Amazon Women on the Moon
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Amazon Women on the Moon is a 1987 film written by comedy duo Michael Barrie and Jim Mulholland.
The film is a compilation of twenty-one comedy skits of various lengths by a group of highly regarded directors. Many of the segments are parodies of late-night television and low-budget movies from the 1950s and 1960s, meant to simulate an insomniac's channel surfing through late-night television, before finally settling on one late-late-late-late movie (and suffering through the commercials). Some of the skits are in black and white, including the "Reckless Youth" parody of Sex Madness (featuring a cameo by Carrie Fisher).
Joe Dante proposed the title The Greatest Movie Ever Made, in order that the advertising could quote critics citing the title, but the idea was rejected by the other filmmakers.
The film pays tribute to some actual black and white "B" sci-fi movies of the 1950s with planets full of dangerous females, notably Cat-Women of the Moon (1953), Queen of Outer Space (1958), and Missile to the Moon (1958).
The film is known in EuropeTemplate:Verify source (outside of the UK where it has always been known by its US title) as Cheeseburger Film Sandwich, as some consider it a sequel to The Kentucky Fried Movie, which was titled Hamburger Film Sandwich there.
The following directors filmed one or more of the segments:
Landis, incidentally, also directed Kentucky Fried Movie, a 1977 release that used the same anthology/faux broadcast format of Amazon Women.
An in-joke title card for the film within a film Amazon Women on the Moon names Samuel L. Bronkowitz as director, who is credited as producer for several of the film parodies in Kentucky Fried Movie.
The film contains performances by some actors known for appearing in B-movies such as Jenny Agutter, Sybil Danning and Lana Clarkson. It also includes a number of then largely unknown actors who would later achieve stardom such as Ed Begley Jr., Arsenio Hall, Joe Pantoliano, Rosanna Arquette, Kelly Preston and David Alan Grier as "Donny No-soul Simmons", as well as Michelle Pfeiffer and Steve Guttenberg. There are appearances by B.B. King, television star Roxie Roker, Firesign Theatre's Phil Proctor and cult film director Russ Meyer. Los Angeles radio personality Al Lohman played the part of a film critic and was credited as simply "Lohman." Henry Silva appeared as himself as the host of the show within a show "Bullshit or Not?": a parody of In Search of... and Ripley's Believe It or Not. Monique Gabrielle spoofed her Penthouse Pet status in the "Pethouse Video" segment in which she does everything in the nude, including going supermarket shopping, to art museums, and to church.
The title sketch "Amazon Women on the Moon" is presented as a late night B-Movie feature that suffers from technical breakdowns and is interspersed with the other sketches, in spite of repeated claims that there will be "no further interruptions". Every announcement for the movie gives a different production year.
Cast
- Arsenio Hall
- Carrie Fisher
- Sybil Danning
- Griffin Dunne
- Kelly Preston
- Michelle Pfeiffer
- Peter Horton
- Phil Hartman
- Joe Pantoliano
- Rosanna Arquette
- Steve Guttenberg
- Bryan Cranston
- Robert Picardo
- Phil Proctor
- Corey Burton
- Donald Gibb
- Ed Begley, Jr.
- Larry Hankin
- Terence McGovern
- Andrew Dice Clay
- Willard E. Pugh
- Steve Forrest
- Robert Colbert
- Joey Travolta
- Howard Hesseman
- Marc McClure
- Corinne Wahl
- Steve Allen
- Charlie Callas
- Rip Taylor
- Slappy White
- Jackie Vernon
- Ralph Bellamy
- Paul Bartel
- Bela Lugosi (archive footage)
- Ronny Cox (uncredited)
- Huey Lewis (uncredited)
- Robert Loggia (uncredited)
- Dick Miller (deleted scene)
See also
- The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), a similarly formatted anthology comedy
- The Groove Tube (1974), a similar TV-parodying low-budget comedy
