I’ve watched many a bad movie for this site, but this has to be the new basement when it comes to films, a Shot On Video piece of flaccid garbage that wants so very badly to be pornography but stops short, providing all of the downsides of 1990’s VCA crap you had to rent from the back of the video store with none of the upside, like actual pornography or the lunacy of the Dark Brothers or Rinse Dream.
I really wanted it to fit into this week’s theme of matriarchal societies, as it seemed like from the description that Strain’s character was She. But no. No, not at all.
This all became more crustal clear when I saw who made it: Donald G. Jackson, the director of more than three Roller Blade themed movies who has one lone success, Hell Comes to Frogtown.
A whole bunch of women has been invited to an island that takes over their minds — or so they say — while Julie Strain waits for them, naked and swinging around a sword. Do you know how boring a movie has to be to not be good while featuring Julie Strain topless? This movie will give you the answer.
Literally, during this movie, I yelled out loud, “Robert Z’Dar, don’t you have something better to do?”
Also known as The Devil’s Pet and Elixir — the name it finally came out in 2004 on home video under — this movie also has Tina-Desiree Berg (Legend of the Roller Blade Seven), Lori Jo Hendrix (Bikini Summer) and Jeff Hutchinson (who shows up in many of Jackson’s films, like Lingerie Kickboxer and Roller Blade).
Fans of bad movies — this is quite literally as bad as it gets.
Oh man, this week has taken me to some strange places. Like this made for TV movie — cable, one assumes, because no normal network was going to play this — from Dan Golden. Dan Golden, the man who directed Naked Obsession, Saturday Night Special, Timegate: Tales of the Saddle Tramps and T&A Time Traveler, says the voice inside my head? Yes, my imaginary special friend, the one and the same.
How does one even come to explain this one? One just dives in.
Back in 19th Century France, Bram Stoker — yes, the man who would one day write Bram Stoker’s Shadowbuilder and some other book — gets captured by a secret clutch of women who never wear more than bikinis and who have learned to use a flute to hypnotize rats so that they eat men.
Would it surprise you that this is yet another movie where Adrienne Barbeau is the queen of a sect of women who want to kill every man they see? Oh poor Adrienne, who went to Russia to make this and walked right into a coup attempt and then had to deal with the death of most of the trained rats, which meant that she was covered in fish eggs for most of the movie.
Golden used Maria Ford in his movies a whole bunch and she’s here, front and center, as is Olga Kabo, perhaps the only actress to be awarded the Meritorious Artist of Russia and then show up in what is basically a Cinemax After Dark movie.
This movie gets major points for having slow-motion sword fights that go on forever, as well as a cute little miniature guillotine that gets used when any of the rats get out of line. You can tell this movie isn’t from Italy, because when they kill one of them, it’s a puppet.
It loses points for having Linnea Quigley as a rat girl and doing nothing with her. Alas!
Thanks to the anonymous user who sent this video, which previews this movie and the Death Race 2020 comic book.
Any of the women-dominated science fiction societies in films can be traced back to this movie, an independently produced 3D film produced by Jack Rabin and Al Zimbalist (the man who also brought us Robot Monster and King Dinosaur). It was directed by Arthur Hilton, who was better known for his TV career.
Scientists on a trip to the moon find a race of cat-women, the last survivors of a two-million-year-old civilization who live within the caverns of the lunar surface. They have it all — sharp black fashion, great makeup and sweet beehives hairdos. Oh, and a giant moon spider or two to take care of the guys who get in their way.
Their leader, Alpha, has the plan to head to Earth and subliminally control our women, starting with Helen Salinger (Marie Windsor, who was 5’9″ and usually towered over the actors she played against), the only woman on the moon mission. After violence doesn’t work, seduction pretty much does, which nearly strands the men on the moon. Luckily, one of the cat-women, Lamba (Susan Morrow, Macabre), tells one of the men that she’s in love with him but must kill him. Hijinks, as they say, ensue.
This movie recycles the costumes and sets from Project Moonbase and Destination Moon. It’s pretty much a green movie, as it was also recycled and remade as Missile to the Moon.
The only thing that can stop the cat-women from building a matriarchal utopia? One American man with a gun. Think that one over as you watch all sixty some-odd minutes of this.
Science Fact: During the January 20 to 21, 2019, lunar eclipse, a meteorite did, in fact, smash into the Moon at 38,000 miles per hour and carved out a 50-meter crater.
Science Fiction: That same meteor — in The Asylum-verse — shifted the Moon off its axis and Earth’s gravity pulls the Moon into our planet. And don’t worry about the collision: the friction of the moon against Earth’s atmosphere will heat up the planet and burn all that we survey into ash. But man can stop it: we have that newfangled anti-matter spaceship that creates artificial black holes. Yes! We can correct the moon’s orbit. We have the technology . . . uh, oh! There’s earthquakes, and floods, and magnetic storms! Oh, my, Toto! Auntie Em! It’s a METEOR MOON!
So, in the grand design of the everything-and-the-kitchen sink-disaster-mockbuster Final Draft template from The Asylum: While this was probably put into production when the utterly, A-List abysmal Moonfall was announced: what we’ve got here are pinches from the studio’s own Asteroid-a-Geddon and Collision Earth — along with a dash of the recent A-Lister Greenland that’s mixed with a salt shake of the 1998 battle of the Earth-destroyed-by-asteroid-epics-that-just-keep-on-giving-in-the-Asylum-cubicle farm, Deep Impact vs. Armageddon, along with smidgens of the anti-matter junk science of (the craptastic-and-still-can’t-finish-it-after-three-attempts) Event Horizon* and the black hole babble of (the equally-shatty-and-never-finshed-it) Supernova*. And let’s not forget that scene-snip that was even improbable in its original form in Brian De Palma’s Mission to Mars (meh). But in their quest to always one-up themselves: Asylum pinches from their own The Fast and the Furious franchise rip off with Fast and Fierce: Death Race by putting a Ford Mustang into space, à la Universal Studios. Or was that Columbia Studios?
Whatever. Kudos to The Asylum producer-punkin’ Neal Mortiz before he could put Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriquez into space. But what the hell, Universal, do it anyway: Chris “Ludacris” Bridges in a space suit roarin’ out of the ass end of space shuttle in an anti-matter injected-Mustang is a movie I’d pay to see.
Yeah. Fuck you, Moonfall. I’m all in with Meteor Moon!
Look. It’s easy to kick the dorky kid of the streaming-verse in the nuts, leave ’em wallowing in pain on the playground, and hit the 7-11 for a Cherry Slurpie and nuked Bean Burrito with a smile on your face for a bully-job well done. But we’re not cinematic bullies here at B&S About Movies. We’ve watched enough American International and Crown International sci-fi flicks and we are uber-hep to the ludicrous and outlandish, ridiculous inconsistencies of the retro-vibe The Asylum is selling with meteors crashing into moons and high-performance cars shatting out the back end of a United Space Force shuttle under the command of Col. Dominique Swain** spewin’ techno-babble like nobody’s business (and doin’ the Eric Roberts bit of standing/sitting in one room, natch).
Screenwriter Joe Roche — in his second credit after Collision Earth — does his research and the physics, while improbably, sounds accurate, and his actors “sell” the science with confidence, so I’ll certainly watch Roche’s future QWERTY escapades. And, while The Asylum loves to recycle actors, we have to call out that we did notice that Daniel O’Reilly from the studio’s equally ludicious-but-fun Airline Sky Battle is on board (and he was also in Collision Earth).
Look, don’t pick on the dork of the cinematic playground. Be a pal. Buy an extra Slurpie and burrito, sit down and hang out with the kid, and take a ride together on some crappy, CGI’d hard rocks and heavy metal and be a “Radar Rider.” You can watch Meteor Moon as a PPV-premiere across all U.S. cable television systems or stream it as a VOD on Vudu.
** All this week — from Sunday, January 24 to Saturday, January 30 — is our “Matriarchy in Space Week” celebrating women in space. Join us, won’t you?
Disclaimer: We weren’t provided with a screener nor received a review request from the producers or their P.R firm. We streamed the movie out of our own pocket and enjoyed the movie.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies and publish music reviews and short stories on Medium.
Baltimore’s underground film scene of the 1960s. The Orson Welles Cinema in Cambridge during the early ’70s. Baltimore’s celebrated Charles Theatre in the ’80s and the Orpheum Cinema during the ’90s.
All of these theaters had one thing — and one man, really — in common. That would be George Figgs. From appearing in multiple John Waters films to his work curating and projecting so many films, you won’t find many that have such a true love of film and a commitment to sharing it.
In just 25 short minutes, you’ll learn so much about how revival cinemas started, where they are and where they’re going. Honestly, this could have been 25 hours long and I would have soaked up every moment. I strongly advise you to check this out.
You can learn more at Kino Lorber and on the official Facebook page. To watch this, just head to Kino Now.
Between 1922 and 1954, Lewis D. Collins made around 120 films, most of them Westerns. Here’s one of the rare ones that doesn’t have horses and six shooters, set in the jungle and starring future Superman George Reeves as an explorer.
Pilot Mike Patton (Reeves) and Bob Simpson (Ralph Byrd, who had played Dick Tracy numerous times, so this is a meta comic hero team-up) are looking for Greta Vanderhorn (Wanda McKay, who played the leading lady in many a B movie) in the jungle and find her being worshipped by the natives. She begs Mike to help her escape, but Bob has gone insane and they just might not make it out alive.
Producers William Stephen and Robert Lippert would bring back the Reeves and Byrd team for Thunder in the Pines and had plans for four movies with them every year. Banana Fleet was planned, but never got made.
The white goddess trope might not have started here, but it’s definitely happening in this one. The trope probably started in W. H. Hudson’s 1904 book Green Mansions with his character Rima. The first film example is 1920’s The Jungle Princess. We’ll have a few more examples this week, trust me.
Released as part of a double feature with Roger Corman’s The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent — also covered this week — American-International Pictures’ The Astonishing She-Monster is all about what happens when a gang kidnaps a rich heiress and just happens to run into an alien woman who emerges from a meteorite. You know, everyday stuff.
Nat Burdell (Kenne Duncan, the “Meanest Man In the Movies”), Esther Malone (Jeanne Tatum, The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow) and Brad Conley (Ewing Miles Brown, who produced Blood From Dracula’s Castle) kidnap wealthy society girl Margaret Chaffee (Marilyn Harvey, who appears as Dr. Sapirstein’s receptionist in Rosemary’s Baby) and hide out to wait for the ransom to come rolling in.
Meanwhile, a geologist named Dick Cutler (Robert Clarke, The Hideous Sun Demon) watches a meteor land in the forest. He misses the fact that a glowing blonde in a skintight leotard — that ripped during filming — which is why she backs out of every room instead of turning around — has emerged and that she can kill with just a touch.
So, in an amazing coincidence, the gangsters end up in Cutler’s cabin. One of them chases after the alien woman, who quickly dispatches him with radiation before taking out the other gangsters one by one.
Only Cutler and Chafee remain, but he’s one of those 1950’s scientists that can come up with a solution no matter what. He someone deduces that the alien’s body is made up of radium and platinum, which he uses to come up with the perfect acid solution that instantly disintegrates her.
The jokes on him, as she was holding an invitation from the Master of the Council of Planets of the Galaxy for Earth to join the Council. Only now do they realize that she only killed in self-defense and their actions may have doomed our world.
Ronnie Ashcroft directed this, but he had help. Yes, he brought along Edward D. Wood, Jr. who wanted to title this movie Naked Invader. While it was originally planned as a $50,000 production with a seven-day shooting schedule, the final product only cost $18,000 to make and was sold to AIP for $60,000. Most of the actors were paid $500 a week and several actually made decent residuals as it played for at least four years in theaters and drive-ins. So it’s not a great movie, but it is a happy story, right?
As for how it ties in to our week, it promises you an alien femme fatale, but really only delivers a mute alien in high heels and a skintight outfit killing men. Actually, I’m all for that, when you put it that way.
Alain Payet — working under the name James Gartner* — mostly worked in adult films and supposedly directed this, but a few minutes in and you realize that no, you’re watching another Jess Franco movie, which is even more apparent when you realize that even though he didn’t put his name on as a director, he used two aliases for writing (story by Jeff Manner, screenplay by A.L. Mariaux) and Lina Romay shows up as one of the Amazon guards.
Man, this movie is — as is obvious — a mess, but it’s also about Liana Simpson (Analía Ivars, Panther Squad, Franco’s Lust for Frankenstein), whose parents were killed by the Golden Temple Amazons — we get to watch it more than once — and she was raised by the creatures of the jungle before getting her chimp Rocky and a witch doctor named Koukou (Stanley Kapoul, who is also in The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik-Yak, which is a much better movie of the same genre).
There’s also Antonio Mayans (who was in Revenge of the Alligator Girls and directed its sequel), William Berger in a loincloth, Emilio Linder from Christina and Monster Dog, Alicia Príncipe (The Erotic Story of O) and Eva León (Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll, Bahía Blanca) as Rena, the leader of the Amazons, who has an all gold everything matchy matchy fashion ensemble.
There’s also the same deathtrap from Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, so this has that going for it.
Look — you’re gonna like Jess Franco or you’re going to be bored into insanity or if you’re me, you’re going to zone out and use his movies to improve your positive mental attitude and use his tics — long pauses, plenty of scenery, a near-total disregard for how to tell a story — to get closer to Nirvana. Join me, I guess.
*On Letterboxd, Kyle Faulkner drops some science on me by stating how Payet came on board when Eurocine bought this movie, took a bunch of Franco footage to reedit and added shots of women on horseback. This actually played theaters, which is destroying my brain.
As I look for movies that feature matriarchial societies, it seems like so many of them end up being straight-up male gaze fuelled fantasies. Or so you’d think, because while this movie was made by Anthony Brooks and O.O. Miller, only one of those names belongs to a man.
Brooks may have been Raymond Phelan (the writer, director, editor and one of the main actors of Too Young, Too Immoral), but Miller is really Doris Wishman, who Joe Bob Briggs referred to as “The greatest female exploitation film director in history.” From a series of nudist colony movies to movies with incredible names like Bad Girls Go to Hell, Satan Was a Lady and Let Me Die a Woman, as well as A Night to Dismember and two Eurospy films (Deadly Weapons and Double Agent 73) starring all 73-inches of the woman with the largest bust on record, Chesty Morgan.
The truth is, this movie does introduce us to a female-run society on the moon, which for some reason is the occult-created Coral Castle near Miami, but they’re all topless. Yet like many of the nudist films of the early 60’s, this comes off as quite innocent. And unlike so many of them, this movie isn’t boring.
Dr. Jeff Huntley (Lester Brown in his one and only role) has inherited millions in his uncle’s will and is finally going to the moon with his mentor, Professor Nichols (William Mayer, who shows up as in several of these movies, like Blaze Starr Goes Nudist, which was not much of a life change).
Nichols sees Huntley like a son and worries about how dangerous the moon will be. He’s old, so he’s ready to die. But he wants Huntley to live and find a wife. After all, their secretary Cathy (Marietta) is in love with him and he doesn’t see it or doesn’t care. All he wants to do is go to the moon.
They get there, wearing brightly colored spacesuits with plenty of spaces for the lack of environment on the lunar surface to kill them. But instead, you know, they end up at Coral Castle and meet an entire planet of clothing-free ladies who are led by a Moon Queen (also Marietta) who uses her psychic powers — or maybe Dr. Jeff has never seen breasts before in person — to make our young moon-obsessed friend get obsessed over her mountain peaks.
Perhaps this explains why Jack Parsons blew himself up after falling so hard for Marjorie Cameron. I mean, you become besotten with one literal Whore of Babylon and you lose your security clearance but still get a peak on the dark side of the Moon named after you.
But I digress.
For two guys who planned a trip to the moon for years, they didn’t bring enough oxygen and also leave their camera behind, so no one will believe them that the lunar surface looks more like the aforementioned Blaze Starr’s 2 O’Clock Club.
It all works out, because that’s when the hood doctor discovers that his secretary — who he’s been ignoring forever, who sits and types the same letter all night long hoping that he will notice her — looks just like the Moon Queen. They embrace, the camera dollys back to give them some privacy and then the Professor walks in on them and just looks on approvingly. He just stands there and watches and smiles to the camera.
Keep an eye out for Shelby Livingston, who just three short years later would be chopped to pieces –just a few towns away in Kissimmee, Florida — in Two Thousand Maniacs! Lacey Kelly, who was in Bunny Yeager’s Nude Camera and Common Law Wife, is also on the Moon.
There’s also a moment where the two space-loving men discuss Dr. Jeff going to a movie, as they drive past the Variety Theater, which is showing Wishman’s Hideout in the Sun. Did Dr. Jeff recognize Pat Reilly when he also saw her up there in space?
This movie also has its own theme song, which is pretty cool when you think about it. “I’m Mooning Over You (My Little Moon Doll),” which was warbled by Ralph Young over orchestration that had been arranged by — but not credited to — Doc Severinsen.
While not the most feminist leaning film ever, we can still point to the fact that the Moon Queen does rule her planet and you know, if you can breathe the lack of air on the lunar surface — to be fair, at the end the scientists have no idea where they’ve really come back from — you can forget puritanical mumbo jumbo and just walk around unencumbered.
After all, it worked for Blaze Starr, who was smart enough to get 4% of the profits for the 1984 movies about her life, Blaze.
Some people are content enough to never think about movies all that much. They watch them, they may like them, they may forget them and then they go on about having busy lives, making important business decisions and thinking that they’re a success. And then there’s me, awake in the middle of the night, wondering just how many movies have matriarchal societies (like the earlier Flight to Mars and the later Project Moonbase, and the later Mutiny in Outer Space) within science fiction movies.
I’ve paid for my weirdness in money, depression and a sure future.
Enjoy the benefits of my Prometheus-like ways and join me, all week, as we get into these movies.
Fire Maidens of Outer Space is the kind of movie where you can see the zipper on the monster and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s a British-American co-production and I’m astounded that no one looked at what writer/director Cy Roth had, well, wrought.
You’ll recognize the rocket that launches early in this movie from so many other 1950’s science fiction junk films — such as King Dinosaur. It’s a V-2 rocket that was taken from the Germans, probably as part of Operation paperclip, and launched at the White Sands base in 1946.
Once a new moon of Jupiter is found*, Earth sends five men who are as quick to smoke a cigarette and shoot a gun as they are to attempt diplomacy. This is the most realistic notion that this movie presents. Quickly after landing, they save Hestia (Susan Shaw, whose leading lady status was slowly eroded thanks to alcoholism) from a monster and discover that New Atlantis — a colony of the original! — is about to die out and that there are only sixteen women and one old man left.
They’d like to stick around and help, but once they discover that the leader Duessa (Jacqueline Curtis, The Camp on Blood Island) plans on keeping them as studs to repopulate her race, they try to get home. Of course, the monster gets loose, lots of people die and the remaining women all fall for our dashing crew members, like Luther Blair (Anthony Dexter, who was so frustrated by Hollywood typecasting him in only roles like Valentino — they looked incredibly alike — that he quit to become a high school teacher).
This is basically a much worse Cat-Women of the Moon, except you know, with more cigarettes and thirteen Fire Maidens. And don’t get us started with King Dinosaur, where they just simply nuke the planet before leaving. Oh, and if that meteor shower looks familiar, that’s because it’s pinched from Robert L. Lippert’s Rocketship X-M (which we discuss in our review of Flight to Mars).
*The movie is remarkably accurate in one way — it predicted that we would discover that the 13th moon of Jupiter. We sure did — 18 years later — and named it Thelxinoe.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.