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Missile to the Moon (1958)
Topic Started: Jun 6 2009, 08:02 AM (483 Views)
Laughing Gravy
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I guess this film is enjoyable enough if you haven't recently watched the much better original version, Cat-Women of the Moon (talked about elsewhere on this self-same movie board).

Tommy Cook and Gary Clarke are a couple of baby-faced escaped cons who hide aboard a rocketship and soon find themselves on a trip to the moon with a mad scientist, a perpetually worried government agent, and a good-lookin' woman. On the moon, they find a race of manless females, a giant spider, and rock creatures that look like Gumby with muscles. Yes, the moon women dance (of course). The head moon woman wears a chandelier on her head, for some reason.

It's an okay movie, the moon rock creatures are excellent, the cast is awful except for Cathy Downs (from The Amazing Colossal Man), and the rocketship effects are hilarious: at one point, a big wooden model sits on a table outside the lab window and we're supposed to think it's a full-size rocket way off in the distance, one of the funniest "special effects" in movie history. Like Frankenstein's Daughter, though, it's too damn long: at 78 minutes, it seems half an hour longer. Shit like this is more fun at 62 minutes, tops.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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Laughing Gravy
Jun 6 2009, 08:02 AM
I guess this film is enjoyable enough if you haven't recently watched the much better original version, Cat-Women of the Moon (talked about elsewhere on this self-same movie board).

Tommy Cook and Gary Clarke are a couple of baby-faced escaped cons who hide aboard a rocketship and soon find themselves on a trip to the moon with a mad scientist, a perpetually worried government agent, and a good-lookin' woman. On the moon, they find a race of manless females, a giant spider, and rock creatures that look like Gumby with muscles. Yes, the moon women dance (of course). The head moon woman wears a chandelier on her head, for some reason.

It's an okay movie, the moon rock creatures are excellent, the cast is awful except for Cathy Downs (from The Amazing Colossal Man), and the rocketship effects are hilarious: at one point, a big wooden model sits on a table outside the lab window and we're supposed to think it's a full-size rocket way off in the distance, one of the funniest "special effects" in movie history. Like Frankenstein's Daughter, though, it's too damn long: at 78 minutes, it seems half an hour longer. Shit like this is more fun at 62 minutes, tops.
I'll drink to that. I'd watch a lot more of those things if they were a half hour shorter. They were more fun when I was young, loaded, and paying more attention to the real live lady than the screen. You always wanted it to be a bad movie so she wouldn't care if she got distracted. Never forget the time when I took a fetching lass to see The Buccaneer (the Yul Brynner one) and she never took her eyes off the screen, God only knows why. And for three hours! What, with Mr Charm right beside her, could she have been thinking?
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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CliffClaven
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When you mentioned stowaway cons, I thought of the bank robbers in Abbott and Costello Go to Mars. It made a little more sense in that film.
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Frank Hale
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It took me a few minutes to place Richard Travis and Cathy Downs. Bert Jefferson and Clementine! Lo, how the mighty have fallen.

After that I didn’t really follow the plot too much, preferring to concentrate on the many assets of the supporting cast.
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Don Diego
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The MST3K gang has released this title on DVD as part of their Rifftrax series.
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Frank Hale
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Yes, Glenn Erickson reviewed that disc this week, and wasn’t particularly complimentary. He sees the industry starting to divide old films into two groups, indisputable classics and everything else, the latter of which deserves nothing better than ridicule by uninformed louts. Interesting reading. Which group do you suppose “Rules of the Game” will wind up in?

I watched the Image version, which has a bad splice when the space travellers first meet the moon queen, but which otherwise is very good 35mm.
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Stony Brooke da Mesquiteer
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I would rank Rules Of The Game as an indisputable classic.

Mr. Erickson, it seems to me, wants to lump older films into 2 categories: indisputable classics, and then some vague category.
It's like Rodney King used to say, "Can't we all get a bong."
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panzer the great & terrible
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It's silly. Nothing is indisputable. Go to IMDb and there's always some idiot saying he doesn't see what's so great about Citizen Kane/Casablanca/The Searchers/Vertigo/You name it.

There are bazillions of movies that are interesting as all heck that I wouldn't call classic: Twilight's Last Gleaming is one: it's fascinating, and unusually intelligent much of the time, but I'd say the final result's not great. Sparticus is another: clever as hell, but rubbish. The Vikings, by a lesser director, is a much better picture. But would I say don't watch Spartacus? Heck no. See it, appreciate the clever stuff (especially the score) and laugh at the dumb stuff (the dumbest of which being, Kirk Douglas is nailed to the cross and along comes his girlfriend, and what does she do? Pulls on his feet. What were they thinking?). Having fun is what movies are for. We're not talking Milton here.

Fellini made several movies that fit this category; so did Antonioni, Godard, Truffaut, John Huston, Anthony Mann, Saint Alfred Hitchcock -- the list includes almost every important director. Even Chaplin and Keaton had their bombs, and Heck knows, Griffith did. Brilliant movies, spilling over with talent -- but bombs all the same. Buniel made some horrendous movies, as you know if you ever saw Tristana.
Edited by panzer the great & terrible, Jun 15 2009, 08:19 AM.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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Frank Hale
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I don’t get that he’s arguing for sacred cows.

To the contrary, he’s arguing against the false distinctions being made by Hollywood on the quality of old films, and against the idea that any old film less than a certified masterpiece is fit only for ridicule and the scrap heap.

He's also against the reformatting of old films to 16:9, as on Gulliver’s Travels and The Red Shoes, to suit modern monitors.

He’s on our side!



http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s2909moon.html
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Laughing Gravy
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PLUS... He is a card-carrying Balconeer in good standing, albeit a lurking one. He's TRULY one of us.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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I musta been out to lunch when some idiot wrote that, so I edited the offending sentence out and let the rest stand.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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