Cat-Women of the Moon (1953)

Truly Dreadful Film

How sad is this?

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Howlingly bad dialogue dominates this obviously intentionally badly made science fiction film about, as the title says, cat women on the moon.with the crew of astronauts lead by Sonny Tufts, Victor Jory, and Marie Windsor, the mission to the moon is about as intelligent as the children's nursery rhyme about the cow who jumped over it. While there are certainly no dish running around with a spoon,the dishes who run around desperate for men look like something that popped out of the air ducts on the Starship Enterprise.as juvenile as the times when Abbott and Costello and the Three Stooges took separate trips to outer space, this up there with some of the worst films ever made. There is a reason why Sonny Tufts is considered one of the worst actors of all time, and his performance here doesn't betray that reputation. Windsor, with her cat like eyes, could have played the leader of the cat women, who plays an Earthling instead. Here she looks like a poor man's Loretta Young, although her hairstyle is closer to June Allyson. The presence of giant spiders bring on laughter, not fear, and I was grateful that I wasn't sipping anything at the time.The first shot of the cat women is them actually stroking Windsors legs, giving indications that they've made do without men in other ways. Then there are the dwellings of the cat women, replica of ancient cities and looking like something you'd find in a biblical epic rather than in the outer space science fiction movie. what is truly amazing in this film is the fact that the actors actually speak their lines seriously, not even cracking the slightest grin which it would be very difficult for me considering how blame the majority of the dialogue was.so if you are in the mood for something so thoroughly beyond silly, come join the cat women on the moon. This just seems to get more deliberately bad as the film goes on as the moon women get more crazy. One scene involving a stabbing is so phony that I had to rewind it several times to confirm what I had just seen. The writers may have had craters in their head, but I will give them credit for one thing; it is still a slight notch above plan 9 from outer space.

Cat Women of the Moon is great comedy, although it wasn't intended to be so. There are technical gaffs all over the place, wow, where do I start? Here's a partial list:There's no oxygen on the surface but caves seem to have oxygen nonetheless; meteors make a whistling sound as they whizz by in space (how can sound travel without air?); giant spiders lurk in moon caves; clouds appear in the sky on the surface of the moon; astronauts are not fastened in for takeoff - instead they recline in bunks and hop up immediately after reaching orbit; somehow the spaceship has gravity although they are in outer space; finally, the ending is very abrupt - did they run out of money all of the sudden?The basic premise of the movie is that astronauts make their first landing on the moon. Upon disembarking the ship, they explore around and discover a cave with oxygen. The cave leads them to a 'lost civilization' of only women who lure the men into danger. There are several lines in the movie which had my almost falling out of my chair with laughter, such as one astronaut who says to an admiring Cat Woman, "You're too smart for me baby, I like them stupid!"As far as sci-fi goes, it's really awful, but for the high camp factor and unintended comedy, I give it five stars. Don't miss seeing Cat Women of the Moon - it's public domain and can be downloaded for free from http://www.archive.org/details/SciFi_Horror

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.

Talk about déjà vu. I feel like I've seen this movie several times recently. It may be older than either Missile to the Moon, Queen of Outer Space, or Fire Maidens from Outer Space, but I saw those first. So for me, watching Cat-Women of the Moon is like watching what is essentially the same movie for the fourth time. And despite the familiarity and a whole slew of other weaknesses, I found myself enjoying it. The 2.5 IMDb rating seems a bit harsh – especially when you consider the rating for Missile to the Moon. Not only does Missile to the Moon follow almost the exact same plot, but it appears to even reuse some of the props (giant puppet spiders) from Cat-Women of the Moon.The story – five astronauts blast off for the moon only to meet a race of women whose world is slowly being destroyed. The women (known for some inexplicable reason as Cat-Women in this movie) want to use the astronaut's spaceship to take them to Earth to find a new world to conquer.Maybe I'm just weird, but I get a kick out of some of the same things that a lot of other comments bang on. Weak set design (metal rolling office chairs with a seat belts used in the "spaceship"), poor special effects (once again, the giant puppet spiders), bad acting (could Sonny Tufts be any worse), and bad science (just watch as a cigarette burns on the moon!) – you'll find them all in Cat-Women of the Moon. But it's this naiveté to the whole thing that I can't help but enjoy. It might not be for everyone, but I'll give it a 6/10 even with all its flaws.