Hey! Can I wear your crown? Huh? Huh?
It’s hard to beat Missile to the Moon (1958) for sheer luridness, especially if you’re watching the colorized version, as we did. A private citizen, Dirk Green, with the help of a rocket specialist, Steve, constructs a rocket he’s convinced will reach the Moon, but the Army is moving in to take over. When a local prison loses containment on a couple of prisoners named Gary and Lon, though, Dirk finds them hiding in his rocket and coerces them into being crew. As he attempts to slip the surly bonds of Earth before the Army can take over, Steve and his wife, June, also slip on board as they investigate why the missile has become active.
Lift-off is a success, but during the flight Gary proves to be full of hormones and is quite aggressive with everyone. This, of course, marks him for death later on – keep an eye out for it, especially when he bursts into flame on the airless surface of the Moon. But, more importantly, during a run-in with a meteorite field, Dirk is clunked on the head and dies, leaving the ship more or less on automatics.
Once on the moon, we encounter the ‘rock-men,’ subsisting on sunlight and hostile to anything that breathes oxygen, giant cave-spiders, and the women in the Moon, who it just so happens sent Dirk, who it turns out was a Moon-man, to visit the Earth and bring back information as to its viability as a refuge for the Moon-race. Now, there are no more Moon-men (wait, what? Why did you send Dirk?), just a few women, and just for giggles there’s a power struggle on between the old Moon race leader and the psycho ‘Alpha’ who was supposed to marry Dirk – a childhood betrothal, don’t you know.
Diamonds, mind-to-mind battles, cross-species romances, a lame story, unbelievable science, and awful special effects combine to really make this one stink. The only thing I can say is that I liked the dancing.
And purple ladies in the colorized version! Captain Kirk would have slept with one of them in a heart-beat!
