Cat-Women of the Moon

Lunar Week is almost over (tomorrow’s the last Lunar article, the Avenue’s next update will be on Tuesday), but today we take a look at one of the movies from the banner above. The third picture is a still from Cat-Women of the Moon, a complete schlockfest made in 1953. As an added bonus, it’s one of those 3D movies. Which meant the silliness of the film went great along with the silly glasses you had to wear to watch the film.

Arthur Hilton was responsible for directing “the most startling picture of the century” (according to Cat-Women‘s own trailer), a group of space explorers ends up on a planet without men. Handy, as most of the explorers are men. There’s a bit of a twist as there’s also a female on board in this film and that she’s telepathically controlled by the Cat-Women (played by the Hollywood Cover Girls).

This film should be watched by anyone who’s afraid of spiders. The one used in this film is so fake literally noone will be scared by it.

P.S. Apologies for the fact the wide trailer obscures some of my links. Tomorrow the article drops a bit and all the links will be crystal clear again.

Radar Men From The Moon

Today we pay ‘tribute’ to Radar Men from the Moon, a twelve chapter long serial from 1952. This Republic Pictures exercise in silliness was the first Commando Cody serial. George Wallace played Cody, the director was Fred C. Brannon and the screenplay was written by Ronald Davidson. Brannon and Davidson’s filmographies mainly exist out of serials.

In an effort to keep the budget low, a lot of scenes are lifted from another series, King of the Rocket Men (1949) – where the suit belonged to Rocket Man. In fact, the budget was so low Wallace had to do his own stunts and during one of the fight scenes he broke his nose.

Commando Cody, a civilian researcher, has a rocket-powered flying suit and a rocket ship. He’ll need them as the U.S. are under attack. Someone is wiping out military bases and industrial complexes. Cody finds out the culprit is Retik, the evil dictator of the Moon. Retik wants to conquer Earth and Cody will try his best to keep that from happening.

It’s hard to take Radar Men from the Moon serious, from the campy suits to the special effects (Cody’s clearly lifting off thanks to a trampoline).

The twelve chapters are each just over 13 minutes long, with the exception of the first chapter (which lasted 20 minutes). In 1966 Republic Pictures recut the serial to a movie (100 min), entitled Retik the Moon Menace.

You can watch the episodes on YouTube (here’s the link to chapter 1), but for now we’ll leave you with the serial’s trailer.

Teenage Monster

Surprise surprise, Teenage Monster is not that awful a movie.

Sure, the teenage monster is laughable: he doesn’t look scary at all (just hairy) and you’re left wondering if Gil Perkins decided to play a monster with a speech impediment or if he’s trying to speak normally and the make-up is making him mumble.
Anyway, the result is pretty hilarious. (I meant to say “scary”, but the only word I could think of was “hilarious”.)

But Teenage Monster is pretty educational: did you know what happens when a meteor strikes a father and his son? Well, I didn’t! Apparently such a meteor strike will kill a grown man, but not a child. However, the child will grow up with an exceptional amount of facial hair.

Okay, so the plot seems to be ludicrous to non-existing at first, but give it a few minutes (not too many, the movie is only just over 60 minutes long) and see how scriptwriter Ray Buffum (the man who also penned Teen-Age Crime Wave, Brain from Planet Arous and Island of Lost Women) adds a few interesting touches to the script: see how the monster’s mother tries to hide her son from the villagers (it doesn’t help that the sheriff is in love with her) and how the monster is abused by another character.
All this may not sound too spectacular (and indeed it isn’t), but do remember that most 50s sci-fi films just offered you a cheesy monster and a dull story: “Teenage Monster”, directed by Jacques R. Marquette (famous for directing Teenage Monster and … oh, that’s it?), at least tries to offer the viewer a compelling story.

Compelling it isn’t, but at least it keeps you from being bored and waiting for the next scene with the unconvincing monster.

If you’d like to have a look at the monster… don’t be scared, here ‘he’ is:

Tarantula

A Giant Animal movie with a difference: Tarantula

Why is it different?

Tarantula isn’t the first giant monster to rent a room in the Kurtodrome Vault, but it’s special for a lot of reasons. We’ve talked about the 50s sci-fi genre before and how many of those films contained giant monsters and usually sucked. Tarantula is, take or leave a few poorer scenes, a pretty good film directed by Jack Arnold, director of other sci-fi classics such as Creature of the Black Lagoon and The Incredible Shrinking Man.

Tarantula has often been likened to Them!, the giant ant movie made only one year earlier, but Jack Arnold denies Them! was an influence. And not just because here we have one spider doesn’t exactly equal several giant ants.
Most sci-fi movies from the fifties had giant animals as a result of nuclear tests. In many movies the killer creatures were nothing more but an allegory: if you bear in mind that these movies were made in the McCarthy era, it’s not difficult to see who the evil animals (or aliens) attacking good honest Americans were supposed to depict. Yes, kids, if we can get those Martians off our soil, we can sure handle the evil commies.
Tarantula’s tarantula isn’t gigantic because of a nuclear test going haywire, nor is the spider a KGB spy. The person we’ll have to blame for this monster, is a professor who wanted to make sure your children’s children would have something to eat. After all, the more people will walk on this planet, the less food there’ll be per person or something along those lines.
The solution is simple: make sure the animals grow in size. Now the professor’s experiments were paying off as you can see from this spycam footage:

Now I can understand why he wanted to create bigger rabbits, but why the heck a giant tarantula? You can just guess what this means: it means that the professor’s assistant who tried some of the professor’s potion will be angry because on human the stuff only has one effect (the face deforms) and he’ll pick a fight with the professor. In this fight the safety glass of the tarantula’s cage will break and the beast will escape, killing lots of people and animals.
What do you mean: you couldn’t guess that? Oh well, that’s what happens and then only one thing needs to be done: the tarantula must be destroyed.

Anything else good?

Yes, the acting is not bad and the special effects deserve some praise: a few scenes aside, the effects are quite believable.

Nearly fifty years later the film is bound to lose some of its credibility, but overall is nothing to be ashamed for. And as the sole non-nuclear giant animal from the fifties it even gets a special place in the vault. Sure, you’ll never have time to see all the masterpieces of the world, but rest assured, there are a lot of worse things to do than renting Tarantula.