DORIS DECEMBER: NUDE ON THE MOON (1961) **

(Originally reviewed Jan. 11th, 2008)

Doris Wishman, “The Queen of the Nudies” proved that she was truly the innovator of the genre when she directed this sci-fi tinged Nudie-Cutie.  See, up to this time, most Nudie-Cutie movies had a documentary feel to them.  They almost never strayed away from their principal location (namely some nudist colony) and were comprised almost solely of nudists playing volleyball, swimming and walking around totally naked.  Instead of setting her movie in some random nudist colony, Wishman got the idea for the movie to take place on the moon where nudists would play volleyball (or at least an alien variation on volleyball), swim and walk around totally naked.  That’s just the kind of trendsetter Doris was.  

After the great opening theme song “Moon Doll”, the plot begins.  An astronaut (who says, “Science is my life and nothing else!”) uses a three-million-dollar inheritance to build his own personal rocket ship and he and his mentor blast off to the moon.  (“If all goes well, we’ll be back in Miami in four days!”)  Of course, the moon looks just like your average nudist colony, except there’s gold rocks everywhere.  About a half an hour into the movie, the astronauts (FINALLY) find the moon nudists who all look like the nudists of Earth except they have antennae and wear shorts.  The nudists quickly capture the two astronauts and report to the Moon Goddess who uses telepathy to communicate.  When the normally reserved scientist sees all the naked women he yells, “I feel like a schoolboy!”  And for the next hour, the two scientists watch intently as women, men and even children parade around topless.  

The women in the cast run the gauntlet from cute, to passable, to horsefaces, but with this many titties on display, you can’t really complain.  Which leads me to my biggest gripe about the movie:  The title is NUDE on the Moon, but everybody walks around in bikini bottoms.  On the downside, we don’t get to see any of the girl’s bushes, but thankfully we’re spared the sight of seeing all the men’s frontages.  

The goofy premise and novel setting distinguish Nude on the Moon from the rest of the pack, but honestly after about an hour of watching topless chicks cavort around with antennae on their head while men in spacesuits take notes, it gets a bit old.  Seeing the astronauts fight the “gravitational force” of the rocket during liftoff is hilarious, as is the astronaut’s costumes and the aliens lack thereof.  Honestly, if you’ve seen one nudist camp movie, you’ve seen ‘em all, but if you ever wanted to see lots of women parade around topless on the moon, then this will be your best bet.  

Keep your eyes peeled for the theater marquee that advertises Hideout in the Sun, Wishman’s first movie.  

AKA:  Girls on the Moon.  AKA:  Moon Dolls.  AKA:  Nature Girls on the Moon.  AKA:  Nature on the Moon.

DORIS DECEMBER NOTES:

1) “Moon Doll”, is, as the kids say nowadays, a straight-up banger.

2) Since our hero is funding his own space program with an inheritance, does that make him the Elon Musk of the ‘60s?

3) MAN.  I forgot how much padding the first act has.

4) Since there isn’t a lot going on in the early portion of the film, it at least gives you time to appreciate the excellent job AGFA did on the print.  The movie has never looked better.  

5) The scenes of the Moon Queen’s breathless telepathic whispering combined with the repetitive score would make a great ASMR video.

6) I think the reason Nude on the Moon is one of those “Close, but no cigar” movies is because there’s no real conflict.  The astronauts just land, gawk at the nude moon women, and take notes and pictures.  If it was one of those Queen of Outer Space/Cat-Women of the Moon deals where the heroes were in some actual kind of peril, it would’ve worked better.  

DORIS DECEMBER

Now that Halloween is behind us and we’re all fat from Thanksgiving, I thought it was high time to turn my attention to some of the all-time great directors of the silver screen.  Each month for the next few months, I will be spotlighting a different director and trying to run through as much of their filmography as I can.  Fortunately for me, this will be kind of easy as home video specialists like AGFA and Severin have been knocking it out of the park lately with their director box sets.

Each director featured will in some way encompass the motto of The Video Vacuum, which has always been:  Quantity Over Quality.  These are directors who were grinding out picture after picture, year after year, and while not all of them were gems, they were all unmistakably the product of a unique, talented (or sometimes refreshingly untalented) mind.  It’s that kind of stuff that gets you inducted into The Video Vacuum Hall of Fame.

This December, we will be focusing our attention on all things Doris Wishman.  AGFA has recently released an incredible three volume series covering most of her impressive (and sometimes not-so impressive) body of work.  I will try to watch and review as many of these films as possible before the New Year and I hope you all come along for the ride.  

As when I went through the Al Adamson box set awhile back, if I have already reviewed a movie featured in the collection, I will either A) Just re-post my old review (especially if I have already reviewed it in the last year or two) or B) Post my old review alongside a brand new write-up (especially if I reviewed it way back when I had my old LiveJournal site).  

What do, you say?  Let’s dive into Doris December!

WHOEVER SLEW AUNTIE ROO? (1972) ** ½

The year after director Curtis (Queen of Blood) Harrington and star Shelley (The Poseidon Adventure) Winters asked the question, “What’s the Matter with Helen?”, they asked “Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?”  Unlike that film, and the similarly titled Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte, this isn’t one of those deals where two major leading ladies square off against each other.  Winters has the screen all to herself, and does a decent job, all things considered.  

Winters plays Auntie Roo, a rich, sad, lonely woman who is devastated by the death of her daughter.  So much so that she resorts to nightly seances with a phony drunk medium (Sir Ralph Richardson) to ease her troubled mind.  Roo holds an annual charity Christmas party for orphans where she meets the young Katy (Chloe Franks), whom she believes is the reincarnation of her departed daughter.  Katy’s storybook-obsessed brother (Mark Lester, from Oliver!) is convinced the old bag is the witch from Hansel and Gretel and is out to fatten up and eat his poor sister.  

That set-up kind of sounds convoluted, and it might be, a little.  However, Harrington keeps things moving with journeyman efficiency.  In fact, there’s so many subplots flying around here and there that it makes it hard to pin down just exactly where the story is going.  This works to the movie’s advantage sometimes, although it probably needed a couple of genuine shocks to make it worthwhile.  Harrington does a fine job letting the tension marinate.  It’s a shame the third act is predictable and lacking suspense.

Winters does a solid job with a difficult part.  We at turns feel sorry for Auntie Roo, are annoyed by her, and eventually distrustful of her.  She could’ve very easily lapsed into her patented shrewish theatrics, but she is rather restrained, or as restrained as Shelley Winters can get.  That is, until the last twenty minutes or so when she finally reveals her true nature.  I just wish they took her character’s madness a little further.  As it is, it feels like they were holding back during the finale, and as a result, the movie sort of peters out during the homestretch.  Shelley does get a nice moment when she chops through a door and peers menacingly from the splinters, which predates The Shining by eight years.

AKA:  House Terror.  AKA:  Who Slew Auntie Roo?

TRAILERS #2: HORROR AND SCI-FI OF THE ‘50S AND ‘60S (1992) ***

After starting things off with a trailer for Val Lewton’s The Leopard Man, this second collection of horror and sci-fi trailers from Something Weird goes into serial mode with previews for Missile Monsters (a condensed version of Flying Disc Man from Mars), Radar Men from the Moon, and Panther Girl of the Kongo.  Along the way, we get lots of trailers for Roger Corman movies (The Wasp Woman, Beast from Haunted Cave, and The Little Shop of Horrors) and films starring John Agar (Invisible Invaders, Hand of Death, and The Brain from Planet Arous).  The trailer for The Bat, which is hosted by Vincent Price, is among the best on the tape, and contains the great tagline:  “When it Flies… Someone DIES!”  There’s also The Hypnotic Eye (“Stare if You Dare”), filmed in the wonder of “HypnoMagic”!, and the world’s foremost mask collector tells you all about the “Miracle Movie Fright Mask” you’ll receive when you see The Mask!  

I also had a lot of fun with the double feature trailers.  Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory and Corridors of Blood make up the “Nerv-O-Rama” Double Feature.  You’ll have to sign a “Fright Release” if you want to see the double bill of The Horror of Party Beach and The Curse of the Living Corpse.  Then, who can stand the horror of The Curse of the Fly and its co-feature, Devils of Darkness?

Even though this collection is called “Horror and Sci-Fi of the ‘50s and ‘60s”, there are a few trailers from the ‘70s (Young Frankenstein, Massacre at Central High, and The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula) and the ‘40s (Spooks Run Wild, Ghosts on the Loose, and The Invisible Ghost), which are always welcome.  Sure, I’ve seen a lot of these trailers on other compilations before, but many of them like The Electronic Monster, The Unearthly Stranger, and The Vulture rarely, if ever turn up.  There’s also a good mix of genres here like giant monster mashes (The Giant Behemoth), comedy (The Three Stooges Meet Hercules), and big budget studio films (Seconds).  That kind of variety helps make this collection another winner from Something Weird.

The complete trailer line-up is as follows:  The Leopard Man, Missile Monsters, Radar Men from the Moon, Panther Girl of the Kongo, Night of the Blood Beast, House on Haunted Hill, Half-Human, The Cosmic Man, The Giant Behemoth, The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake, Invisible Invaders, The Woman Eater, The Giant Gila Monster, The Killer Shrews, The Bat, The Wasp Woman, Beast from Haunted Cave, Attack of the Giant Leeches, Blood Creature (AKA:  Terror is a Man), The Hypnotic Eye, The Electronic Monster, 13 Ghosts, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Fiendish Ghouls (AKA:  The Flesh and the Fiends), Village of the Damned, Black Sunday, The Snake Woman, The Mask, Hand of Death, Invasion of the Star Creatures, The Three Stooges Meet Hercules, Atom Age Vampire, Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory and Corridors of Blood “Nerv-O-Rama” Double Feature, The Haunting, My Son, the Vampire (AKA:  Mother Riley Meets the Vampire), Children of the Damned, a double feature of The Horror of Party Beach and The Curse of the Living Corpse, The Flesh Eaters, The Unearthly Stranger, Devil Doll, Curse of the Stone Hand, a double feature of Curse of the Fly and Devils of Darkness, Cave of the Living Dead, Seconds, The Vulture, Night of the Living Dead, Young Frankenstein, The Brain from Planet Arous, The Colossus of New York, Massacre at Central High, The Castle of Fu Manchu, The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula (AKA:  The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires), Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, Ghosts on the Loose, Spooks Run Wild, The Invisible Ghost, Bride of the Monster, Horrors of Spider Island, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, The Manster, Invasion of the Animal People, The Brain That Wouldn't Die, The Cabinet of Caligari, Zotz!, and Paranoiac.

LETHAL (2005) ** ½

Sam (Heather Marie Marsden) is a sexy and badass mercenary who tags along on an assignment with her boss/mentor (John Colton).  When the deal goes sour, he is kidnapped and tortured by a sleazy Russian arms dealer named Federov (Lorenzo Lamas) who is looking for a mysterious “package”.  Sam then teams up with a beefy Fed (Frank Zagarino) to save her boss and bring down Federov.  The stakes are raised when Federov also kidnaps Sam’s sister (Jennifer MacIsaac).  

Lethal gets off to a promising start.  Marsden makes one heck of an entrance wearing nothing but skimpy underthings before opening up her closet.  You think it’s going to contain her wardrobe, but… surprise!  It’s where she keeps her arsenal of weapons.  She then gets a strong fight scene in a strip club where she takes center stage and Kung Fus a bunch of goons.  Once the plot (and by “plot”, I mean, “a bunch of action movie cliches”) kicks in, things start going downhill as the movie begins to get bogged down with a lot of exposition and shit.  

Marsden makes for a likeable leading lady though.  She looks great in her leather coat and crop top T-shirt while kicking ass.  She has a considerable amount of charisma too.  It’s a shame she never became an action star because based on the evidence here, she had the chops.  

I watched Lethal hoping for a great Lorenzo Lamas performance, and I have to admit, he’s pretty good.  He doesn’t go overboard with the Russian accent, but he comes awfully close.  It might not be his finest hour, but it’s fun seeing him chew the scenery a bit in a rare villainous role.  Zagarino, on the other hand, is stuck playing a bland federal agent, and it’s a role he ultimately can’t do a whole lot with since it’s so thinly written.

Director Dustin (Easy Rider 2:  The Ride Back) Rikert handles the various shootouts and fistfights in a competent manner.  He also tosses in some dime store versions of John Woo slow motion and Michael Bay whirl-a-rounds in there for good measure.  By the time Marsden does her little Matrix move in the third act, you get a sense that no one was really taking any of this seriously… and I mean that as a compliment.  Too bad he couldn’t bring some of that same kind of fun to the dialogue scenes, which are mostly dull.

Lethal isn’t going to be labeled a classic by anyone, but I had some fun with it.  The cheeky action scenes alone give the film personality, which is at the very least something you can hang your hat on.  I’ll remember it longer than dozens of other cookie cutter DTV actioners, that’s for sure.  (But not much longer.)

HELL SQUAD (1986) *** ½

An ambassador’s son is all set to blow the whistle on the testing of a new “ultra-neutron bomb” when he is kidnapped by terrorists.  They demand the ambassador turn over plans for the bomb in exchange for his son.  That leaves only one thing to do:  Train a bunch of Vegas showgirls to become a team of commando assassins so they can go rescue him.

The showgirls are first tested on a desert obstacle course.  Once the strongest, baddest, and foxiest women are selected, they don crimson berets and khaki fatigues and head out to the undetermined Arabic country to kick some ass.  Once they get to their hotel, they learn there’s a water shortage.  That means they all must take bubble baths together.  BATHS.  PLURAL. 

Yes, folks, Hell Squad is the only movie I’ve ever seen where Vegas showgirls drive their jeeps through the desert, blow away a bunch of terrorists, and then head back to their hotel for a bubble bath together.  It is also the only movie I’ve seen where said Vegas showgirls drive a tank through an enemy camp, gun down a bunch of people, and then head back to their hotel for ANOTHER bubble bath together.

Things get a little shaky in the second half when the girls get lost in the desert and are unable to take any bubble baths.  However, the finale is really something else.  They snorkel to a castle that looks like it belongs at the bottom of a fishbowl, spear gun a couple of guys, liberate the kidnap victim and then set off an explosion so powerful it turns day into night.  Not to mention the completely out of left field Scooby-Doo ending.

While it was made in the mid ‘80s, everything about Hell Squad screams the ‘70s.  From the cinematography to the music to the wardrobe, the whole thing looks and feels like it was made a decade earlier.  In fact, it often looks like a failed pilot for a TV show with a little T & A tossed in there for good measure.  (The random fade-in and fade-outs would make perfect commercial breaks.)  It also has more visible boom mics (and visible panty lines) than you can shake a stick at.  None of this is a criticism by the way.  This movie is awesome.  (The bubble bath-less second half notwithstanding.)

AKA:  Commando Squad.  AKA:  Commando Girls.

GIANTESS BATTLE ATTACK! (2022) ***

Beverly Wood (Ivy Smith), everyone’s favorite 50 Foot Camgirl, gets sued into the Stone Age for the havoc she caused in the first movie.  Because of that, the only job she can get is breaking rocks in a quarry.  A sleazy fight promoter (Steve Altman) offers her a chance to make some serious money by fighting against his wrestler Anna Conda in a Pay Per View match called “War of the Girlgantuas”.  (A better title than Giantess Battle Attack!)  Meanwhile, in space, the planet “Buxomus” is home to giant women who participate in super-sized girl on girl gladiator games.  Searching for some new competition, the reigning champion, Spa-Zor (Kiersten Hall) goes to Earth to challenge Beverly, which leads to a three-way giantess royal rumble.

Giantess Battle Attack! is only fifty-nine minutes, but somehow, it’s still heavily padded with scenes from the first movie (and even some scenes from this one are repeated too).  The outer space stuff doesn’t work quite as well as the scenes that act as a direct continuation of Attack of the 50 Foot Camgirl.  (Although I did like the way Spa-Zor “destroyed” the world’s monuments.)  Even though it’s a bit spottier than its predecessor, there’s still some good stuff here. 

The final battle is particularly fun, especially when an oil well explodes and covers the colossal combatants in crude.  I think my favorite part though was when Beverly’s normal sized boyfriend goes “spelunking” in her underwear.  Returning director Jim Wynorski has a funny cameo too when he condemns the film for having too much sex. (It doesn’t.)  It’s also fun seeing a bunch of the familiar Wynorski regulars like Frankie Cullen, Lisa London, Becky LeBeau, Gail Thackray, and Deborah Dutch in the cast.  I think I might’ve enjoyed Attack of the 50 Foot Camgirl more, but I still had a good time with Giantess Battle Attack!  I mean it’s hard not to like any movie that manages to reference Kronos, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Back to School in under an hour.