The plot basically involves a mission to the moon where the astronauts encounter an ancient race of cat women. That's probably not much of a spoiler when you look at the title. But the cat women are a dying breed, and with most of the moon dead they've been forced to live in a large cave, which somehow has managed to retain the last of the moon's atmosphere. The cat women hatch a plot to hijack the crew's space ship and fly to earth, where they will procreate with the human males to try and rebuild their race. This plot has massive holes in it which quickly become evident.
So we join our astronaut friends just as they leave the earth's atmosphere and head towards the moon. The crew consists of guys with names like Kip, Doug and Walt. And remarkably there's a woman too. She's called Helen. Of course the only mechanical or electrical equipment the 1950's woman is qualified to operate is a cooker, so Helen has been given the role of "navigator" so that she doesn't have to touch any of those confusing dials or switches.
On leaving earth orbit Helen immediately gets out of her bunk, takes out a pocket mirror and fixes her hair. We of course know that in reality Helen would look like she'd been dragged through a hedge backwards, but those 1950's boffins seem to have worked out artificial gravity no problem. So nothing eventful happens on the journey to the moon. We learn that there's a bit of a love triangle between Helen and two of the guys (well of course there is), but it's all rather meaningless really.
They reach the moon and Helen decides that they're going to land on the dark side. Apparently this is based purely on a feeling that she has. So they land somewhere on the dark side of the moon and they all put on their idiotic looking space suits. One guy takes his gun and Helen takes her cigarettes with her (well it is the 1950's after all). They all venture out onto the moon, which mainly consists of a few strategically placed rocks in the foreground and some pretty painted mountains in the background. And the gravity of the moon appears to be exactly the same as that on the earth. What a stroke of luck!
So they wander aimlessly about on the moon for a bit. They encounter a couple of big-ass moon spiders, which are exactly like big-ass earth spiders except that they look a tad more pipe cleanery and don't actually move their legs. Helen of course runs away screaming from said spiders, but thankfully the men are there to dispense with the arachnids. Actually I think they just use the same spider again as you never see both of them in the same shot.
Then they come across the entrance to a large cave. Helen says it's perfectly safe so they all venture inside. Another of Helen's hunches it would appear. Inside the gigantic cave they see buildings and structures that could only have been made by an intelligent civilisation, so they start to explore. The buildings and structures look very Roman-esque, but I'm thinking maybe they just managed to pick up some second hand scenery on the cheap.
While our friends are exploring you can begin to see shadowy human-like figures hiding in the background. I would like to point out that at this point we're halfway through a one hour film and we haven't even seen a single bloody cat woman yet. It's just not good enough!
The guys manage to catch a cat woman, or at least they think they do, but she vanishes. No special effects here, they just cut the film. But yes, at this point we briefly see a "cat woman" and I have to admit to being rather disappointed. The women aren't even remotely cat-like, they're just women in catsuits. And not particularly sexy looking catsuits either. No PVC or leather-clad ladies here. But then it was 1953 I guess.
The guys decide to wait for Helen to return. Meanwhile Helen finds the cat women and their leader "Alpha" welcomes Helen and introduces her second in command "Beta". I'm guessing the cat women population isn't huge. Certainly no more than 24 if they're named after the letters of the Greek alphabet anyway. Alpha explains to Helen that the cat women have special telepathic powers of mind control, that's how they've been controlling Helen. But their powers are useless on men, not that they have any of those. Alpha says their plan is to take three of the cat women plus Helen back to earth in the space ship. But of course the cat women need to learn how the ship works. And Helen, with her knowledge limited to that of kitchen appliances isn't going to be much help. The cat women can't use their mind control powers on the men, so they have to find other "weaknesses" in order to glean the knowledge from the men. Hmmm, I wonder what they could possibly be talking about? At this point Helen remarks about her male crew mates "It's strange. I should care what happens to them, but I don't!" Yes, Helen has now transformed into a complete bitch.
So the cat women proceed to offer the men delicious food and to generally look pretty while saying corny lines like "May we serve you, earth men?" and "Do you have a special earth girl?". The men of course seem quite happy with this turn of events. Well apart from Kip that is, who is a grumpy bastard and sits in the corner with his gun looking miserable. The cat women then proceed to glean information about the ship from the other men.
Helen and Kip go off together away from the others. Helen has a moment of clarity and is able to explain to Kip the plan to kill the men and take the space ship back to earth. Helen declares her love for Kip and they inevitably kiss. Then the mind control kicks back in and Helen goes back to being a complete bitch again.
Walt goes off with one of the cat women under the promise of gold, which apparently is everywhere on the moon and not at all valuable. But Walt must show the cat woman the inside of the space ship first, and tell her precisely how it all works. Which Walt does without a second thought. The cat woman then takes Walt to a cave made of gold, where she promptly kills him.
Meanwhile another cat woman tells Doug that he must flee in a rather corny "I love you, yet I must kill you" kind of way. She then goes to see Alpha and confess that she's having second thoughts about their evil plan. Alpha says they must carry out their plan, go to earth and have all the earth women under their control. It's still not clear what the plan is for the earth men at this point. There's obviously some amount of procreation that needs to take place for the cat women to survive, but judging by what happened to Walt I don't think the earth men are in for a good time.
Some other unimportant shit happens (cat women dancing, that kind of thing) and then Doug's cat woman tips him off that they're heading for the space ship. She's killed by one of the other cat women for her betrayal. Doug goes to her and as he kisses her we hear gunshots off screen followed by Kip saying "Doug, the cat women are dead. Helen's alright". Then we cut to everyone back on the ship (minus Walt of course) and everyone's happy (apart from Walt and dead cat woman of course). The rocket ship takes off and heads home to earth. The end.
This film was rather corny, predictable and unexciting. And I made the dreadful mistake of only writing half of this review, which meant I actually had to go back and watch this thing for a second time. I think this film ticks a lot of the stereotype boxes, especially with regard to the roles of women and the attitudes towards them at the time. It's a mildly entertaining watch for an hour, but it clearly hasn't stood the test of time. The title of the film promised so much, and yet managed to deliver so little. Yes it was only 1953, but it could've been more interesting, more dramatic, more sexy, more everything really. Shame.
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