The Most Startling Movie of the Century!!!

“The eternal wonders of space and time, the far away dreams and mysteries of other worlds, other life, the stars, the planets. Man has been face to face with this for centuries and barely able to penetrate the unknown secrets. Some time, some way, the secrets will be pierced. Why must we wait? Why not now?”

WHAP! Flaming phallic rockets, Lois, cut the talk and get to the point!

In which the person who hates their office job is given the resources to imagine they’re a daring space adventurer for the next month

And “Cat Women of the Moon” does. Kind of. From the vistas of starry space to a shot of a toy rocket to…uh…well, I’m telling you what I need is to post an image that would speak the thousand words I can’t quite get in my grip, sitting here staring at the television set now for five minutes and counting, wondering just where to begin. The man lying strapped into the lawn chair? The office chairs on rollers at desks? The computer as conceptual art that is one tape reel on the wall above a small bank of lights? The strange suspended kind of hammocks to left and right that you don’t even notice at first because of the guy strapped Frankenstein monster like to the prominent front lawn chair on the floor? Any minute I expect a bolt of lighting to thwack him zap, the man to rip the bindings from his wrists with super strength and uhm…I dunno…proceed directly into office chair space sex with a cabin mate babe, because that’s just how astonishingly grab bag, “no one will care, they’re just here for the flesh”, bad this set is. And praise the Hollywood film overlords for it! When the sets are this bad and there’s no promise of skin, the next hour of entertainment is going to be watching the actors struggle to convince themselves that content resides in the thespian’s craft.

Cut to Sonny Tufts (playing Laird Grainger) searching for an expression. Cut next to Victor Jory (playing Kip Resissner) who hears “Action!” and kind of heaves his chest. Cut to the rocket ship’s viewing screen which shows something zipping past, establishing for us the ferocious velocity that appears to have no effect on the valiant quonset hut that could. Cut to Marie Windsor (playing Helen Salinger) who hears “Action!” and breathes. Cut to Douglas Fowley as the devil with delicately-penciled power mustache and male’s version of widow’s peak, grimacing, managing to flubadubdub his cheeks supposedly simulating gravity fighting to drag your ass back to reality (or in this case a trace sensibility as in, “Don’t make this film!”). Cut to…oh…oh…now this actor, William Phipps, he had come up with the brilliant idea that withdrawing from Earth would be best representing by The Shakes and is watching hordes of spiders crawling up and down the walls.

“White Sands calling Moon Rocket 4 Code 63…Can you hear us?”

Cut again to the blondish older guy Sonny Tufts, who’s not Lloyd Bridges, trying to break a sweat. Kip and Helen appear to relax, yet Diablo still struggles because no three actors are ever on the same page in this film. Begging response, White Sands gets panicky. Meanwhile, ascension apparently accomplished (what happens to an actor when his career dies even as you are watching a film, and I’m being lamely facetious there as Victor Jory served a long time in Hollywood), Kip opens his eyes, rubs them, removes his hands from their straps, his fingers curled into arthritic claws, and massages them too. Looking at the rocket’s viewer he grunts, “What’da you know.” Helen removes her hands as well from their restraints and taking Kip’s cue does a screen test as a pain relief hand model. Kip attempts to give the appearance of a fifty-year-old energetically leaping from his cot above Helen’s and would have done a good job of it except he knocks his foot on a supposed control box that is sitting right on the cot at his feet, its electrical cord dangling down! He glances back at the box to let it know he’s aware it tried to trip him up but he won that round (you go, Kip!), and informs Laird the telephone’s on the burner.

Assistance is provided outlining your co-workers roles in your secret space fantasy

“All right you sleeping beauties, hit the deck!” Kip orders “Every man a tiger! Let’s go!”

Tiger. OK, the movie’s about Moon Cat Women so this mention of every man a tiger must mean something. An anticipation of the troubles to come but that tigers have it all over cats and the men will win in the end?

By the way, Victor Jory narrated “Tubby the Tuba”, his version of which wins hands down over Danny Kaye’s. I adore Victor Jory because of this. He can do no wrong. There is no mocking this man, I’m incapable.

Kip checks on Helen. Is she all right? Yes. She stands and fails to convincingly stretch her muscles, which almost distracts us from getting a really good look at that control box sitting on the cot behind. Then, rubbing your face in the preposterousness of it all, she advances a foot to her secretarial office desk, slides open a drawer, takes out a compact and comb and touches up her hair. Yes, she touches up her hair! as the Shakes Guy, soaked with sweat, manages to drag himself up and exclaim, “In space, we made it.”

“Oh brother, am I going to collect some bets,” says Diablo, grinning and leaping down from his cot, rubbing his tortured elderly limbs as well. Laird, having taken the command seat that he will have a hard time filling, even while spilling out all over it, protests talking to White Sands just yet; no, he wants his crew instead to prepare their reports because this is, after all a science expedition, not just a stunt! That’s right, leave ’em hanging in White Sands wondering if the rocket’s turned into a space coffin. Typical passive-aggressive.

“Are we on course, Helen?” Laird asks.

Helen puts up her compact and without looking at her instruments, replies, “On course.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite. You know, Laird, I’ve the strangest feeling, as though all this has happened before.”

I’ve the sneaking suspicion it wasn’t in rehearsal.

At a loss with how to cope (and they haven’t even hit the requisite meteor shower yet), Laird opts for ignoring his navigator, answering White Sands. They’ve passed the 2000 mile mark and are traveling at 7 miles a second. “Motor’s smooth, fuel consumption point 865, temperature density of atom chamber unchanged, nitrate pictate acid secure. We will report again at 1400. Over and out.”

Nitrate pictate acid? Is that what he said? Did he mean to say nitrate picrate acid? “Come again?” the folks at White Sands should be saying, but what they want is a word from the crew for the waiting world. Though the request doesn’t sit well with Laird, because this is, after all, a real science expedition, he permits the crew to take their turns giving their regards to Earth.

“All I’ve got to say is watch out for that first step, it’s a pip,” Kip jokes.

And merry prankster Helen? “Hello Alpha, we’re on our way.”

Kip and Laird again glance at Helen like what kind of drugs are you on, woman. Doug Smith, the radio operator, promises to bring Earth some green cheese. Walter Walters, the engineer, says, “We’re humming along folks, that new lubrication by the Del 5 Oil Company sure turned the trick.” Then aside to Doug, “That plug ought to make a couple of grand, huh.”

Phipps appears to have not competely grasped, at the time the movie was made, that cheese was what it was all about. An interview has him reminiscing on certain ludicrous aspects of the film and how he’d moaned they would ruin it.

How to successfully imagine a meteor strike without killing your fantasy right off

White Sands turning communication over to the brass in DC, the crew is congratulated and informed, if they didn’t know, that they’ve embarked on a space journey of over 200,000 miles (cut to the rocket ship exterior and a subliminal quarter second’s worth of I guess earth terrain before returning to the crew–what happened in the editing room there?) at 25,000 miles per hour with 10 hours of flight ahead of them. (Cut to a bottle rocket whirring outside the ship.) The engineer asks the radio operator if he has any gum and is shushed by the radio operator who wants to hear what the brass is saying about skill and courage, and something about prayer, there’s another shot of the bottle rocket and SLAM!, Laird identifying, “Something’s embedded in our rear section!” In the atom chamber! The heat radiation is going up fast.

Helen’s studied all the previous sci fi movies of the decade. “Must be a meteor!” Can they shake it?

“Maybe centrifugal force will dislodge it…”

Cut to the exterior of the rocket, which shows no sign of injury, now slowly turning very slowly turning slow slow toy rocket turning, back inside to the crew waiting and then yes, they’ve dumped the rock.

“If we’d been paying more attention to our work this might not have happened!” Laird scolds, asking the radio operator if he’d seen the meteor on the view screen.

“No sir, I was listening to the…”

“Exactly!”

No need to listen to the brass in Washington.

“For the rest of this journey we operate strictly by the book,” Laird says. “The planners of this journey have foreseen all contingencies.”

“We hope,” Kip sneers.

“We do more than hope! We work with confidence!”

M’thinks Laird protests too much.

Who’s running this ship anyway? Which is a concern that has been at the forefront of Laird’s mind and was what distracted him, one assumes, from observing the meteor himself.

Now the radio operator is unable to bring up White Sands and the Sector 5 light is flashing! The atom chamber! One of the containers of nitric acid must have broken and if it reaches the fuel it will explode! Turning on the water line doesn’t neutralize it and Laird is near panic with things not going by the book, yelling at Kip as he gets up from his seat, “What are you doing?” Yelling at him to “Come back!” as Kip, a man of action, grabs some white protection utility suit and prepares to go check the water line. “Kip!”

Alrighty then, Doug and Walter rush to help Kip on with his fire suit…in front of a set of metal lockers, those lockers for some reason leaving me about as speechless as the desks and office chairs. The thunk that’s made as they bump into the lockers, dressing Kip, resounds quite loudly, as you’re sitting there thinking you’ve never seen metal lockers used on a rocket ship set before.

Kip climbs down into the atom chamber. Way too much time is spent with Kip wandering around looking for the hatchet with which he could, as an actor or–with some radical suspension of disbelief–as an astronaut, put himself out of his misery. There is no hatchet, fortunately–fortunately, for this is Victor Jory and I love Tubby the Tuba Victor Jory with all my aching heart and soul. Locating a fire extinguisher, Kip gamely waves it around, and if this was any actor other than Victor Jory than he’d be inwardly griping about how acting in a cover-all isn’t acting all, deprived of communicating emotion, but not Tubby the Tuba who being fiercely dedicated to song and symphony will blow oom-pah-looh up until his lovely brass heart bursts a valve and off he floats to Marching Band Heaven, where he will never feel lonely again, his wind supplying the wings on the breeze upon which all the ghosts of Macy’s Thanksgiving balloons bob and bounce.

Cut to outside of rocket.

In which you have a fantasy chance to profess your undying love to your favorite office co-worker, while I instead meditate on the marvelous Tubby pining for his own pretty melody

Cut to Kip resting on Laird’s bunk, coming to, Helen seated at his feet. “Every man a tiger, let’s go!” she jokes. Kip notices the white gauze band aid on his thumb. “You must have skin like a rhinoceros, it didn’t even blister,” Helen remarks, resting her hand on his, and he rests his other hand on hers (and she rests her hand resting his hand on hers and so on and forth), replying, “We can’t all be beautiful.” A meaningful exchange of looks. (Oh, but Tubby! We are each beautiful in our own way! Isn’t that so, Tubby?!) Kip asks if Laird is sore after what he did and Helen answers that he did give them another lecture on discipline. Kip rolls on his side toward the camera.

“He’s right, you know,” Helen says. “We came only this far because we did it by the book.”

“Some things aren’t in the book,” Kip replies, leaning in to her, then back. “I’m OK, go and talk to Laird. After all, you are his girl.”

Oh, so that’s what’s going on here. But we’d suspected as much. The Tuba’s in love with the trombone’s squeeze.

“For the duration of the trip the only relation I have with Laird is a scientific one. This is no time to tamper with emotions,” Helen defends her right to be on the ship as a professional navigator who guides by intuition.

“Bet you got that from him.”

“It’s true.”

“It’s hooey!” Ferocious tiger Kip flings caution to the wind, going face to face with Helen. “You can’t turn love on and off like a faucet! Believe me baby, if I ever fell in love with you I’d chase you across the world, around the moon and through all the way stations inbetween!” That confession out of the way–now that they’re all stuck in space in one room, everyone forced to confront Tuby’s angst, full-throttle–unwrapping his thumb, Kip leans back. “Go on, beat it.”

Oh, said Tubby, every time we do a new piece, you get such pretty melodies to play, and I?–never a pretty melody.

And then reclining on his side, facing the camera, resting on his elbow, shoulders hunched, Kip turns his attention to his thumb and decides to put it in his mouth and sucks it for one-thousand, two-thousand, three-thousand, four-thousand beats, nursing that thumb in his mouth…

Which is one of the most peculiar bits of film I’ve ever seen in my life, that one right there.

It may be the most peculiar bit of film I’ve ever seen.

Which, for the sake of Tubby the Tuba, I would have to forget, except that Tubby and Victor Jory can do no wrong, no. I’m sure Victor knew exactly what he was doing and I will therefore embrace that action. Man, he’s wonderful. Digs down into the heart of the role and pulls out of a character the most extraordinary…character notes. Yeah. Character notes.

“All right hero, I’ll go talk to Laird,” Helen sniffs, “but if you don’t mind it will only be about our landing.”

Laird’s had his back turned throughout, this exchange has supposedly been between Helen and Tubby alone. But Helen now walks the four feet over to Laird and huffs, “You two make a great team, strong mind and strong back!” Laird chuckles, “I suppose.”

And the whole orchestra laughed.

Which means, I take it, that Laird is well aware of Kip’s crush on Helen and has dreamed of the moon trip as an opportunity to rub it in that Kip’s not leading man material?

The viewer screen now fixed, through the next bit of dialogue we watch the moon meander drunkenly back and forth.

The boss surrounds him or herself with people of questionable skills in case of the need for responsibility-avoiding excuses later

Laird asks Helen who Alpha is. Helen says she doesn’t remember saying anything about Alpha. Laird says it was then probably just a touch of space madness and seems not to be very worried about this. “Better pick your landing spot and start figuring.”

“I already have. We’re on course.”

Good for the captain’s girl! He knew she’d pull it together. “That’s what I call a navigator!”

“It’s a valley on the dark side of the moon.”

Yes, that kind of relationship, each one ever hoping the other will one day measure up to the most modest of expectations.

“On the dark side!? How could you possibly know anything about the dark side. All we’ve ever seen is the bright side.”

“Well the bright side just cuts across part of this valley, you can barely see it…”

“Why there? We plan to study the bright side and circle to the dark side.”

Why? Because the navigator knows best, that’s why! “Please! This is the perfect landing place. Believe me. I don’t know why I know it but I know it for sure.”

Well, whatever.

“You’re the navigator. Take a look at it anyway.”

So they land.

“I knew it was the right place!”

“Some day I’m going to ask you how,” Laird doesn’t really threaten, he and Helen knowing that their thin excuse for a relationship wouldn’t tolerate it.

“What do we do first Laird?” Kip Strong Back asks, stretching (and flexing) his muscles in Laird’s face. “Want to check the ship and do a repair job if necessary?”

“Let’s make some findings first. We’re on the moon, not in a machine shop,” Helen protests, Laird agreeing.
Kip concedes but says he’d feel better if he knew they could take off at a moment’s notice.

“Why?” Helen asks.

“My Navy background. Men in engagement, be prepared to disengaged,” or something like that, I’m not sure I’m quoting that line exactly right, not even after rewinding and listening three times. And, as it flusters me a little, I think we’ll just move along.

“Well this isn’t the Navy! Come on, Doug, help me into my suit!”

That’s odd, don’t you think, that Helen, when she’s mad at Kip, gets back at him by demanding Doug, not Laird, help her into her suit. A therapist would have something enlightening to remark on it, but I’m not a therapist. No, I’m just thinking that the script writer must have had his nose pulled through it by a fairly twisted relationship.

Next we have everyone suited up in astronaut gear, but seems they pulled from two ready-made sources as three wear matching clear bubble helmets and two others are stuck with metal cylindrical helmets. Laird tells them that once they’re out there to remember to stay in the dark side. Helen pocketing a pack of cigarettes, Kip asks her what she wants with them when there’s no oxygen, to which she replies that she feels more at home. Laughing in reply, Kip pulls out his gun. Laird, not without some extinct for self-preservation, says the gun is just as silly as there’s no life on the moon. (Ha! Not until you take your first step on it, Laird!) Kip laughs he’s just like Helen and feels more at home with it.

“Tell him not to, Laird!” One’s Great Aunt Millie is suddenly channeled now by Helen and Laird winces inward as it’s the same plaintive whine Helen uses when frustrated at him for picking up a bag of kitty litter at the corner market rather than waiting to buy it cheaper by the truckload at Costco. “Either we’re on a scientific expedition or we’re a bunch of boy scouts on an outing.”

With a gun.

And a love triangle.

“I agree with you Helen, but I guess it won’t do any harm.” If the gun accidentally fires and he is shot, well, no worries, centrifugal force can play the great surgeon. “There’s too much infantile romanticism in this crew,” Laird pouts.

Doug holds up a Los Angeles City Limits sign. “Then I guess I better leave this behind.”

“I was going to do this outside but I guess it can wait,” Walter says, taking out a box filled with letters that he’d planned to stamp on the moon, figuring they’d be worth a couple hundred dollars a piece. Oooh, that devilish, greedy Walter, always thinking about money, money, money.

In which Laird wastes one of Helen’s precious cigarettes and considering the nearest Gas ‘N Go is thousands of miles away, he deserves to die

Laird descends first to the moon set. “It works, come ahead!” he yells up.

What works? The set? His helmet? Did he imagine if it didn’t that he’d have time to yell for duct tape?

“Think of it Helen, 200,000 miles away we were, yet we knew it would be like this!” Laird tells his woman as she takes her place at his side, sweeping his arm in a broad appreciative display of the valleys of the moon.

This being my second viewing of the film, knowing what’s coming up, I’m thinking what’s up with that statement? Has he entered some strange mental symbiosis with her? Or is he trying to reassure himself that the moon goes by the book (please god, let it go by the book) and as the moon does so will Helen get her act together, decide to be satisfied with the way things are, realize that they are meant to be together as the moon is exactly as it was supposed to be–you can see how that makes sense, Helen, can’t you?–and (please, god, please) stop reminding him he’d only be a whole man if he had heroic Kip’s strong back, especially as his brain, though it’s his strong point, isn’t all that or else she wouldn’t always be lording female intuition over him.

“We’ll head that way,” Helen says.

“Any particular reason?”

“There’s a cave in the side of the crater over there. I noticed it when we were settling in.”

Kip quips there must be buried treasure there, perhaps, to which an indignant Laird replies, “Kip, would you mind it very much if we did operate by the book for a while?”

Hello? What book? A science book? “Here we are at the dividing line,” Laird points out where shadow and light meet on the moon with no shade of gray between. “May not seem like much to us but if Helen will fish me out one of those silly cigarettes, I’ll show you something.” Laird takes one of Helen’s cigarettes and carefully tosses it across the “dividing line” to the light side, where the cigarette promptly explodes in flames.

Wow!

Yeah, no kidding, wow! That’s some pretty startling stuff. I’m surprised!

And, look, there’s Helen’s cave!

“I wonder if the commander would permit an observation,” Kip approaches Laird. No need to be so formal says Laird–which Kip wasn’t being, but Laird missed it. “I only wanted to point out that from the angle the ship entered the crater it would have been impossible for Miss Salinger to spot the cave.”

“You mean she just guessed it was there.”

“If she can guess a landing spot on the dark side of the moon, I suppose she can guess a cave.”

“What are you driving at?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll guarantee you it isn’t in the book.”

Oooh, yeah, rub it in, rub it in. One dig deserving another, when Kip asks if someone shouldn’t stay behind and guard the rocket, Laird takes the opportunity to scoff that he doesn’t think anyone will take it–because, after all, the moon is uninhabited after all, right Laird?

“Exactly as I dreamt it,” Helen marvels at the cave. “Or did I? Maybe this is the dream.”

“Pretty weird,” Laird says and asks if she’s had enough, because if she’s tired they can go back. (Please?)

“No! We go on this way!”

Kip ain’t so happy with things either but everyone trots dutifully along behind Navigator Helen through the cave.

Noticing stalagmites and stalactites are everywhere, you laugh.

“Look, there’s moisture!” crew says, reading your mind. Which is too much for Laird who says it’s impossible, it only looks like water. “A scientist that doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain,” Kip retorts and points out where there’s atmosphere there’s got to be gravity to hold it. Well, then, Laird suggests they go back and get their instruments to check (and get out of that damn cave before giant spiders appear and attempt to eat them) but Kip instead grabs Helen’s matches and lights one. Fire! Oxygen! “It’s air all right,” Doug says, pulling off his helmet. Walter speculates on how they can bottle it as Moon Mist for chronic coughs and asthma, and Laird mulls over how free and confident Kip’s hands were fetching the matches from Helen’s person.

“Well, Laird, that wasn’t in the book,” Kip digs it in. “How do you figure it?”

“That makes you very happy, I suppose.”

“Just curious.”

“The magnetic field on the dark side could exhibit a gravitational pull, a special one.” Laird coughs. “Of course, we’d have to verify it.”

“And this is a natural decompression chamber,” Walter adds.

“We’re almost at the end,” Helen informs them.

“How do you know?”

Damn men always asking her to explain things. “Well, it stands to reason. The air’s not stuffy so there must be an opening nearby.”

In case you were wondering, moon cheeze > curds and whey > Little Miss Muffett–such was the line of reasoning

They strip out of their suits but Kip resolves to bring along his gun as where there’s oxygen there’s life and where there’s life there’s death.

“There you go again, Kip,” Helen complains. “Why is it the unknown always frightens people? Why can’t we expect love and friendship instead of death?”

On cue, Helen becomes spider bait. (I was wondering when the spiders from “Queen of Outer Space” would happen by. Oh, wait, “Queen of Outer Space” came out in 1958, Cat Women preceding by five years. So from where were borrowed the spider props because you know Cat Woman’s budget didn’t allow for them.) It’s big and hairy and has a horn on top of its head. The men attack, stabbing it repeatedly, then Kip thinks to shoot it to death. But there’s more time to be wasted. Another spider pounces on hapless Helen and is again shot to death by Kip, who again misses doing away with Laird.

Helen shaken, resting for a moment after her ordeal, Kip goes back with Walter to get the space suits, and for some reason Laird and Doug advance ahead, leaving the hapless Helen alone, an arm covering her eyes so she will be unable to see if any other spiders should advance upon her. Cut to the shadow of a woman’s head against the cave wall. Behind Helen, on the rock she’s leaning against, there step into view…feet in black tights shod in a pair of scuffed, black ballet slippers. With straps. A moon dancer? Helen doesn’t notice the dancer climbing down next to her and passing her hand over the length of Helen’s arm. Moon Dancer quickly makes a circle on Helen’s palm causing an illuminated dot to appear. Helen exhibiting some sense of awareness and screaming, the mysterious dancer in scuffed ballet slippers scurries away.

“What happened?” Laird asks, racing to answer Helen’s distress.

“Oh, nothing. I just opened my eyes and missed you.”

Like if you had a woman or man friend who screamed bloody murder every time you wandered around the bend away from them, you’d imagine this was a good thing?

Laird again suggests it’s time to return to the ship. Helen balks, arguing Laird’s been listening to Kip, who’s just afraid. Ignoring the allusion to Laird’s being a coward, Doug says he doesn’t believe Kip’s afraid, instead they just don’t know what’s ahead.

“I’ll tell you then! Adventure, discovery and knowledge, isn’t that why we came?” Helen yells she will go on alone, that Laird isn’t her commander. She knows where she wants to go and she’s going there. On the verge of not telling Helen to go bake, Laird is relieved that Kip and Walter return as he may continue to practice avoidance of his avoidance. But, oh no, Kip and Walter reveal the space suits are gone! “You seem very proud of yourself Helen,” Laird says to Helen, concealing his relief that he doesn’t have to worry about arguing with her over pressing forward, which she’s demanding they do seeing as hah hah they have no other option.

“I am.”

A woman who says what’s on some other woman’s mind (as we shall soon learn) means we really shouldn’t take too much glee in Helen voicing her supposed thoughts, because as a weak-willed Earth Woman she hasn’t any, and the fact that the theater is filled with Earth Women going, “Yes!” despite the fact Helen is speaking for someone else, well, it’s kind of interesting.

In which Helen is completely taken over by the dark side and no longer responsible for any of her actions, which excites the men in the theater as a woman who will do anything for sake of manipulating them, cut free from conscience, is somehow a pleasurable fantasy

Next scene they are stepping out of a cave into an open moon valley, a small ancient city beyond resting beneath moon clouds. Helen leads them confidently on and into an open air plaza of black and white checkerboard floor, boarded right and left with tall Greco-roman style columns topped with statues of some being (couldn’t begin to tell you what). Over the plaza gazes a statue of Buddha, or so it seems, which could merit some discussion on America’s mid-twentieth century views on any religion that wasn’t Christian, which were just plain very confused views. Laird notes the bowls filled with ashes in which torches may have once burned and that the ashes are cold. “I’d say there hasn’t been a fire lit in this place in many years, perhaps centuries. An extinct civilization.”

I’d say that Laird presumes a lot upon meeting a bowl of ash, but since the crew’s space suits are stolen I’ll just ask how in the hell did he come to be chosen to lead this mission, which is the same thing on the rest of the crew’s mind.

“Took some form of intelligence to steal those space suits.”

“Course it did,” Helen says, “and a very high one to build a place like this.”

Kip observes she seems to know all about it. “What do they look like?” he demands, but Doug interrupts, calling them over to a torch which seems to have a piece of charcoal. Helen’s matches, the ones she said she didn’t feel at home without, spark the flame.

“Helen, I asked you a question. You seemed to know this place was here. What else do you know?”

Helen argues that she knows nothing and must have dreamt it, to which Kip effectively says posh. Laird argues for Helen’s honor–and despite Lair arguing for Helen, when she’s peeved what does she do again but shun Laird and go for the radio operator. “Come on, Doug, let’s look around,” Helen says, surly, and he happily follows. At the plaza’s edge she steps back against a pillar and watches as a woman in black leotard and ballet slippers, dark hair pulled back in a low bun, leaps upon Doug. They struggle. Helen takes the chance to sneak away. “Ow!” Doug yells, Cat Woman going for his neck, and she flees as the rest of the men run over. Doug says he didn’t see what jumped him but he did see Helen just stand against the pillar watching.

Bad Helen.

Oh, very bad Helen.

The flame left unattended, a figure advances to the bowl, crosses its hands in the flame and causes it to disappear, the figure then also going poof. The men run to see and are tackled by women who fail to get the gun from Kip and run off. Doug restrains one, but as the men gather around to ogle her, she too disappears. Kip says they’ll give Helen one hour to return then leave without her.

Laird challenges, “I’m still in command here, Kip.”

“That’s right, Laird, if you order us to separate and go searching for Helen, we will,” Kip challenges back.

“No, we’ll wait,” Laird demures.

Cut to Helen passing through a curtain and announcing, “I’m here, Alpha.”

Cut to Alpha in dramatic cat’s eye make-up, black leotard and some kind of silvery (in black and white) pectoral necklace. “It’s been a long journey, Helen,” she smiles. “Welcome to the moon.” She introduces Helen to her second-in-command, Beta, and Lambda, each of the women with dark hair in the same style, each clothed in the same outfit of black leotard, tights, ballet slippers and necklace.

Helen rubs her temples. She’s confused (and experiencing nicotine withdrawal). There’s so much she doesn’t understand. As she is now one of them, however, she’s told she can ask any question what she wants.

How does she understand their language? Well, because they don’t need language, they can project their thoughts long distances. Some day they will teach her but in the meanwhile will speak her tongue.

“Why me and not the others?” Helen asks.

Beta scorns, “We have no use for…men.”

A quick bit of damage control in order, Alpha explains, “What Beta means is we have no contact or control over them as we do among ourselves. It seemed rather difficult to get a crew entirely composed of women. We decided to concentrate on you.”

In other words, because you, Earth Woman, have even less will power than By-the-Book Laird, but Helen seems not bothered in the least she’s just been called a hollow shell of a person,

So why didn’t they go to earth, with all their wisdom? Because the ancestors made a fatal error upon discovering the atmosphere on the moon was beginning to disappear. They decided to conserve oxygen. Maximum energy reduction. Planned genocide to reduce population. “Then when we discovered we were only postponing the inevitable, it was too late. Our only hope was that a spaceship would come to us.”

The plan is that the spaceship will take Alpha, Beta and Lambda back to Earth.

“But my knowledge is limited only to navigation,” Helen says, beginning to understand. “We can run a ship without…them?”

“They will teach us how.”

“But you said you had no control over them.”

Beta smiles. “Show us their weak points. We’ll take care of the rest.”

“Strange. I should care what happens to them, and yet I don’t.”

“You see, we don’t care and you are one of us.”

The confused mess of suggestive underpinnings is not so much that the Cat Women are all lesbians but that lesbians have seized control, killed off all the men, and have the psychic will power to seize the minds of all females and absorb them into their vengeful, power hungry, man-loathing sisterhood, and that power hungry, man-loathing lesbians are more than glad to manipulate men sexually in order to dominate them, and having dominated, kill them, because sex is death after all. Your basic women in chains scenario and the moon is a psychic prison planet.

A lotus for every man, except Kip, who brought a pocketful of K-rations (yum)

Back to the men waiting. It’s been one hour, Laird says, and that Kip was wrong. But Kip hears something and leads them into a room in which Helen appears with the Cat Women bearing food. Helen reprimands Kip for his gun, telling him it was the weapon that frightened the Cat Women and that she has promised them he’ll put it away. The weapon representing Kip’s free male will, he argues no, and that if the Cat Women only mean well they’ll return the suits now. The women promise to return the suits, but that it will be in the morning, and Kip storms off, refusing their orgy of food and female wiles.

“Pay no attention to him. He’s only the co-pilot,” Helen says.

Doug, the innocent, is paired off with Lambda, while Diablo gets Beta for his lunchmate. Doug says he wonders what people on Earth would think if they knew he was eating with a beautiful woman.

Lambda asks, “Do you have a special earth girl?”

“No. not special. What about you?” And, by the way, where are the men folk? Lambda reveals he’s the first man she’s seen, that the others died off when she was a child.

“Then it’s a lucky thing we came along. I mean, so that you’d know what a man looks like. I mean, I’m sorry about your men…”

Yes, Doug, we know what you mean.

Over on the sidelines, a disgusted Kip chews his rations meal, looking on, crumbles up the wrapper and tosses it. He’s been around the block and knows better than to partake of the lotus.

Alpha picks Laird’s brain on how you pilot a rocket ship, but Laird isn’t revealing how the automatic pilot is set as it’s confidential information. Laird is curious how Lambda is able to come and go so munchkin quickly and Alpha replies that if he tells her about the automatic pilot then she’ll tell him how they’ve managed full mastery of their bodies and minds. But no deal for Laird, at least not for the moment, so she offers him wine.

And Kip, on the sidelines, looks on.

Walter, the opportunist, asks for the bracelet that Beta wears and observes that at home it’s called a slave bracelet. Having identified Walter’s weak point, Beta tells him gold is considered a common metal on the moon and that there is a cave filled with it nearby. She proposes that she’ll show him the cave and return the space suits if he takes her on the ship. He says he’ll consider it, as long as she tells no one else about the gold.

Meanwhile, Doug is telling his Moon Girl all about Saturday night dating rituals back home. She says she likes best driving down to the beach, stretching out on the sand, “And, maybe, what you call a Coke.” (And that’s what you called a product plug in the 50’s.)

That’s what Doug likes best, too. As long as it’s with the right girl.

“To the everlasting friendship of our peoples,” Alpha toasts, then proposes all part and rest for the night.

In which the office worker is given a guide for imagining a romantic encounter with the office worker who stubbornly resists any notion of a mutual attraction, and he or she plays it out in their head for the next three months, because the Women In Chains scenario is probably most appealing to those who haven’t a chance of scoring

The women leave and Laird scolds Kip for wanting to blunder ahead and start a war. Kip isn’t interested, he just wants to figure out which two of them are going to stand watch first that night. And, by the way, where is Walt? When Doug says he was last seen leaving with Beta, Helen laughs over his being a fast worker, but Kip storms off to look for him saying it’s not funny. A few seconds’ search not unearthing Walt, Kip returns, upset, but Laird says he doesn’t believe Walt is in any danger.

Is he or isn’t he, Kip asks Helen. She retorts Kip’s just looking for an argument, which he says he is and would she like to step into his office. Handing Doug his gun, Kip takes Helen to a spot where he can have it out with her, absent Laird. You and I both know where this heading and if Laird doesn’t, then he deserves what he gets (or doesn’t deserve what he doesn’t get).

Exiting outside, Kip asks Helen which side she’s on, saying he’s convinced she led them deliberately into the situation. He grabs her arms. “Look Helen I have a very high regard for you,” he romances her. “You’re smart, you have courage. And you’re all woman. And if it hadn’t been for Laird I would have tried to make it you and me a long time ago.”

“Flattery will get you no place.”

Kip grasps Helen’s hand, restraining her. She yells for him to take his paws off her. He says not until she levels with him. Helen collapses in tears on his shoulder. “Don’t let go, Kit,” she sobs. “Danger!” They want to kill him and take the spaceship, she tells him, and that they’re able to control her. “Even with Laird, I liked you best but Laird knew more and they wanted me with him.”

“They don’t control you now.”

No.

Hang on, hold on tight talk. Talk of how he’s dog-gone right he will. Big aggressive kiss finally, and it’s obvious that Kip is a one woman man and that when they get home they’ll settle down and raise little Tubbys on a diet of Cream of Mushroom Soup over Cold War. As they embrace, Helen eyes her palm and the white circle of light on it. She asks Kip not to tell Laird, let her be the one to figure out how to tell him as she doesn’t want to hurt Man Brain’s feelings that she’s opted for the Strong Back.

Sure, sure, Kip says, but grasps her as she goes and asks how do the Cat Women intend to play their hand.

Not for a few days.

And Walt? Is Walt all right?

Boys will be boys.

Helen asks to go in, saying she’s exhausted. Kip, so confident that he’s skipped further wooing and honeymoon, moving directly to the “Have a nice day at work, honey” stage, plants a big kiss on her cheek. “Sleep well, Helen.” In truth, he looks at her like, “Must I kiss you again?”, takes a reading and realizes she’s not too hot on the idea either, but feels compelled to cement for the audience that a bond has been made. Helen rushes off leaving him looking kind of meaningfully after her, his hand extended, wistful, holding empty air or maybe a memory, whichever works best for you.

Laird stepping now outside asks, “Well?”

Hem haw. “You were right, Laird. She’s just a fine girl.”

She is, Laird proudly concedes. He does admit there are a lot of things he doesn’t understand, “But you can be sure there’s a perfectly valid, scientific reason for all of them. These people are far ahead of us in many things.”

“Not as far as they think.”

“What do you mean?”

Oh, nothing. Kip suggests they get to sleep.

Which co-worker would you feel good about killing off in your fantasy life? Cat Women of the Moon opt for Diablo just in case (I guess) their plan doesn’t work out as they don’t want hordes of pioneers following Gold Diggers to the moon and consuming all the natural resources which we’ve yet to see

Cut to the spaceship where Walt and Beta, in space suits, huddle talking romance. “In other words,” she says, “this controls this, in a ratio of six to one.” Yes, that controls that. She runs briefly through again what she’s learned. “The speed control retarder. The stabilizer. And the cut-off.”

Walt laughs. “You’re too smart for me, baby. I like ’em stupid.”

Beta laughs. “Why don’t you stay on the moon and let me do your job?”

Walt says if there’s as much gold as she says there is, he’ll do only one more trip and then she can have his job.

Fade to the…Dance of the Cat Women scene…which I can’t begin to describe but seems to be a fairly new cultural rite for which they’ve failed yet to identify any purpose. Lured by the flute, Doug awakes and goes to see what’s happening.

Kip now wakes up and sees that Doug is gone, hears the flute, and exits.

Doug advances upon the women dancing, upon Lambda. She faces him with pleading eyes. They kiss. Kip comes upon them as they sneak off the porch. He returns to the sleeping quarters and as he and Helen are nice and comfy confidey cozy now, he rouses her to share that he feels like he’s chaperoning a fraternity dance, Doug just having gone off with Lambda.

“Lambda! Well, that’s bad Kip,” Helen says. “She’s the dangerous one. You better go after them, there may have been a change in plan.”

Away goes trusting, trusty Kip.

Left alone with Laird, Helen stands and advances on him, he resting like some Roman Caesar oblivious to slaughter descending. Helen bends down over him…

Cut to Walt in the cave of told. Gold, gold! Beta stabs him in the back. Slowly. Real slow. That must be some powerful sharp knife with which she’s just stabbed him. And yes I know I spoiled things for you by revealing Diablo would be offed, but so did the movie’s original trailer. Everyone entering the theater knew Diablo wouldn’t make it back to Earth and have been waiting for this sorry scene.

Cut to Kip outside looking for Doug and Doug and Lambda looking at the scenery then embracing. Lambda urges Doug to go away quickly, in order to save himself from her, offering him a line that few men could resist. “Because I love you Doug, yet I must kill you.” When he insists he’s not afraid she tells him the survival of her people is at stake and in a few years the underground world will be as dead as the bright side of the moon. Doug promises to return but Lambda asks how can they be sure, and can two million years of civilization be risked for a promise. They kiss. It’s love, true love.

Kip returns to find Laird up and walking around with Helen. Laird says to leave Walt and Doug alone. “There must be something in that moon and romance stuff,” he adds, looking meaningfully at Helen, who smiles.

“All right. Now, Helen, you say something,” Kip demands.

“It’s obvious. All that poppycock I told you on the terrace was just to get you to go away. Now go away will you?!”

“That’s what I’d like to do but I’m sure not getting any help.”

Cut to Lambda entering the lair of Alpha and Beta shushing her, saying Alpha is in tune with Helen who is having the automatic pilot explained to her by Laird. Lambda interrupts and pleads that they should, in a matter of good faith, take one of the men back with them. That the Earth People would then send ships for everyone! Alpha says the four of them are quite enough and that soon, the women of earth under their control, they’ll rule the world.

“But I don’t wanna rule the world. I want to live on it just like the Earth people do.”

Such is the power of the Saturday night dating ritual…and a Coke.

“Lambda, we are coming into a new situation. We must bring our culture to earth.” The new Moon Dance must be preserved!

“No!”

“She’s fallen in love with the radio operator,” Beta says.

And what if it’s true?

“There’s no room in your life for love. We will choose your men eugenically. You and Beta will have girl children fit to carry on…”

Lambda pulls an unexpected card. She says they can’t leave without them and she won’t reveal why. Plus, she vows her will is just as strong as Alpha’s. Alpha slaps her.

OK, now it’s getting boring.

Kind of.

Have you ever heard Victor Jory’s narration of Tubby the Tuba? Because if you haven’t, you should seek it out. He’s really a fine actor. Truly. I promise. Danny Kaye couldn’t even do Tubby the Tuba without resorting to character actor cute, but Victor Jory takes seriously Tubby’s woes and tremulous, grateful joy at finding his very own melody and delivers his big-little triumph with soul-mending heart.

Doug goes to Kip and tells him what Lambda has revealed to him, that Helen’s under the control of the women and that their intention is to find out from Laird and Walt how to control the ship.

Laird! Kip goes to find Laird happily writing in a notebook on Helen’s leg. “Nothing wrong with talking shop,” Laird taunts.

“Except the cat women are out to steal our ship!” Kip says. “And Helen’s tied body and soul.”

Laird resents that. How does Kip know?

Because Helen told him herself. “Out on the terrace she told me to hold her tight! Not to kiss her but just to hold her hand!”

Kip grabs Helen’s hand and looks at it, Helen yelling at him to let go of her.

“Not this time, Baby!”

Helen briefly rolls her eyes, signalling the control of the Cat Women has been overcome, at least briefly. “Oh, thank you Kip!”

“Now, let’s set the record straight. Are you in love with Laird?”

No.

Has she been bleeding him for information for Alpha?

Yes.

“And who do you really love?”

“You.”

Yes, yes, Kip turns to Helen and pulls out all the stops with a big stage kiss that sends the cheeze meter flying into the red zone, exactly where it should be, and you appreciate the considerable effort though there’s so little chemistry between the two they seem strapped in great metal Man ‘O War prophylactics. Laird hops forward and grabs Kip and punches him. Helen, left to her own devices, promptly falls under the control of the Cat Women again and runs off.

“Do you want to put her back under Alpha’s spell?” Kip demands of Laird.

Well, yeah, Laird thinks, if Helen will play nice, cuddle up and let him scribble military secrets for her Mata-Hari pleasure. Sounds good to him.

Lambda is where the occipital and two parietal bones of the skull join, and considering Cat Lambda’s demise I’m not altogether certain the writer was unaware of this

The men rush to find Helen but learn from Lambda that Helen, Alpha and Beta are already on their way to steal the ship. Laird concedes there comes a time when you don’t fight by the book (that may or may not be what he says, it’s my best guess) and tells Doug to go with Kip to save the ship in the two space suits that Lambda has stolen for them. Lambda brings the men the suits then poof, she disappears, which is as oddly disconcerting as it is, one realizes, because the musical score comes to an abrupt halt.

Lambda reappears in front of the Helen, Beta and Alpha in the cave and begs Helen to not do what she’s planning. “They’ll kill you as they killed Walt. Stay here. Don’t listen. Stand firm.”

Beta lightly taps Lamda on the side of the head with a rock. Lambda falls down (so much for standing firm). Kip and Doug rush up. Kip fires his gun at the fleeing women. Doug crouches over Lamda as Kip gives chase, and begins to cry. I guess Lambda is dead.

In which the director asks the cameraman how much film stock is left…

Doug still crouching over Lambda, bang bang and Kip, off-camera, calls back that the cat women are dead and “Helen’s…all right!” That last little stagger seems Jory’s attempt to inject some suspenseful doubt before the climactic revelation Helen has been saved.

Cut to the ship. Still in his space suit, Doug sits grief-stricken at his radio. “As for you, young man, what’s done is done,” Laird says, patting him on the shoulders, consoling. Then, everyone at their respective stations making motions of preparing for lift-off and looking vaguely satisfied but indifferent (except for Doug), THE END, and cut to credits.

There you go. That’s the most startling movie of the century, at least according to its trailer.