Comment:

In short, "We have no use for men". 110 minutes long. Part 2 of my 4 part opus of bad 50s movies scored with lounge/exotica.
Flashback to USA. 1953. The team of Director Arthur Hilton, Screenplay writer Roy Hamilton, Story/Producers Jack Rabin & Al Zimbalist, legendary music composer Elmer Bernstein, and Art Director William Glasgow were about to unleash on the public an iconic seminal work. No, not The War of the Worlds, but the equally important Cat-Women Of the Moon. An all-star cast rounds out this interstellar feast. Sonny Tufts (Laird Grainger), Marie Windsor (Helen Salenger), and Susan Morrow (Lambda) are just to name a few. A rocket expedition under the command of Laird lands on the dark side of the Moon. Navigator Helen Salenger guides them to a cave. There they find a world inhabited by cat women who have eliminated all the men of their species. The cat women reveal they sent telepathic messages to Helen to draw the expedition to them so that they can commander the spaceship and return to Earth to liberate the women there. Cat Women of the Moon is one of the classically awful sf films of the 1950s and is frequently mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Robot Monster (1953) and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). Although in seeing it again, it seems more dull than awful. There is one hilarious shot where the Moon outside the rocketship window is seen as a topographical map of the Moon replete with meridian lines, not to mention the screaming spider. You have to love lines like - Helen Salinger: [on being told that she can't come on the trip to the moon] Someone's got to cook your meals for you! OR "You're too smart for me, baby, I like em stupid". This is probably the worst female civilization in space movie (wow, that's a genre), far worse than Fire Maidens in my estimation, but also in a way, the genre was done to perfection here, in a horribly bad twisted way. In the end for me, this movie remains just as something I can put on to fall asleep to, and while asleep Zeta talks to me. "Kill all the men" she whispers to me. "Kill them all."... The lounge/exotica used here is mainly from the 60's. I borrowed heavily from the Bongo driven beats of the bongo ambassador himself, Mr. Bongo Jack Costanzo, as well as Paris-inspired material, Can, Can, Can by Jerry Shard, is much like this movie, outrageous. Elmer Berstein who did the score for Cat-Women is also represented here with Valentina! I mixed mambo in too, I figured nothing says Cat-Women like bongo-mambo-paris fluff. Sway by Dean Martin is stellar, the instrumental is repeated halfway again through the album in It Happened In Monterey, Julie London then gives her rendition of Sway right at the albums end. The closer on the album is a song everyone knows. Billy May covering Valle's classic elevator music - do do do do do do - dah dah dah dah dah dah. My sweet elevator to the stars. These are the 2 longest reviews you can find for Cat-Women ( http://twtd.bluemountains.net.au/Rick/cwotm.htm ) AND ( http://www.monstershack.net/reviews/full/cwotmoon.htm )
Here's the funniest review you can find ( http://www.badmovies.org/movies/catwomen/ )
Some good pictures here (http://tarstarkas.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18&Itemid=46 )

Stay tuned for part 3.

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