's story has the usual group of astronauts heading off to the Moon, where they're captured by a black-clad race of warrior women who have designs of them. A giant spider also pops up at one point. It's all very straightforward and ineffectual, not quite cheesy enough to be a so-bad-it's-good classic, but lively enough that it never becomes a bore. Marie Windsor, of NARROW MARGIN fame, plays one of the crew and is the best thing in it.

This is one of the best. So-bad-it's-great! A cast of stars (including Sonny Tufts, Victor Jory and the delicious Marie Windsor) land on the far side of the moon and discover a race of beautiful women (there not cats, that's just the title.) Oh, yeah, and some giant spiders, too. But enough of that. Any film that has Ms. Windsor in 3-D has got to be tops on any bad sci-fi list. This is probably the first film of it's kind. No, not camp, but the plot of "male astronauts go to extraterrestrial planet and discover race of sex-starved women dying for company". Invasion of the Star Creatures, Fire Maidens from Outer Space, and Queen of Outer Space all follow in its footprints. There was even a direct remake, Missile to the Moon! All in all, if you liked Robot Monster, chances are you'll be gaping at your television screen for the next 64 minutes (another great thing about these films - they're extremely short if you don't like them. But if you didn't, you probably wouldn't be reading this.)

Don't believe the detractors. This is great cinema. See Marie Windsor (Always worth the price of admission), Victor Jory as a good guy (with his constant 'I'm a bit constipated,' broken smile) and catch a glimpse of rich boy turned bad boy Sonny Tufts (scion of the Tufts family of Tufts University fame)on the down slide from hero roles of the late 40s. The F/X are dazzling, the ... well, OK. It's, shall we say, not quite up to some of the other sci-fi thrillers of that era, e.g., When Worlds Collide, War of the Worlds, From the Earth to the Moon, Rocket X-9, the Man from Planet X, etc., but it's a lot friendlier. And, the cat ladies dancing are great too. This movie is fun...and Marie Windsor is still a delight to see!