Cat-Women of the Moon (1953)

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

A Disappointing Continuation

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

This is the movie where Jory and Marie Windsor are in love; he's in very fine shape, though perhaps just a bit put off by the undignified slapdash, yet at ease.At 1st, I believed they supposed that the Moon had atmosphere and gravity, since the crew members could hear each other and were walking normally, there was the cigarette gimmick; but then it turns out they're surprised there's oxygen, atmosphere and gravity. Later, there's a scene with the sky with clouds.The architecture on the Moon is ancient European, and Asian.But the movie, meant occasionally humorous, is, despite three actors, in the hands of the cretins. And these cretins are worse than indifferent: they are wrong, and their minds are sleazy. The storyline has two ideas which could have worked: one is generic (the fight with the spiders), and it failed; the other one, the objects (the cigarettes, the gun, the box). Women are cats because they are sneaky. They also look like cabaret fetishist fantasies. The result of the travel to the Moon is that the Terrestrials loose the engineer, but murder all the Moon survivors. The story ends with the swiping out of the last Moon people. Greed and altruism alike lead to death. The matter of this tale is sleaze.'Cat-Women …' is watchable, because it's moderately amusing, the actors save it (though Marie Windsor seemed to go with the bombast of the thing); the scenes in the Moon city are the less appealing. The producers tried to bluff it somehow, giving clumsiness as nonchalance. It's a bombastic movie, deprived of any emotion, an outing of uninspired hacks; and there's shamelessness in this absence of any affection or care for their movie. There's no thrill, no dramatic drive, no suspense whatsoever. The fact that the scenes, the dialogs are contrived has nothing to do with the budget. It's badly scripted and badly directed (but nicely acted and scored): the encounter with the giant spiders didn't need to look so ridiculous, and the cat-women themselves, and the seductions, and the ciphered dance. Because there are some silly inadvertence, some wish to attribute most of the movie to thoughtlessness; but this is to misinterpret the movie, which actually indulges in goofiness, in word-plays, etc.. Some things aren't errors, but meant to be amusing (the cigarettes, the gun and the box, which are funny, good for characterization (the copilot is brave and combative, the woman is addicted, unreliable, manipulated, vulnerable, the 3rd person is greedy and selfish), and later useful (the gimmick with the cigarette, the gun-play); Jory anxious to find out whom does Marie Windsor love). This might not be top humor, but shouldn't all be attributed to carelessness and stupidity.Jory has a love scene with Marie Windsor.It's also a cautionary tale. Tufts and the engineer fall prey to the crassest seduction, the pilot is practically degraded by his misconduct; and the one who wishes to be shown the golden cave is the most severely punished.'I'll show you the cave of gold.'

I picked up a copy of this because of its alleged stereoscopic content. Much of the tape had such poor registration that the stereo effect was lost. A couple of scenes were close enough so that one could see a little depth, but not most of them.In the copy of the Rhino videotape, there was the tape and two sets of anaglyph glasses. For standard color anaglyph presentations, the left filter is red; the right, blue or cyan (or sometimes green). This one has it reversed, and on the glasses it says to use them in the red-right orientation to see this film, and the standard way to see Robot Monster or The Mask. Well, it's cheaper than redoing the film recording, but if they'd done that, they might have avoided the misalignment.The film story is pretty weak, and rather silly. In the opening scene, the rocket, which looks similar to a radiator hood ornament, is blasting along, and someone at White Sands is trying to contact the ship. The crew starts to recover from ... what? ... the strain of takeoff? ... without responding for the longest time. Eventually, the commander responds with the equivalent of, "We're okay, now shut up." The rest of the crew objects so strongly that he lets each one of them report his or her conditions, but advises them to keep it short.As has been observed, the command area of the ship employs office furniture. Each crewmember has a locker, like those found at high schools.When they go to explore the lunar landscape, it's interesting to see that the space suits are of two different designs. How hot the lunar surface is can be seen by dropping a cigarette onto the surface, where it bursts into flame. Pretty good trick for a part of the moon that ostensibly had no atmosphere.The technical gaffes ... no, make them howlers ... are so great that it propels the film immediately from science fiction into pure fantasy. Children's fantasy at that.This is not a film to be taken seriously. If you like honest camp, though, you might find it fun.

This preposterous sci-fi flick deals with the first mission to the moon. While there, the astronauts encounter a subterranean civilization of slinky cat-women dressed in leotards and a giant spider puppet. The men are hypnotized by the cat-women but eventually break free of the spell and triumphantly return to earth.It certainly appears that space travel has vastly improved since 1953, since the spaceship's crew is using office desks and chairs. The space suits are pretty funny, and instead of ray guns the astronauts carry around plain ol' six-shooters.I can see why Sonny Tufts was in this movie, since he appeared in quite a few substandard films in the 40s and 50s. But what on earth are fine actors Victor Jory and Marie Windsor doing here? This film rates as probably the worst ever to be remade (just a few years later, as "Missile to the Moon"). Campy film will certainly provide some chuckles.

Cat-Women of the Moon is another of those movies that is so-bad-it's-good. I quite enjoyed it.A crew of five people, four men and one woman go on an expedition to the Moon and during this expedition, they face several dangers including meteorites, giant spiders and the Cat-Women. These people plan to hijack the ship and take over Earth! All are killed at the end and a member of the crew dies too.The special effects on the Moon are actually quite good considering the very low budget. The music score is by Elmer Bernstein, who of course went on to do the music for huge hits like The Magnificent Severn and The Great Escape. Well, he had to start somewhere! The cast includes Sonny Tufts (Serpent Island), Marie Windsor (The Jungle, The City That Never Sleeps), Victor Jory and The Hollywood Cover Girls as the Cat-Women.Another thing: Cat-Women of the Moon certainly has nothing to do with the 2004 movie Catwoman, so don't expect to see Halle Berry! This is a must for any 1950's sci-fi or bad movie fan. Great fun.Rating: 3 stars out of 5.