Amazon Women on the Moon

Amazon Women on the Moon (1987)

Runtime: 85 minutes

Directed by: Joe Dante/Carl Gottlieb/Peter Horton/John Landis/Robert K. Weiss

“Starring: Lots of Actors”; that line legit appears in the opening credits, and is true

From: Universal

In the last of this genre of films I plan on seeing for awhile-due to my restless nature-I might as well check out a cult classic and something that has many online fans yet last night was my first experience with it. AWotM has a credit which states “Starring: Lots of Actors” and it’s true. I saw the theatrical version rather than the TV cut that’s available on disc but even then, what an experience it was to see something that has Henny Youngman, Michelle Pfeiffer, Joey Pants, Sybil Danning, David Alan Grier, B.B. King, Rosanna Arquette, Henry Silva, Paul Bartel, Carrie Fisher, Andrew Dice Clay AND Russ Meyer, among many others.

The movie is framed as channel-surfing done between a showing of a really bad 50’s sci-fi movie known as… Amazon Women on the Moon-I point at the screen like I’m Rick Dalton. I noticed it was in particular inspired by an actual 50's sci-fi which wasn't a really bad B movie (Destination Moon), and in fact actually uses some props from that film. There are really too many sketches to mention but I’ll mention that they include everything from Arsenio Hall having a VERY bad time at home and Grier as a Black man w/ no soul to Silva hosting a spoof of Ripley’s Believe it or Not* to actual pirates pirating media from Universal, which made the film… wait a minute, did the term “pirating media” come from this movie?!

Me liking this movie a little more than the consensus is a little surprising; admittedly, there are still juvenile moments-such as Monique Gabrielle appearing nude the entire time she’s on screen-yet this gave me plenty of laughs between the gags, the later callbacks to previous moments, how accurately certain segments spoofed a topic, all the famous faces present, etc. The movie even has a loving piss-take on the Universal The Invisible Man. My having to check out the movie “less than ethically” is a darn shame; why isn’t it available for legal streaming? Unlike many cult films, this is on Blu—from Kino and by all reports that is a solid release.

* An old show starring Jack Palance which I recall long ago was in reruns on the Sci-Fi Channel; bizarrely, it also reminded me of Robert Stack hosting Unsolved Mysteries, which actually was a show AFTER this movie came out. Silva even wears what looks like a trench coat that he borrowed from Stack.