Tuesday Terrors - Cat-Women of the Moon (1953)

Ok, let's be honest. The title of today's flick is Cat-Women of the Moon. It features "The Hollywood Cover Girls". Having read those two sentences, you already know whether you want to see this one or give it a pass, and there's really no need for me to tell you any more. Of course, has that ever stopped yer Ol' Professor before? No. Is it going to stop me this time? Nope.

From the so-bad-it's-actually-still-really-bad school, this B-reeler was actually created during the height of the 50's 3-D craze, and yes, it was originally released in 3-D. Why? Unfortunately, as seems to be increasingly the case today, the answer appears to be "because they could". Admittedly watching a 2-D print today may not have the same ambience, but there really seems to be no effort at all to exploit the possibilities of the process.

So what we have here is sort of a contrast of styles. The first part of the film is a fairly typical space-faring adventure (well, typical if you accept that future space-farers will be traveling in lawn recliners and office chairs), and the second part is their encounter with the titular Cat-Women who are the last of a race of people who apparently have been trapped on the moon for around 2-million years. Having developed a telepathic rapport with the lone female crew member of the space-ship, (who just happens to be the navigator for this flight which apparently has not even tried to figure out where the optimum landing spot is before they took off) the Cat-Women subtly direct her to direct the craft near to their cave-lair. Their plan is to overtake the men on the flight (exploiting their "weak points") and then hijack the ship so they can escape to the Earth.

The Cat-Women are certainly suitably slinky in their black tights, damsel-in-distress Helen is definitely distressed, the men are all brash and brave and curt, and the spider... what? I forgot to mention the spider? Oh, yeah, there's a giant spider. Well, actually there's something resembling a giant spider puppet that the men spend some time struggling with before... well, anyway, yeah, there's a giant spider.

Ok, let's take a look, shall we?


And now the Skinny:
Title: Cat-Women of the Moon
Release Date: 1953
Running Time: 64min
Black and White, 3-D
Starring: Victor Jory, Marie Windsor
Directed by: Arthur Hilton
Produced by: Jack Rabin, Al Zimbalist
Distributed by: Astor Pictures

Cat-Women of the Moon is available to watch or download for free here.
It's also available for purchase on DVD from Amazon: Cat-Women of the Moon.
Netflix also has this DVD available for rental: Cat-Women of the Moon.

Until next time, Happy Treasure Hunting,
-Professor Damian