Back in the days of the home video revolution, I picked up an inexpensive VHS set of low budget sci-fi films. It included The Hideous Sun Demon and Missile to the Moon. When I watched Missile to the Moon, I realized that it was one of those films where space explorers land on a planet where the entire population is women. In the book, Son of the Golden Turkey Awards, they devote a whole section to this type of movie with a category called “Most Primitive Male Chauvinist Fantasy”.
This movie follows the formula closely. The main scientist has a rocket that he is showing his coworker and his coworker’s fiancée. He traps them on the rocket and blasts off to the moon. The rocket also has two stowaway escaped convicts. The scientist is actually a moon man trying to get home. There is a colony of beautiful women that live under the surface of the moon. There are giant rock creatures that look like giant Gumbys without the faces and more clunky. There are also treasures that the convicts want to take home. The evil leader of the women is called the Lido. And hypnotizes the main scientist into falling in love with her. The actor playing the scientist looks more like an old man father figure than a love interest. The moon maidens are credited as “international beauty contest winners”.
This film was released in 1958 and is almost a shot for shot remake of Cat-Women of the Moon, which was made by the same film studio 5 years earlier. It even includes footage of a giant spider that was used in the earlier film. The plot is ridiculous. The male characters are misogynistic to comic extremes. My kids would request that we watch Missile to the Moon when they were young. We still return to it occasionally but most of the time now we watch a version that has been “riffed” by the MST3K alumni of Rifftrax.