Cat-Women of the Moon (1953) – Review

How disappointed do you think Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were to find the Moon completely devoid of sexy Moon babes? I’m betting the lack of women is the reason their time on the Moon barely lasted a day, but what would be the cause of such a disappointment? The fact that even the Ancient Greeks thought the Moon was a lifeless rock makes it rather surprising how often Hollywood has depicted it as being inhabited by a variety of alien races yet it was with producer Jack Rabin’s Cat-Women of the Moon that the idea of an all-female race living on a celestial body was first introduced.

The exciting space adventure known as Cat-Women of the Moon was one of those quickie productions that raced to the theatre to cash in on the publics’ sudden love for the genre while using sets and costumes from the film Project Moonbase to shave a couple of extra bucks off their budget. What is weird is that these two films were released within one day of each other, but from different distributors, which leaves one wondering about what kind of gentlemen’s agreement these filmmakers had between production companies at least as for as it came to borrowing props and the like. Was there some kind of “Good ole boys” network among the independents that allowed for such cooperation? That all said, the sets and costumes all looked incredibly cheap and laughably silly which did add a certain charm to these films.

Space furnishings provided by Office Depot.

At just over an hour in length Cat-Women of the Moon doesn’t waste any time in getting to the action as the film starts with our “heroes” already on route to the Moon, with the required shots of the crew struggling through the G-Forces of launch, and we are quickly introduced to the crew of this mission to the Moon. First, we have Commander Laird Grainger (Sonny Tuft) the no-nonsense leader of the mission who insists everything be done “By the book” of course that book goes out the window if there happen to be cat-women on the Moon who have plans to take over the Earth, in that case, he’ll probably let a few things slide. Unfortunately for him, that is exactly what is going on as a race of women living on the moon have just such a plan, worst of all is that this plan involves his girlfriend Helen Salinger (Marie Windsor), who also happens to be the ship’s navigator, and she is being manipulated by a domineering cat-woman called Alpha (Carol Brewster) who has used her telepathic powers to control Helen from afar.

Note: We won’t be getting even implied lesbianism in this all-female society, which is something even current Hollywood films like Wonder Woman seem to have a problem addressing.

What’s interesting about the character of Helen is that aside from being a mind-controlled puppet of the cat-women, who we later learn were also responsible for her becoming a space navigator in this first place as the cat-women realized they’d never be able to get an Earth to the Moon mission that comprised solely of women so they just focused their mind powers on making Helen the best navigator possible, and yet aside from making Helen a pawn of the villains unlike many other films of the time her character is not treated condescendingly or in any way patronized by her fellow astronauts but is accepted as a competent member of the crew. This is a far cry from what we see in films like Rocketship X-M and Project Moonbase where women were clearly depicted as the weaker sex, full of all those pesky emotions that men find so annoying, but even though the character of Helen wasn’t a victim of this sort of blatant sexism in this particular outing we are still dealing with a movie about man-hating women.

“Captain, did Space Command mention the possibility of Amazons on the Moon?”

Upon arriving on the Moon the crew quickly disembark to do some exploring and it is Helen who suggests that they should check out a cave she saw while they were landing. Second-in-command Kip Reissner (Victor Jory) tries to point out to his commander that not only is it curious that Helen somehow knew about this great landing spot on the dark side of the Moon but due to the angle of their descent she wouldn’t have been able to spot this mysterious cave entrance at all, pointing out sarcastically “If she can guess the landing spot on the dark side of the Moon I suppose she can guess a cave.” Despite this being a rather relevant observation Laird “pooh-poohs” such reasonable concerns and the crew march blissfully march off into danger, which pretty sums up the rest of this film with Kip decrying to the Heavens that they are in mortal danger at every turn and then such concerns being laughed off as if he were some paranoid nut job. Even the fact of him bringing a gun causes Helen to remark “Why does the unknown always frighten people, why can’t we expect love and friendship instead of death?” yet minutes later a giant spider kind of proves his point.

When space puppets attack!

The two other members of the crew consist of Doug Smith (William Phipps) the radio operator and man voted most likely to fall in love with a cat-woman, and Walt Wallace (Douglas Fowley) the ship’s engineer and man voted most likely to be stabbed in the back while being a greedy idiot, and with his mighty assemblage of space travellers as an example of the best that Earth has to offer it kind of makes sense that the cat-women would think Earth was plum for the picking. But why are the cat-women so set on taking over the Earth? Well, it turns out that centuries ago the Moon began to lose its atmosphere and cat-women’s ancestors decided on a policy of Maximum Energy Reduction and by that they mean “planned genocide” but unlike Marvel’s Thanos they didn’t randomly cut the civilization in half they, instead, had the males of the species selectively targeted thus leaving the Moon solely populated by women.

What we have here is a lunar version of the YWCA.

As the years went by it became clear that they had only postponed the inevitable so the Cat-Women telepathed Helen to come to the Moon so that she could take three of them back to Earth where they would use their telepathic powers to take over all of the Earth’s women. The only wrinkle in the plan is that Helen is actually in love with Kip, her relationship with Laird having been telepathically manufactured by the cat-women to help her get assigned to this mission, and whenever she is embraced by Kip they lose their mental hold over her. Who says true love doesn’t conqueror all? What follows is a bunch of hijinks surrounding stolen spacesuits, Walt being lured to his death over promised gold, Doug falling in love with a cat-woman and Laird getting really pissy when he learns that Helen prefers Kip over him.

“Sure, the fate of mankind is at stake but that’s my girl!”

Stray Observations:

• The first thing Helen does after their successful launch from Earth is to check her hair and make-up, this is important as you never know who you’re going to run into while in outer space.
• When Helen inexplicably says “Hello Alpha, we’re on the way” when giving her radio broadcast the Commander chalks it up to “Space Madness” which is actually a Hollywood malady and not something ever experienced by an actual astronaut.
• Commander Laid is surprised when Helen tells him the landing site she chose is on the Dark Side of the Moon, but wouldn’t a landing site be something decided upon well before they even launched?
• Liard uses a cigarette to illustrate what would happen to anyone or anything that ventured onto the bright side of the Moon, and we see the cigarette burst into flames, but not only is the idea of people or things burning up from exposure to sunlight on the moon completely wrong how exactly can anything burn when there is no bloody atmosphere?
• Minutes later, in the cave Helen discovered, they deduce it has breathable air by lighting a match, which they see burst into flames, but going by that previous scene things burning on the Moon does not require atmosphere. It’s one thing to be scientifically inaccurate but they could at least be consistent about it.
• When Kip learns from Helen that cat-women plan to murder the men he tells the Commander “We don’t need to stand watch after all” which doesn’t seem to make much sense but I guess being murdered in your sleep would lull the cat-women into a false sense of security.

Face the dangers of Interpretive Dance!

Overall, Cat-Women of the Moon is an incredibly goofy little movie that if a little thin on the plot side of things should at least be credited as the birthplace of the all-female civilizations on other planets that continue in films over the years. Sure, we never find out how centuries-old, seemingly immortal race of women, who have master telepathy and teleportation, hadn’t yet gotten around to figuring out space travel, but that kind of thing was almost expected in this genre and certainly doesn’t lessen the entertainment value and in my case actually increases it a little. So if giant spider puppets and women in matching leotards are your bag then check out Cat-Women of the Moon as it’s a whole lot of fun.