Quei fantastici razzi volanti

In the early part of his career, Victor Jory appeared in some great films, starring alongside the likes of James Cagney and Errol Flynn. He even had a prominent role in Gone With the Wind. His co-starring role in Cat-Women of the Moon represents a descent to the depths in a film that resembles an amateur high school production. He must have been desperate. This is about as bad as it gets with a horrendously unimaginative miniature rocket and a plot that makes you wonder why they bothered. The absolute highlight occurs midway through the film when the head Cat Women slaps one of the underlings. The slap misses by some margin despite the sound effect of hand making contact with flesh. This scene is so bad that it has been mimicked by comedy writers ever since. The original print has been remastered for some unknown reason. Whoever made the decision to do that wasted their time.

Obviously Sonny Tufts was really hitting the bottle when he appeared in this film. He was touted as a new star in the 40's but his messed up personal life really did him in and he was reduced to playing in Grade Z movies and barely getting by. In several scenes he loses his train of thought and because of the low budget the scenes were not re-shot. What a hoot but at the same time pathetic.

This is one of those little sci-fi films that were so popular in the 1950s, usually low budget and inept. But if you are a bad film buff, you can't help but love Cat Women. There are some good actors in this film.....Victor Jory (how far he had fallen!); the wonderful Marie Windsor who made any film in which she appeared worth watching; and Douglas Fowley who was a film staple for years. And then there were the Cat Woman, slinking around in leotards and dog collars.

I won't go into the "plot" but suffice to say it was the same as all the other films which involved lost civilizations on distant moons. It is such fun and if you love low budget films with ridiculous special effects, bad acting and dialogue that makes you cringe, see Cat Women of the Moon. It's a treat!!

What we have here is a good old 50's sci-fi B movie that's a great example of the expression "It's so bad it's good". The conflict here is that when this movie was made, it was meant to be serious stuff. Man breaking the confines of the earth, exploring the moon and encountering hostile alien life forms. It's not exactly how the movie seems today. You have a hard time taking a space ship equipped with lockers, a desk, and old office chairs too seriously. There are all sorts of scientific bloopers in this film. Three men and a woman embark to land and explore the moon. What last minute preparations do you make? Well, naturally the woman has to fix her hair and another astute astronaut is thinking of selling souvenirs when he gets back home. It gets even funnier; they bring along cigarettes and for protection against who knows what, a revolver. The conversations are equally amusing. They sound as if the space explorers were picked up off the streets and asked, hey! you want to go on a trip to the moon? The landscapes and backgrounds are mostly painted but actually they did a pretty good job at that. They're not bad at all. Times have changed though and this film doesn't quite hit the mark that it was once intended to attain. If you try watching this as a serious sci- fi drama, You will be extremely disappointed. You can find faults and pick this movie apart until it is shredded to bits and you would be rightfully so in doing it. I suggest watching it with the understanding that it's a part of sci-fi movie history. View it with an easygoing fun attitude. Look for the blunders. Laugh at the cheapness and corny dialogue. How can you not love a line like, "You're too smart for me, baby, I like em stupid". I mean, come on, it was made in 1953 and the title is "Cat-Women of the Moon" what do you really expect? It's a fun movie. Relax and enjoy it for what it is.

It says so much about the production that an early scene in which a character ascends a ladder is capped off by the actor hitting his head on the ceiling of a chamber in the spaceship - at which point the ceiling very obviously moves. The film is easily dated: black and white photography, meager practical or special effects and props, characters and dialogue written from a male-centric perspective on gender, and so on. 'Cat-women of the moon' is direly ham-handed, as one would surely expect of a genre picture from the 1950s. Still, if you can overlook the indelicacies of the timeframe, this isn't half bad.

The set design is actually quite fine, and I appreciate the consideration for details like hair, makeup, and costume design. Though coerced into a certain overtness by the writing and direction, I think the assembled actors give performances that are quite suitable. It's noteworthy that celebrated film composer Elmer Bernstein wrote the score for this slice of cinematic tomfoolery, one of his earliest credits in a long and fruitful career. The music undeniably echoes similar sci-fi fare of the era, but - though I admit bias - I think there's a subtlety and cleverness that shows the beginnings of what Bernstein would go on to achieve.

The scene writing and overall narrative are terribly gauche, but not outright terrible; I've borne witness to far worse screenplays. You'll never see me call this "great," however. Because for whatever strength there is in the concept, 'Cat-women of the moon' also creates a distinct dichotomy in which men are heroes, and strong, independent women are villains. But oh, wait, of course the power of love can overcome the influence of evil. Moreover, the climax is written and executed with extreme, curt, unconvincing inauthenticity, and at that, there are no surprises here - the plot is very predictable. Were this movie made in the 70s or later, one could easily imagine more inventive, subversive directions the tale may have taken - but with rare exception, we just weren't going to get that in the 50s.

Not absolutely bad, but not really good, the movie just languishes somewhere in the unremarkable middle. Surprisingly, there's enough here to keep us mildly engaged and amused, but I think it would be a stretch to claim any greater sense of entertainment. There's no reason to seek out 'Cat-women of the moon' (and no, there are no actual felines here), but so long as you can abide dubious writing and the shortcomings of the decade's technical craft, there are worse ways to spend an hour.

For several years this movie had the reputation of being one of the worst movies ever made. Now it seems that bad reputation has cooled off since many other worse films have been remembered. Cat-Women Of The Moon is the story of four men (Sonny Tufts, Victor Jory, William Phipps, and Douglas Fowley) and a woman (Marie Windsor) who blast off in a rocketship, and land on the moon. On the moon they encounter large spiders, and the cat-women. The moon no longer has any male inhabitants, and it is learned the cat-women plan on stealing the rocketship to take a few of them back to our planet. The cat-women would then take over the world! The cat-women have telepathic powers to gain information from the male crew members, and make the female crew member a sort of guest cat-woman. The movie has some stuffy dialogue, but a lot of dialogue is hilarious and will bring unintended laughter. The repeated shots of cat-women silhouettes against cave walls becomes humorous, and there's a well known flub in which a cat-woman calls one of the crew members by the wrong name! The "exotic" dance number the cat-women do may also bring laughter. The special effects and large, cave spiders may bring on even more laughter. The acting of the rocketship's crew members is certainly not good, but it is certainly not the worst that can be seen in movies. Victor Jory and Marie Windsor probably do the best where acting is concerned from the crew members. Acting by the cat-women is worse. Most of the cat-women were billed as The Hollywood Cover Girls, which alone should indicate this movie contains a high amount of camp and unintended laughter. Music by Elmer Bernstein is mostly unnoticeable, and when it is noticed it is clearly not his best work. The mental telepathy aspect between the cat-women and the earth woman is interesting. Watching Cat-Women Of The Moon with a friend or in a group may be a laugh riot! How can you not laugh at those sappy, facial close-ups of crew man Doug (William Phipps), and cat-woman Lambda (Susan Morrow) as they fall in love; Marie Windsor's screaming; the way the cave spiders scream while being stabbed and shot; the painting that is supposed to be the city of the moon inhabitants in the distance; etc? Cat-Women Of The Moon can be enjoyed in a low-budget, comic book way, and may bring on a lot of unintentional laughter!