Cat Women of the Moon (1953)

How bad is it? It's very shoddy, even by 1950's 3D standards.

Should you see it? It's not essential. There are a few good laughs.

Publicity photo - suggests more than is delivered.

Though only 63 minutes long, this is incredibly padded. Nothing really happens in the first half, but we get to see an astronaut whose only interest is profiteering off the mission and an emergency handled by a guy in a beekeeper's outfit and a fire extinguisher (there's no fire). There is a funny shot of the rocket pivoting for landing. Sonny Tufts and Marie Windsor, veterans of this type of film, are wasted.

Once they land, one person pulls out cigarettes and another a pistol - the 1950's calling cards - and, while both get questioned, both are essential for the plot. The spacesuits don't match, having been borrowed from two other films (and reused many times in later films). They land on the dark side of the moon and show that the bright side will burn the cigarettes (despite lack of air). The one female astronaut sense a cave is nearby and she's right - and they fight two giant spiders, again taken from other films. They discover that there's air in the cave, though why it doesn't evaporate into space is never addressed.

Finally the cat women arrive and they turn out to be nothing cat-like. They have their own Egyptian/Greek Classic architecture. They use mind control on Marie Windsor. The greedy astronaut is led to his doom in a cave of gold. There's a love triangle of sorts. There's a truly awful stage slap. The cat women all get killed, mostly by firearm. They go back to Earth.