MISSILE TO THE MOON (1958)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

Before getting into the review proper of this film-- the only one of Richard E. Cunha's SF-cheapies that I hadn't yet analyzed-- I'll note that I watched the 2007 colorized version. The color added a little extra zest to a film that had even less of a budget than the flick it was remaking, 1953's CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON. 

Though I've suffered through a lot of senseless remakes, at least writers H.E Barrie and Vincent Fotre found a way to inject a different angle on the story. The original CAT WOMEN already had various narrative problems, and MISSILE TO THE MOON doesn't appreciably improve on any of these, nor does it tap into the "War Between Men and Women" theme of the first film. In its place, the writers inject a somewhat awkward "good women vs. bad women" motif, in which the male characters are carried along like flotsam.

CAT WOMEN dealt with an all-female civilization of lunarites sending their thought-waves to an Earthwoman in order to get her added to the crew of a moon-rocket. In MISSILE, the all-female society apparently sends its last male, name of Dirk, to Earth to find out if they should emigrate to that planet before their artificial atmosphere runs out. The dialogue suggests that the present crisis on the moon has only been going on for twenty years, solely because the new plot makes it necessary that Dirk's arranged fiancee Alpha (Laurie Mitchell) has to grow from childhood to womanhood while he's gone. 

If your society is worried about survival, it doesn't make much sense to send the last male away, but the script avoids dealing with the specifics of what Dirk did and why he did it. Masquerading as an Earthman for all those years, Dirk manages to partner with another inventor, name of Steve, in order to make their own moon-rocket. However, the government steps in to confiscate the project. Dirk is in a dither to get back, so he hijacks two escaped convicts, Gary and Lon, to help him pilot the ship back to the moon. Partner Steve and his fiancee June accidentally get swept on board the ship, so that as in CAT WOMEN, five space-travelers end up moonbound.

However, one big change is that Dirk perishes on the way, and he calls out to someone called "the Lido" as he dies. With Steve's guidance the survivors manage to land the ship and debark in space-suits. Despite a run-in with some palpably phony "rock-men," they make their way into a cavern that in turn leads to them to the all-female society of the moon.

The aforementioned Lido (K.T. Stevens) is the queen of the moon-people, and because she's blind she seems to initially mistake Steve for her agent Dirk. (Later she tells her servitors that she knew the Earthman's identity all the time and was just sussing him out.) Dirk's fiancee Alpha-- whose name was originally given to the leader of the evil Cat Women-- takes a fancy to Steve while thinking he's Dirk, and doesn't get discouraged even when June jealously breaks the news of Steve's true identity. (June and Alpha even have something the Cat Women never did: a true "cat-fight.") Meanwhile, the arcs of Gary (hardened, greedy crook) and Lon (relatively innocent kid who made a mistake) roughly follow the arcs of Walt and Doug from the earlier film, with Lon even falling for a young innocent named Lambda.

The Lido doesn't have any plans to conquer Earth-- in fact, she's already made plans to evacuate her people to some other unspecified world-- but she like the villain of CAT WOMEN still wants to take over the Earth-ship. As shaky as the CAT WOMEN plot was, this wrinkle makes even less sense, since the Earth-rocket can't accomodate more than five people. However, the Lido doesn't wish harm to the Earth-people, so she and Alpha butt heads when the latter wants to eliminate June and marry Steve. For that matter, the Earthpeople get in trouble when they try to escape the city, and run afoul of the same spider-marionette seen in CAT WOMEN. (FWIW, Cunha does film the spider a little better, so that it might at least scare a five-year-old.) The spider doesn't get the humans but poor Lambda-- who apparently doesn't have any of the mental powers other moon-girls demonstrate-- becomes arachnid-chow.

Alpha can't challenge the Lido's powers, but she manage to shank the queen when her guard is down. In addition to cowing the lesser women, Alpha shows that she, unlike the Cat Women, can easily use her abilities to hypnotize Steve, after which she sentences June to Death By Spider. At this point the script, having dumped Lambda, quickly builds up a secondary nice-girl character, Zeema, who then challenges Alpha. (Wonder if one of the scripters meant to write "Zeta?") Zeema makes possible the Earth-people's escape, though at the cost of her entire civilization when she destroys the atmosphere machine. (Virtue is definitely Zeema's only reward.) Foolish Gary dies in the heat of the moon's surface because he won't give up a cache of diamonds he's found. His death is one of MISSILE'S best scenes, since Gary is easily the film's most annoying characters, though I for one didn't really care when the thoroughly boring survivors made it back to Planet Earth.