Creature Features Extravaganza: Missile to the Moon

Welcome back to the blog, girls and boys! So last week was me editing the crap out of two movie review videos. The links are up if you want to see them. This week I was looking at a wide range of creature features and thought we could enjoy those. And by "we" I mean me sitting through some of these turds, giving a humorous take on them and you enjoying the write up. This time around we hit a black & white from 1958.  With action, drama, scintillating dialogue...won't be in it.   But how about a mad scientist, two cons on the run and a rocket scheduled to go to the moon?  This is Missile to the Moon.

Sorority sisters rat out Cindy for stuffing her bra.

With director Richard Cunha (She Demons, Giant from the Unknown, Frankenstein's Daughter, Girl in Room 13 and When Strangers Meet)at the helm, what could possibly be to mock at?

For starters not only does this film feel like Catwomen of the Moon it actually has some of the props from it.

For more than 10 years, building and perfecting it, Dr. Dirk Green (MichaelWhalen of Wee Willie Winkie, The Poor Little Rich Girl, The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues, The Dawn Express, My Three Sons and Sea Hunt) has been working with pre-NASA and the government to build better, superior rockets all the while, building his own rocket as well. Like in his backyard in Utah. No, that was not a joke. The colonel of this mission along with Dirk's assistant Steve (Richard Travis of The Man Who Came to Dinner, Mesa of the Lost Women, Cyborg 2087, Lassie, The Legend of Jesse James and Grand Jury) meet with the good doctor with a face-to-face on the news that the funding for his exploration dreams are getting pulled. Guess you don't want to drop that big of a bomb over the phone.

Hold me closer, tiny Colonel.

Arriving as a retirement dinner, Steve and his fiancee June (Cathy Downs of My Darling Clementine, The Amazing Colossal Man, Perry Mason, Surfside 6, Rawhide and Bat Masterson) feel booze and the dullest conversation possible will ease the tension. The tension that is so thick a f*cking lightsaber couldn't cut through it.   Meanwhile two cons have escaped the hoosegow and are looking for a place to hide on the lam.  Naturally Dirk's SPACESHIP isn't guarded, locked up or even inaccessible so those two thinking it was, I don't know maybe a tree fort hide there. Allegedly has an electric fence around it.  Still love they pull back the curtain to Dirk's pad and boom there's the rocket. So adequate engines, fuel, pounds per thrust and no shielding I saw, yeah his house will catch fire the moment of launch. Totally feasible.

With such craftsmanship one could hardly conclude it is a wooden rocket super imposed on a backdrop. Bet you also didn't know that most spaceships have lots of pegboard and flimsy restraints for car batteries as a means of additional electrics. Yeah me either. 

It's clobberin' time!

The sheriff in hot pursuit of these escaped crooks, just asks Dirk if he can look around his pad and is very noncommittal about the giant rocket in his backyard. I mean he had to have attempted some test flights, right? Calculations and preliminary gauging aside, what about the noise and racket of building the damn thing, prepping a launch platform...you know what? Fine, it is totally feasible. What the hell kind of permits would you need for that??!!!

Dirk looks up in the rocket spotting the two hoods and tells the sheriff no one is around. He bribes them with sandwiches, fruits and a few Cokes then tells them they are going into space whether they like it or not. Yeah Green couldn't build a one man rocket so why not make use of these young punks.

Steve and June start looking for Dirk when the pre-flight computer starts blaring, so they go TOWARDS THE BLAST ZONE!!!

Accidentally stowing away, regardless of extra weight, oxygen, fuel and....sorry sorry. TOTALLY FEASIBLE... The five of them are off to the moon. Thankfully they had just enough spacesuits, masks and O2 tanks at the ready. Funny how the moon looks an awful like region for the Vasquez Rocks and of course off to Griffith Park via the Bronson Canyon and the damn caves!!! Why not the 40 Acres in Culver City??!!

Dirk dies from car battery bonking him on the noodle and with his dying words to Steve he hands him this amulet McGuffin to assure them passage. The foolish foursome go and explore with guns. With scrub brush and cacti!!! Dreaded creatures composed of rock proceed to...walk very slowly but threatening our landing party so they proceed to try and drill them...with combustion pistols that has no atmosphere at all. A vacuum one might say. TOTALLY FEASIBLE!!!

Narrowly escaping the incredibly slow moving creatures our heroes head for the caves. Deep in this labyrinth of bat poop is an oxygenated area of the moon inhabited only by women. Con 1 and 2 start falling for the moon girls almost immediately. That's called being horny.

We need about 4,000 gallons of peppermint oil STAT!!!

So the queen mucky muck wants her space broads shipped to Earth and save their culture, blah blah blah. Oh did I mention diamonds just plentiful on the moon? Solves NASA's budget right there. Methinks Armstrong skipped that detail. Con 2 wants the diamonds and makes creeper eyes at all the girls. Seriously, this cat is a thug. This was shot in the seventies it would be Space exploration exploitation and his character would have raped more than half of the girls.

The plot is more thinly veiled than the moon girls, its subplots go really nowhere and ultimately no goal aside from get back home is even made. Also the killer spider puppet in this bit of nonsense is leftover from the 1955 Tarantula.

So good vs evil, Earth Men made mindless by hormones. Yeah there is no real redeeming value to this flick at all. An upside is Rifftrax via Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett of Mystery Science Theater 3000 made it bearable to watch and the riffs are damn funny.

Hey Lonnie, your balls hurt with your pants hiked up too?