We mentioned the other day that titles can be deceptive. Our example was "Teenagers From Outer Space", which sounded like a silly science fiction comedy but turned out to be a creative and fairly original take on the "alien invasion" subgenre. In that case the title was definitely deceiving. However, there are other times, occurring far more often I imagine, when a movie's title is not deceptive. In those instances, after rolling the dice you find out the hard way that what sounded bad, was bad. And not "good/bad", either. Just plain bad.
"Cat Women of the Moon"(1953) is one such title. It's another film that's been turning up on my search lists for weeks. I avoided it because it sounded.........well, whataya think it sounds like? Dumb? Campy? Anything but serious? How about "all of the above"? In browsing synopses of the storyline, I kept seeing the phrase "cult classic", but I also read that it involved "cat women in black leotards" slinking around in a cave on the Moon, so even before I eventually decided to watch it, I knew it was gonna be Cheese Personified. Had it just been that, I'd have been okay. After all, we've been living on a cheese-heavy cinematic diet for many weeks now. What I wasn't prepared for was how dull it was gonna be. As I watched, the word "bad" kept coming to mind, a simple concept. Not "terrible" or "rotten" or "ludicrous". Just "bad". But then the movie dragged on, and by the midway point I felt the need to add a modifier. "Stultifying" won the contest.
"Stultifyingly Bad". No other description would do, and so the title may have been deceptive after all, in the opposite way : Here is a film you expected to be bad, held out hope it might be "bad/good", but were shocked to discover it was not entertaining on any level.
And to think it started out with a small measure of promise, provided by it's cast. Sonny Tufts stars as "Laird" the Captain of a rocketship headed for the Moon. His crew is made up of Victor Jory (recently seen as the Mad Scientist in "The Man Who Turned To Stone"), Douglas Fowley (Kim's Dad), William Phipps and noir queen Marie Windsor. They're riding in a craft comparable to the one we saw in "Space Probe Taurus", with a spacious interior, lounge chairs and Earth-level gravity.
Navigator Windsor has chosen a landing site on the Dark Side of the Moon (no Pink Floyd jokes, please). When Captain Tufts tells her it's impossible to land there, she says "I'm feeling drawn to it. We shall be safe". She's using her psychic powers on this trip, it seems. And she's right - they land safely and even discover they can breathe. There's air on the Moon; they don't need their helmets or spacesuits. Inside a cave, they are accosted by Giant Fuzzy Spiders. This scene is pretty cool because the spiders look right out of Jim Henson. Whoever is pulling their strings does a good job. Actually, the production design may be the only reason to see this film. The matte paintings, special effects and models, and the handful of papier mache sets all have a comic book look to them. Visually, it's a fun movie. I can't say the same about the story, unfortunately.
Following the Deadly Spider Battle, the Cat Women appear, led by "Alpha" (Carol Brewster). Her right-hand woman is "Beta" (Suzanne Alexander) and their lieutenant is Lambda (Susan Morrow, sister of JFK's mistress Judith Campbell Exner). Lambda is a seductress who will entrance William Phipps. Their catwoman/earthman romance will lead to Lambda's mutiny from her leaders, but there is no reason for me to go into that subplot because it leads nowhere. Here's the basic deal with the Catwomen. They've been alone on the Moon since their civilization died out three million years ago. They've long since gotten used to being without men, but now there's a problem. As there a only a few of them left, they need men to make more Catwoman babies. They are eugenicists who will kill any males, keeping only the girls to raise in their all female society back on the Moon.
To achieve their goal, they have hypnotised American astronaut and navigator Marie Windsor, to get her to land the spaceship near their cave. That is why she mentioned "having a feeling" about the Dark Side. The Catwomen plan to steal the ship, but first they're gonna have to overpower Sonny Tufts and Victor Jory, two large and burly men. Jory is onto the Catwomen's scheme, good thing he brought along his gun. But he's alone in his fight. Tufts is oblivious and all Douglas Fowley can think of is the gold mine Beta tells him about. He ain't leaving till he finds the Mother Lode.
I know it sounds like there's a plot, but I'm making it sound more interesting than it is. Mostly, the Catwomen spend their time walking around the cave in their black tights, making pronouncements that come out sounding like lines in a "Saturday Night Live" skit. That's what I kept thinking as I watched. "This might work as a six minute sketch on SNL". At 64 minutes, however, the voids in the action are as great as those in outer space : expanses measured in parsecs where nothing happens.
So to recap : I was expecting a Cheesy Movie, even a camp one, What I wasn't expecting was to be bored out of my mind. If you took away the production design and the ladies in tights, you might be looking at the worst film we've seen so far. Scriptwise, it's awful. Any points it merits are for it's comic book stylings, but I can't give it anything but two thumbs down for deadly dullness. Highly Unrecommended! /////
That's all for today. I'm getting used to writing on my work schedule so I should be able to keep the reviews coming, maybe even every day. Everything is readjusted to my off hours from 2-5pm each afternoon. Right now I am gonna do a little reading, then head out for my CSUN walk at 4. See you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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