IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 19 minutes and rate 3.6 by 732 cinemitizens.
Verdict: The first astronaut was a Moonie!
It bears an uncanny resemblance to ‘Cat-Women of the Moon’ (1953), reviewed elsewhere on this blog, but there is less dancing and this time no one smokes on the Moon, these being the high points of the film. Yet it does have some interesting features which go undeveloped in the screenplay in favour of the spacers old friend, the meteor shower.
With their own money Dork and Steve have laboriously built the cardboard cut-out of a spaceship in the backyard and are about to blast off for the Moon when, the heavy hand of officialdom falls. ‘Private enterprise shall not go the moon,’ says a man in an Army Navy Store uniform. The Air Force is here to confiscate your rocket which will fold down nicely into a briefcase.
Steve rolls with this punch but Dork is infuriated and becomes driven to set off on his own. There are close ups of Dork fuming. [Censored.]
The rocket is surrounded by an electric fence, yet two reform school drop outs get inside without breaking a fingernail. See, the cut-off switch for the fence was conveniently located by the gate and it took only a dime to pry it open and kill the juice. A dime is all the sense these two elderly teenagers had together but it was enough. They hide in the rocket. Well, they stand around in the rocket’s ballroom and Dork finds them but keeps it a secret in return for their cooperation in his flight to the Moon. ‘Sure, why not. It is a little out of the way but, hey, it’s a free joy ride.’ This is delinquent logic at work.
While Dork and his cronies are dialing dials, unbeknown to them, Steve and Squeeze come on board for reasons known only to the scriptwriter.
The original plan was a crew of two, now there are five on board. Yet somehow the cardboard cutout rocket is up to it and they have lift-off.
In flight Dork snuffs it when the BO of the felons hits him in the enclosed cabin. Well, he hit his head when he slipped in the meteor shower where he went to escape the aforementioned pox. As he dies, he tells Steve that all is programmed and it must be followed exactly. He goes on about ‘my Lido,’ as it pining for Venice. Was he in the wrong movie? Good question.
Cutting to the lunar landing, they discover the two-crew rocketship has spacesuits for four, though the suits do not extend to the back of their necks. They are in for some Moon tan. They encounter some of the slowest moving stuntmen in the geriatric wing of the old actors’ home decked out as Moon Rockmen. Squeeze falls down in front of these Rockers and is unable to get up in the Moon’s low gravity so she waits patiently for rescue by Steve. She stave off the Rockers by reciting Zeno’s paradox. What other explanation could there be, Erich? Note that the Moonscape had scrub bush on it just like that in Bronson Canyon. What an odd coincidence. They shelter in a cob-webbed cave where they find: spiders, torches, oxygen, beauty queens, and the Lido. But no cat women.
Turns out Dork was a Moonie! His plan was to go to Earth, build a rocket ship and return to the Moon by missile. Neat so far? Then the beauty queens would pile into the rocket and return to Earth to…. Now how Dork got from the Moon to Earth without a rocket in the first place is left to mystery. The BQs have to leave Moon because the oxygen is running out, though where it ever came from is left to mystery. There is mystery in this screenplay.
The idea that the first Earthmen in space is a Moonie, well, that is a twist, and that lust for The Lido is his fuel might add to the fun, but it does not because there is no fun to which to add anything.
Along the way the enlarged spider appears to justify the lobby card. One of the delinquents fries. (See comment above about neck exposure.) Various BQs come to bad ends.
Oh, and we discover that ‘The Lido’ is the maximum BQ.
Notice the boss headwear.
She mistakes Steve for Dork, such is her undying love for Dork, because she is blind, because Steve is wearing a medallion Dork gave him with his dying breadth, because the scriptwriter hit the wrong keys. She wants a (re)union with Steve the ersatz Dork, and this riles Squeeze to something more than the mild boredom which has been her contribution to the dramatic arts so far.
‘Cat-Women of the Moon’ has the same IMDb score of 3.6 but has more exposition of the Moonies that strives for plausibility, and fails. Moreover, it had Marie Windsor to add some spunk to proceedings and some old hands in the crew to deliver their lines with conviction, rather than this weary and dreary crew. No doubt the two delinquents were there to capture the Steve McQueen youth market per ‘The Blob’ (1958). Fail!
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