Missile to the Moon |
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USA • 1958 • 78m •
  • Directed by: Richard E. Cunha. • Starring: Richard Travis, Cathy Downs, K.T. Stevens, Tommy Cook, Nina Bara, Gary Clarke, Michael Whalen, Laurie Mitchell, Leslie Parrish, Henry Hunter, Lee Roberts, Pat Mowry, Tania Velia. • Music by: Nicholas Carras.    Steve Dayton and Dirk Green are scientists disappointed when top-echelon government men inform them that their moon-missile project is to go under armed-forces control. Green is convinced he can take the projectile to the moon successfully and when two escaped convicts, Gary and Lon, happen to clamber aboard, he enlists their aid, and the mission is on, and the passengers include Dayton and his fiancée, June Saxon, who have come on when they came looking for Green.
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Review:
The sexiest and most exotic of all is in fact Nina Bara, as the beautiful bad Moon girl Alpha. Though only 5th billed, Nina was the real star of the show. Her chewing the cardboard scenery, deliciously wicked villainy is the only thing, other than curiosity, that makes this space soaper worth watching to the end. Her acting skill, I hasten to add, was far above that of the higher billed members of the no-name cast. It's worth the price of the DVD to see her gleefully wicked expressions and movements as she pulls a dagger from the confines of her bulging bosom. Though 38 years old at the time, Nina was still very pretty (in a sinister way), and wow! what a figure! In that all-important department (to this picture) she stacked up quite well (pun intended) against the young beauty contest bimbos. I don't understand why this badly underused actress didn't do better. In her prime a few years before this, she would have been a terrific femme fa-tale in those noir thrillers -- well, the low, low budget ones anyway.
Missle To The Moon is not nearly as bad a movie as others have carried on. Not one of those you watch just to laugh at such as Mesa of Lost Women (see my review). True, they did use the same giant, rubber spider from that looser, but they used it better in Missle. Though leading man Richard Travis and leading lady Kathy Downs were as bland as skim milk most of the time, Ms. Downs at least came alive during the cat fight with Alpha -- Hot Dawg! Though veteran stage actress K. T. Stevens seemed to sleep-walk though her part as the Moon Babe ruler Lido, the general quality of the acting wasn't so bad. Compare to past space operas up to the time -- every member of the cast, including the blankest of the beauty queens, could act better than Buster Crabbe of Flash Gordon fame! So the shots of the rocket in space were stock footage of V-2 rockets. What would you expect of a space travel flick of any budget from 1958. This was only the year after Sputnik. The United States had not yet managed to launch a ping-pong ball into space. Actually, Missle to the Moon is quite an enjoyable watch if you just think of it as a fun romp.
I do have a couple of gripes though. 1) They spent too much time traveling to the Moon before they found the Moon Babes and the wonderful Alpha. 2) A major plot hole is the Moon Babes claiming they were keeping the earthlings captive so they could learn to fly their space ship to another planet before their oxygen supply ran out. Why did they need the rocket? With all the spandex the Moon bunnies had, they could have built a giant sling shot which could have launched space vehicles with velocity enough to escape the moon's low gravity. And you thought I wasn't the scientifical type!
If you want to see space travel portrayed as accurately as 1950's technology could, watch Destination Moon, and be bored. If you want to have fun, watch Missle To The Moon!
Review by oldblackandwhite from the Internet Movie Database.
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