Nude on the Moon

Doris Wishman belongs to that category of film directors that include Russ Meyer, John Waters, Herschell Gordon Lewis and Ed Wood. These are film-makers who make movies that are simply uncategorizable. Either you get it or you don't.

In "Nude on the Moon" the moon looks suspiciously like the Coral Castle in Florida and is inhabited by a bunch of nude women with flabby bodies and bad hair. Nothing much happens. You just get to ogle. The movie is about boobies.

Never has nudity been more wholesome. This is a nudie pic for the whole family. Your children can sit and watch it and laugh right along with you. There's nothing offensive. What a great way to dispel unhealthy attitudes towards the human body! You can teach your kids not to have a snickering, lewd attitude towards their bodies and to accept them as a natural part of life. Then they'll get bored and leave to go do something else while you sit there amazed that such a wiggy movie ever got made. With a Doc Severenson theme song!

I also appreciated how this movie so accurately depicts what life is like on lunar nudist colonies. If any of you have ever been, you will understand. Don't you get sick and tired of Hollywood misrepresenting nudity in outer space? I do.

The best thing about 'Nude On The Moon' is the title, which promises kitsch fun that the movie never quite delivers. It's one of those "legendary" cult movies that you only really watch so that when someone at a party asks you if you've seen it you can say "yes, I have". The late Doris Wishman made a few Chesty Morgan pictures and other sexploitation movies that fans of the genre rate highly, but this is from her early, much more innocent nudie period. Watching this movie you must keep in mind that it was a big deal at the time to get to see some breasts in a movie. That's the only reason this film exists! Instead of the usual peek at clean living nudists concept quite common during this period, Wishman uses a sci fi "twist" to basically make yup, you got it, a clean living nudists movie. Only these gals are "Moondolls" and live on (obviously!) the Moon. The movie only goes for 70 minutes but the two knucklehead scientists (Lester Brown, William Mayer) take 20 minutes to get to the freakin' moon, and another five are wasted before we get see any naked women. Well okay, no-one's actually naked, just topless. Most of the Moondolls aren't that fetching, but their queen/goddess (played by Marietta) is actually pretty hot and has a great pair of lungs. The younger and stupider scientist doesn't seem to notice that she looks like his secretary back home, Cathy (played by, yes, Marietta), who of course is secretly in love with him, but I'm sure you can guess how the movie will end waaaaay before he does. I've sometimes heard 'Nude On The Moon' being inexplicably described as "sleazy", it's anything but. Russ Meyer it ain't! The movie is so lightweight and innoffensive nobody but a total prude would even blink at it. Unfortunately this makes it very dull viewing.

This movie has a great premise! Astronauts undertake on a mission to the moon. When they reach their destination, it appears to be overrun by dishy females in the nude. Setups for dramas of life and death, of love and betrayal... but no payoffs! The great disappointments of this gem of the sixties is that it forgets its story upon reaching the moon. Instead we see lots and lots of barely dressed girls having a good time. This plot-turn would be quite understandable if they were in fact nude, but compared to modern times, we see no more that one might hope for at a public beach. However the dialogues are amusing, and the production-design is unforgettable. "Nude on the Moon" leaves one with the hope for a modern remake (true to the title) that dares to challenge modern day Hollywood from its current puritan "make war not love" attitude and show the american youth that it is no bigger shame to flash their butts and on celuloid. Unfortunately: they dont make them like this anymore!

It takes a lot to make me laff out loud during a movie, but this flick certainly did the job. Beyond-belief atrocious acting; a "script" that'll make you pine for the wit and wisdom of Edward Wood; special effects that make "Plan 9"'s look like "The Matrix"; a bunch of topless, football-tossing, antenna-sporting, average-looking-at-best "moon babes"; a virtual lack of synchronized dialogue; and an annoyingly catchy theme song all add up to one completely unbelievable experience. Just wait till you see the two "scientists" talking to each other in their Earth-bound spaceship, using microphones despite the fact that they are SITTING RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER!!! You'll fall right off your Barcalounger! Seriously, though, folks, despite the laffs, this one was kinda hard to sit through. It really is baaaaaaaaaaaaad! Do yourself a favor and watch "Queen of Outer Space" for the 15th time instead!

Nude on the Moon (1961)

* (out of 4)

A couple scientists invent a rocket-ship and head off for the moon. Once there they love the fact that there are naked woman standing around everywhere.

This Doris Wishman film, for some reason, has a minor cult following but I really wouldn't tell you why. Some people talk about the various changes or firsts that were done with this "nudist" picture but I guess they were watching something other than me. Yes, most nudist pictures in their Golden Era just had a camera wondering around and capturing whatever nudity they could. In my humble opinion, the "nudist" film has to be the worst sub-genre ever made and certainly has the most number of awful films.

Perhaps I'm being too hard on nudist films because, after all, it wasn't as easy to see nude bodies as it was today but at the same time you'd think directors would come up with better ways of showing it. I mean, the stories to these films are just downright awful and the majority of the time we're just given the thinest of plots and a cheap reason to capture the nudity. This film does feature a wrap-around story with the scientist making the rocket and so on but it doesn't add anything to the film other than a longer running time.

I will at least admit that the majority of the people naked here are good looking, which is a step up from some of the movies I've seen but outside of this there's no reason to watch NUDE TO THE MOON unless you're just trying to see everything Wishman did.