Customer Reviews

Nude on the Moon

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is Doris Wishman at her most mediocre.... the wonderfully hairbrained script is full of non-sequiters, child-like mistakes and a sensiblity bordering on the moronic. But, still it manages to be one of the most endearing films ever made just from the fact that it is so facile.

Two hardy space-adventurers boldly go.... to the moon! Strangely the moon is covered with grass, rocks & trickling brooks and young topless maidens with a serious case of "workman's-crack" lounge around in the blazing sun. Our two intrepid heroes wear the most ridiculous spacesuits ever seen on screen and are transported to the moon by means of getting in the spaceship, closing their eyes and pressing the nearest button to hand!

Not the most memorable film Ms Wishman has ever made... but ceratinly the cutest!

Two "scientists," armed with $3,000,000 inheritance (just about enough to buy a space shuttle toilet these days), set out on a private expedition to the moon. And what do they find? Meteor dust? Green cheese? No! An idyllic and telepathic civilization that doesn't wear clothing above the waist.

While exploring this moonscape, which looks suspiciously like Florida, the scientists never remove their low-budget space suits or truly go native. They do, however, spand copious amounts of time photographing the bare breasted women in this paradise. Good thing that this trip only had two scientists ... I can just imagine the havoc a missionary could have wreaked, trying to get the women to cover their nipples!

If only the moon nymphs & satyrs knew the history of Western Civilization ... they would have immediately imprisoned the scientists, if not executed them. In the entire recorded history of the West, this is the first time in which a non-aggressive civilization has not been conquered, assimilated, enslaved, or butchered after first contact. Of course, perhaps that =DID= happen after all ... by the time Neil Armstrong made it to Luna, paradise had vanished and nothing was left but dust and craters.

If you're looking to see really sexy naked women flouncing around in titillating poses, go rent a Playboy video--that's not what this one is about. If the Sci-Fi channel dared, they'd use this movie as MST3K fodder.

On the other hand, it enacts a mythic transformation for one of the scientists, who returns to earth forever changed. This voyage to the moon has been for him an heroic journey, and the life he lives on earth will be forever transformed.

Not much depth, plenty of bare-breasted rubenesque women, no tan lines (no tans, for that matter), and little literary or cinematic merit. Why did I give it three stars? For the gumption of being what it is ... Nude on the Moon, what an incredible fantasy!

'Nude on the Moon' is a delightfully ridiculous cult classic from the Grand Mistress of low-budget sexploitation cinema, Doris Wishman. It is definitely my favorite Doris Wishman nudie-cutie title.

In this picture, our astronaut heros are surprised and delighted to find that the moon is inhabited by topless women (and a couple of men) that communicate telepathically via pipe-cleaner antennae! Oh, and of course the moon is practically littered with huge chunks of solid gold! A good portion of the film focuses on Jeff and 'The Professor' as they walk around taking photos of the women at play and writing notes on their discoveries while talking without their lips moving! Fantastic!!! Gotta love Doris!

A handsome astronaut inherits three million dollars and decides to build a rocket ship to take him and his professor/mentor to the moon. They land on the moon (really the Coral Castle in Florida - a home made of coral that is a local tourist attaction here in Florida) and find out that it looks just like Florida (Surprise!) -with topless women and a few local hunky lifeguards wearing antennae on their heads. One of the topless women looks like the astronaut's secretary on earth (who has a crush on our hunky hero but who isn't given the time of day by him. He's a scientist, after all, and women don't interest him). When the astronaut gets back to earth, he sees his secretary in a new (topless) light and gives her a big, manly kiss. End of movie. It's junk but fun, for a number of reasons:
1) Floridians will enjoy the on-location color filming of 1960's Florida. This was paradise before hurricanes, a tsunami of illegal immigration turned South Florida into South America (so much for the promises of Republican politicians to do something about this problem that has led to South Florida having no recognizable American identity - you will have trouble getting a job in Miami if you do not speak Spanish), and property taxes made it unlivable (everyone I know is leaving for Georgia and North Carolina).
2) Sci-Fi fans will get a kick out of the low IQ scientific mis-explanations for everything that these astronauts do.
3) This is totally politically incorrect bachelor fantasy stuff from the end of the atomic age. Women exist for men. Period. It's funny and offensive at the same time.
4) It's garbage but fun garbage. This was considered hot stuff in 1960 - the theatres in Florida packed them in with this silly nudie movie.

If you appreciate cheesy time capsules, this will please you.

Judging from the title, you might expect this to be a hilarious movie, but unfortunately, it's just an extremely slow-paced nudie cutie flick with a sci-fi element added to it. The scientists travel to the moon and finds out it's inhabited by topless women. The story pretty much ends there but the movie drags on for another half hour or so. There is some amount of Doris Wishman charm in there somewhere, but not enough to save the movie from getting boring very quickly.

I wanted to like "Nude on the Moon", but unfortunately, the title is the only good thing about the movie, and that's just not a good enough reason to waste money nor time on this film.

Thankfully, there are at least a few moments of the "so bad it's hilarious" variety in this film (a prime reason one checks out these "Something Weird" DVD's, right?), but- sadly- large chunks of this particular offering are just plain bad period. Bad as in inane, boring, dull, etc. If you have this playing in the background at a party or informal get-together, it might work: viewers can make fun of the intermittent funny stuff, check out the women, but then tune it out and go back to their conversations during the frequent dull stretches. But to just sit and watch this, giving it your undivided attention? No, no, no. Don't do that to yourself.

Here, for your consideration, is the premise of this movie (plot seems an overstatement). Dr. Huntley (William Mayer) and Professor Nichols (Lester Brown) are finally able to complete the work on their moon rocket because of an inheritance from Uncle Ted. So they travel to the moon and find a bunch of nudist "moon dolls" with pipe-cleaner antennae sticking out of their bouffant hairdos. The telepathic nearly naked women take the pair to be judged by the Moon Goddess (Marietta). Did I mention the women were nearly naked?

"Nude on the Moon" comes to us courtesy of writer/director/producer Doris Wishman who also brought us "Diary of a Nudist," "The Prince and the Nature Girl," "Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls," "Behind the Nudist Curtain" and "Bad Girls Go to Hell." Believe it or not, Wishman did not consider "Nude on the Moon" to be one of her better films because the cast was so ugly. This is what happens when you do not have total control over your pictures, I guess. Of course today "nudist" films such as this one are cute and quaint, but even when they were originally released they were not even remotely close to being soft-core. At least this one has the relative virtue of being in color. This 1961 film was also released as "Girls on the Moon," "Moondolls," "Nature Girls on the Moon" and "Nudes on the Moon" (important difference with that last one, I guess).

Doris Wishman (1912-2002) stands out in the history of sexploitation films because she had the distinction of being a successful woman director in a genre dominated by men. Wishman started making films set at nudist camps and probably enjoyed her most success making "nudie cuties" of which "Nudes on the Moon" (made under her Anthony Brooks alias) would be the prime example. But then she moved on to the "Roughies" that defined the middle of her film career (e.g., "Bad Girls Go to Hell"), before she moved on to the "Ghoulies" (e.g., "A Night to Dismember") and soft core (e.g., "Double Agent 73").

By the way, the song opening and closing the movie is "Moon Doll," words and music by Judith J. Kushner, sung by an imitation Sinatra type who may well be Ralph Young. You have to love a song that opens, "I'm mooning over you, my little Moon Doll." The music that perfectly suits the tone of the movie and the topless people enjoying the all that sunshine on the moon is apparently by Daniel Hart and Doc Severinsen. You have to admit, the music fits the action perfectly, whoever wrote it for this film.

The most disappointing thing about this DVD is that for one in the Something Weird series there is only the one movie and only one short subject "Cosmic Striptease," which suggests that if a female cosmonaut saw creatures on the moon (well, the antennae of creatures on the moon), that a reasonable response would be to do a strip tease. There is a gallery of exploitation art from Wishman's films, which we have seen on the superior Something Weird DVD with the roughie double-feature of "Bad Girls Go to Hell" and "Another Day Another Man." If you want the complete Doris Wishman experience you need to check out that one as well as this one. But this would be the place to start.