Missile to the Moon (1958, Richard Travis, Cathy Downs, K T Stevens, Tommy Cook, Gary Clarke, Michael Whalen, Nina Bara) – Classic Movie Review 12,813

The 1958 American black-and-white sci-fi film Missile to the Moon stars Richard Travis, Cathy Downs and K T Stevens, and is a gem of a so-bad-it’s-good Fifties drive-in camp classic.

Director Richard E Cunha’s independently made 1958 American black-and-white sci-fi film Missile to the Moon stars Richard Travis, Cathy Downs and K T Stevens, and is a gem of a so-bad-it’s-good Fifties drive-in camp classic.

The impressively pathetic 1958 sci-fi movie Missile to the Moon is a total bonkers hoot as scientist Dirk Green (Michael Whalen) discovers escaped convicts Gary (Tommy Cook) and Lon (Gary Clarke) hiding aboard a rocket and forces them to pilot it to the Moon.

But also, Steve Dayton (Richard Travis) and his fiancée June (Cathy Downs) are trapped aboard as the rocket takes off from Earth. Landing on the Moon, they enter a cave where conveniently there is oxygen, and discover an underground kingdom with a group of buxom, half-clad alien women ruled by a sadistic queen called the Lido (K T Stevens) in the kingdom of Olanda.

Missile to the Moon is a relishable film of highly amusing awfulness: the laughs keep coming. It’s mesmerising. Richard Travis is the main star as Steve Dayton and his performance is hysterically bad. In some ways, he’s the worst thing about the film. Otherwise, who or what’s more terrifying, the script, the production, the special effects, the acting, the ‘sexy’ Moon maidens, the pathetic, slow-moving ‘monsters’ (giant Rock Men with strips cut out revealing human faces and a giant Moon Spider puppet with silly crazy eyes). All achieve new levels of low.

However, a sneaky admiration has to go out to Nina Bara as the evil, scheming, back-stabbing Alpha. She’s a lot of fun, Fifties audiences knew her as Tonga in TV’s Space Patrol (1950-1955).

They obviously wanted to sex it up this time. The plot adds a pair of supposedly handsome youthful escaped convicts – a good kid and a crook – and gives them lunar ladies to love. Meanwhile, the ‘Hollywood cover girls players’ who played the Moon maidens in the original are this time sexy ‘international beauty contest winners’.

Whatever, there are loads of laughs anyway in film that, unbelievably, is worse, much worse, than the legendary Plan 9 from Outer Space. The laughs just keep coming.

A colorized version was released in 2007.

Produced by Marc Frederic, the film is distributed by Astor Pictures and is a remake of an earlier Astor Pictures film, Cat-Women of the Moon (1953) with an even lower-budget of $65,000. You can’t make this kind of picture for $65,000. Did nobody tell Richard E Cunha that?  Given how awful the plot is, it is astounding that it follows closely that of the first film.

Missile to the Moon was released in late 1958 as a double feature with Cunha’s Frankenstein’s Daughter.

The giant Moon Spider, controlled from above by wire, is the same spider as in Cat-Women of the Moon.

The cast are Richard Travis as Steve Dayton, Cathy Downs as June Saxton, K T Stevens as the Lido, Tommy Cook as Gary Fennell, Gary Clarke as Lon, Michael Whalen as Dirk Green, Nina Bara as Alpha, Laurie Mitchell as Lambda, Marjorie Hellen (Leslie Parrish) as Zema, Henry Hunter as Colonel Wickers, Lee Roberts as Sheriff Cramer, Pat Mowry as Moon girl, Tania Velia as Moon girl, Sanita Pelkey as Moon girl, Lisa Simone as Moon girl, and Mary Ford as Moon girl, Marianne Gaba as Moon girl, and Sandra Wirth as Moon girl.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 12,813

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