Missile to the Moon (USA, 1958) 78 min B&W DIR: Richard E. Cunha. PROD: Marc Frederic. SCR: H.E. Barrie and Vincent Fotre. MUSIC: Nicholas Carras. DOP: Meredith M. Nicholson. SFX: Ira Anderson. VFX: Harold Banks. CAST: Richard Travis, Cathy Downs, K.T. Stevens, Tommy Cook, Nina Bara, Gary Clarke, Michael Whalen, Laurie Mitchell, Marjorie Hellen (aka- Leslie Parrish). (Astor Pictures)
This endearing camp classic is a 2D remake of the classic 3D bomb, Cat-Women of the Moon. People may ask why on Earth someone would ever want to remake that picture, but hey- Plan 9 from Outer Space inspired a musical! Here is a rare case where the remake surpasses the original. Where Cat-Women is lumbering although somewhat better produced, and full of actors like Marie Windsor unable to contain their contempt for the material onscreen, the people before and behind the camera of Missile to the Moon give this picture a game sense of energy. As a result, this imaginative little movie surpasses its limited budget with imagination, and delivers a wild ride within 78 minutes.
Professor Dirk Green (Michael Whalen) is the typically crusty old scientist who has a rocket ship in his backyard. His project is just about to be taken over by the government, so he decides to fulfill his ambition to go the moon that night before some faceless bureaucracy takes over his baby. Only a couple of hitches- a couple of well-groomed juvenile delinquents named Lon (Gary Clarke, who looks like Art Garfunkel) and Gene (Tommy Cook), who digs older women, escape from their correctional center and hide on the rocket ship. Steve Dayton (played by Richard Travis, from Mesa of Lost Women, for God’s sake) and his fiancee June Saxton (Cathy Downs) hear from the sheriff that there are a couple of delinquents on the loose. So they prowl around the professor’s place to make sure everything’s okay and then they notice the security gate is broken. That’s right- before you know it, there are a bunch of unwitting passengers travelling to the moon.
It seems the professor knew these two delinquents were on the ship, so he could use them as a crew. Then they prove too much to handle, especially when Gene starts to get his mitts all over June. Steve comes to the rescue in a laughably choreographed fight. Alas, this internal petty squabbling soon comes to an end when they must strive to keep the ship merely intact. On the way to the moon they are bombarded by meteors (well, basically just a bunch of silly super-impositions). In the rough ride, the professor gets mortally wounded, and in his last breath he entrusts Steve to a strange medallion.
Alas, the quartet touches down on the lunar landscape, and what a strange world it is. Yes, they need spacesuits to walk the terrain (there is a mountain range instead of a desert– who knew?), but all of our latter conceptions of the moon are quickly subverted. First, the surface is infiltrated with these groovy rock creatures that even The Mummy could run away from- yet, strangely enough, people either seem to trip, or are frozen in terror so these lumbering creatures can catch up to them. Look closely at the moon skies, you can sometimes see clouds! Hmmm- maybe those conspiracy theorists were right after all– Apollo 11 was a hoax!
Anyway, our quartet narrowly escapes these dangerous rock creatures (cough), and finds some solitude in a cave, which actually has a breathable atmosphere. Before long they are overcome with sleeping gas and wake up in a mysterious harem full of cute female models with pointed ears (among them, an actress who would be known as Leslie Parrish!). This lunar set is really cool– shot in glistening black and white, full of platters of food, torches, and pillows, it looks like something out of The Arabian Nights crossed with some bordello that Captain Kirk might visit.
Because of the medallion Steve is wearing, the moon girls mistake him for being Professor Green, who had visited the moon years before. Aha! No wonder the old guy was in such a hurry to rocket to the moon! It seems these giggly lunar gals are curious about the opposite sex, which of course delights Gene’s raging hormones to no end. In one scene he demonstrates the act of kissing to a willing participant, and he utters the cringe-inducing line “Don’t think, just be beautiful.” Alas, Missile to the Moon may have one universal truth- the 1950’s weren’t all that respectful of the fairer sex– on any planet!
But wait, there’s more– it seems there are other things about our moon that we hadn’t realized. There is also this big creepy spider (basically a silly-looking papier-mâché arachnoid mask held up by big black pipe cleaner legs) that gets a free meal whenever somebody does the moon girls wrong. Plus, there are diamonds galore to be had in these strange caves- naturally, the girls all think they’re chump change.
The premise for a science fiction movie turns into a campy melodrama that may have starred Maria Montez. So for a little while, the Earth visitors think they’re in paradise, until these extra-terrestrial hostesses begin to exhibit very human qualities of greed and jealousy. The Professor was set to marry The Lido (neat Orwellian-Speak for The Leader), yet when the back-stabbing Alpha overthrows her, she hypnotizes Steve into marrying her! And check out this groovy glass-blown chandelier thing that poses as a headdress for the leader of the lunar civilization. It turns out too, that that all this hospitality has an ulterior motive, for the oxygen is slowly running out, as well as all their food and drink, so they want to steal their rocketship and fly to another world which would suit their needs.
You get a lot for your money in this wild little adventure full of surprises, laughs and cheap thrills. It even comes with a dubious little moral: “Avarice is one’s undoing.” It is hard to believe this scruffy little winner was devised as the second feature for a bill with Cunha’s own Frankenstein’s Daughter, since this is the more elaborate and ambitious of the two. Even though Neil Armstrong has since proven much of this film to be preposterous, can you imagine what a delight it must have been for undemanding Rocky Jones fans? It is a non-stop grab-bag of imaginative ingredients (despite the laughable production values), and characters who are unusual for a 1950s space opera.
Instead of the listless, clean-cut soldiers of Forbidden Planet, we get a catalog of 50s archetypes: a couple of juvenile delinquents, a brawny leading man and June Cleaver. Stereotypical so they seem today, these characters help make this flick a time capsule. You can have Mission to Mars. I want to see Missile to the Moon again.
Updated from a review originally published in ESR #6, Summer 2002