Project Moonbase (1953)

Original title

Project Moon Base

Directed by

Richard Talmadge

Genre

adventure film, science fiction film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 03m

Rated

B-15

Rating

3.3 of 10 from 29 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A female commander leads the first American moon mission in the future. But her male superiors treat her as weak and threaten to spank her. The film tries to be realistic about space travel but has old-fashioned gender attitudes.

low-budgetdatedearnestclunkynaivetalkycheesy

What happens

Project Moonbase (a.k.a. Project Moon Base) is a 1953 independently made black-and-white science fiction film, produced by Jack Seaman, directed by Richard Talmadge, and starring Ross Ford, Donna Martell, and Hayden Rorke. It co-stars Larry Johns, Herb Jacobs, Barbara Morrison, and Ernestine Barrier. The film was distributed by Lippert Pictures and is based on a story by Robert A. Heinlein, who shares the screenwriting credit with producer Jack Seaman. Project Moonbase is unusual for its time in attempting to portray space travel in a "realistic" manner and for depicting a future in which women hold positions of authority and responsibility equal to men; as an example, the President of the United States is a woman. However, Colonel Breiteis, the female commander of the Moon mission, is shown to be picked for her gender, generally shown as a member of a "weaker sex", and even threatened with a spanking by her commanding officer (not helped by the fact that her last name is pronounced "Bright Eyes"). Mystery Science Theater 3000 featured the film in January 1990 as an episode during its first season on The Comedy Channel. It had been originally broadcast in 1986 as a syndicated television episode of the Canned Film Festival. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

More like this

• Cat-Women of the Moon (1953)
• Untamed Women (1953)
• Destination Moon (1950)
• The Lost Planet (1953)
• The Right Stuff (1983)
• Roman Holiday (1953)
• Jungle Moon Men (1955)
• Countdown (1967)