Cat-Women of the Moon (1953)
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(Foreign Titles)
Nomination Year: 2014
SYNOPSIS: Cat-Women of the
Moon is truly a film of its time (the early 1950s).
A few specific things make it very 1953. The female astronaut feels naked going anywhere without her cigarettes, even the airless surface of the moon. And a plot point turns on which male astronaut she is secretly in love with. Because you know she had to be in love with one of them.
The plot is fairly basic (for a 64-minute movie, it has to be). Astronauts go to the moon, and (guided by their female navigator) find a cave in a crater on the dark side of the moon -- a cave which contains an atmosphere, giant lunar puppet spiders, and an ancient society of women.
The (telepathic!) society, lead by a woman named "Alpha," is planning to secretly learn from the men how to fly the rocket so that they can escape to earth, and take control of our planet. The lunar cave is slowly losing its atmosphere, and soon their two-million-year-old society will be destroyed.
Thank goodness they couldn't wait a decade or so until women knew how to pilot rocket ships by themselves ... then we all would have been doomed!
There is a wonderful moment when the captain of the mission uses a cigarette on the lunar surface to demonstrate just how dangerous landing on the "bright side" of the moon would have been. There are many less-wonderful moments, but I want to leave you with a wonderful one.
A few specific things make it very 1953. The female astronaut feels naked going anywhere without her cigarettes, even the airless surface of the moon. And a plot point turns on which male astronaut she is secretly in love with. Because you know she had to be in love with one of them.
The plot is fairly basic (for a 64-minute movie, it has to be). Astronauts go to the moon, and (guided by their female navigator) find a cave in a crater on the dark side of the moon -- a cave which contains an atmosphere, giant lunar puppet spiders, and an ancient society of women.
The (telepathic!) society, lead by a woman named "Alpha," is planning to secretly learn from the men how to fly the rocket so that they can escape to earth, and take control of our planet. The lunar cave is slowly losing its atmosphere, and soon their two-million-year-old society will be destroyed.
Thank goodness they couldn't wait a decade or so until women knew how to pilot rocket ships by themselves ... then we all would have been doomed!
There is a wonderful moment when the captain of the mission uses a cigarette on the lunar surface to demonstrate just how dangerous landing on the "bright side" of the moon would have been. There are many less-wonderful moments, but I want to leave you with a wonderful one.
Kevin Hogan
Arthur Hilton
