Cinema Sunday: Cat-Women of the Moon

Today's Cinema Sunday takes a look at a classic science fiction tale from 1953 called...

Hold on! Let's look around to make sure no one suspicious is watching this.  

OK, I think we have the all clear.  

Cat-Women of the Moon, an epic tale of mankind's first foray into space to visit the moon. 

Or as it is described on Amazon Prime, 

"Astronauts travel to the moon where they discover it is inhabited by attractive women in black tights."

And for the record, black ballet flats too.

No high heels! These cat-women may be there for fanservice but it's practical fanservice.

This first expedition to the Moon faces disaster because they let a woman on board the space ship. 

That's right, ya lugs heard me! A woman on a space ship!  A dame!  A skirt! A shrew! A babe! Whattaya expect, letting a woman on a space ship?  

Look! She's taking time to check her hair and make up on the bridge of the space ship! Of course! She's a dame! 

By the way, the seats on the space ship have safety belts in case there's trouble. 

On the other hand, those seats are common office swivel chairs with wheels on 'em so there's that to contend with.  The navigator's station is a regular wooden desk. 

Helen, the ship's navigator, guides the space craft to land on the dark side of the moon. She's subconsciously guided there by the telepathic powers of the cat-women. 

The movie may have gone to Ed Wood levels of cheap with office chairs and wooden desks on the space ship but the surface of the moon is rendered very well.

Helen guides the 4 men of the crew from the ship to a cave which has a breathable atmosphere and 2 giant spiders which demonstrates the moon surface effects ate up all the budget. 

Eventually, our intrepid explorers find the titular Cat-Women of the Moon, part of an ancient and unknown civilization hiding underneath the surface of the moon. 

The Cat-Women of the Moon are living on borrowed time with the air available to them in limited and dwindling supply. 

They very much would like to hitch a ride on a rocket and high tail it to Earth where there is more air. They've been anxiously waiting for Earth science to become advance enough to send a frickin' rocket to the frickin' moon. 

The Cat-Women of the Moon possess telepathic powers that they've been using to influence Helen. 

For reasons of plot, their telepathy does not work on men.I guess that's what the black tights are for.  

The music score for this movie is pretty good for a low grade sci-fi flick. The music is credited to "Elmer Bernstien" and yes, it is a misspelling of Elmer Bernstein, the Academy Award winning composer slumming it for whatever work he can get while the Red Scare of the 1950's was fucking up his career.  

Laird Grainger (Sonny Tufts) is the leader of the expedition, a by the book type of guy with a tendency towards reason and rationality which puts him at odds with Kip Reissner (Victor Jory), a take action kind of a guy who likes to solve problem with his gun. Laird is more susceptible to the manipulation of the cat-women while the tough as nails Kip knows immediately that the cat-women are up to some kind of shit and he ain't got time for it.  

Three of the cat-women, identified as Alpha, Beta and Lambda, take point in the narrative with various degrees of manipulating the men. They need to learn from the men how to work the rocket so the women can steal it and, as Alpha puts it, "We will get their women under our power, and soon we will rule the whole world!" 

The cat-women are bringing lesbian literature and a stock of vibrators with fresh batteries?  

Alpha is pulling Helen's strings to get Laird to cough up rocket intel while Beta gets her info from a spaceman using his greed for gold and then kills him. His name was Walt and seriously, no one liked him. So killing him is a plus mark for the cat-women.  

Lambda is not on board with the plan for her guy because dang it, she's fallen in love with him. Lambda confesses to crew member Doug  about the cat-woman plot, saying, "I love you Doug, and I must kill you". 

Doug tells Kip whose all "A-HA!!! I knew it!" and the chase is on. 

Alpha and Beta, dragging Helen along, make a break for the space ship.  Kips runs offscreen firing his gun after Alpha and Beta. We then hear him shouting back, "The cat-women are dead! Helen's all right!"

The movie ends with our crew (down 1 dead guy) heading back to Earth and they're all, hey, that was a thing that happened.  

The End. 

I think Cat-Women of the Moon ends because the camera ran out of film. 

I am intrigued by the blurb on Amazon Prime for this movie: 

"Astronauts travel to the moon where they discover it is inhabited by attractive women in black tights."

I don't want to make assumptions that the blurb writer for Amazon Prime is a fashion conscious gay man. 

Whoever wrote this could've written something like: 

"Astronauts travel to the moon where they discover it is inhabited by attractive women with strange powers."

Or...

"Astronauts travel to the moon where they discover it is inhabited by attractive women with a sinister purpose."

Or just cut it short a couple of words: 

"Astronauts travel to the moon where they discover it is inhabited by attractive women."

Instead the blurb writer for Amazon Prime is compelled to call attention to the black tights of these women on the moon. 

I guess it could be weirder if the blurb writer for Amazon Prime was drawn to some other aspect of their appearance.

"Astronauts travel to the moon where they discover it is inhabited by attractive women with cat eye make up."

That is that for today's Cinema Sunday. Until next time, remember to be good to one another.