111 - MOON ZERO TWO

Genre:  Dated Late ’60s Sci-Fi (1969, Color)

Synopsis:  Well, the title of this movie is accurate: it’s set on the Moon and, on a movie rating scale of 00 to 10, it would rate an 02.  Although, when compared to another, much, much better sci-fi film made about the same time, this movie could have instead been called 2001: A Goofy Odyssey.  The Western-influenced plot is about a spaceship pilot named Kemp who scrapes by salvaging space junk, such as old satellites.  A woman, who in her goofy hat looks like a nun in a badminton-shaped habit, wants to hire Kemp to go with her to find her brother: a miner staking a claim on the far side of the moon.  Kemp, instead, takes a job with the local evil tycoon, Hubbard, to go to an asteroid made of sapphire, attach rockets to it, and crash it into the moon.  After they attach the rockets and are waiting back at the moon for the asteroid to enter orbit, Kemp finally agrees to take the woman to see her brother.  He takes her to a station on the far side and then they must rent a lunar bug(gy) to ride out to her brother’s claim.  There they find that her brother has been murdered and soon after, three colorfully space-suited guys try to kill them too.  Kemp manages to kill all three men, but they then barely make it back to the station in a damaged lunar bug.  Back at the station, they find out that Hubbard killed her brother because he needed a place to crash his asteroid, and her brother’s claim was as good a place as any.  They all go out in Kemp’s ship to set the asteroid’s rockets for its crash.  But Kemp and the woman manage to get away while Hubbard is left on the asteroid to crash along with it into the moon (maybe he could try to jump straight up right before it crashes!).

Don’s Review:  While this movie is reasonable watchable because it definitely had a budget (the cost of the animated credits alone was probably higher than most of the films seen on MST!), this was one very dated movie with all of the late ’60s Mod culture clichés: Go-Go dancing girls in the lunar station’s bar (and these dancers do the exact same dance in every bar scene, just with different costumes each time!), dated ’60s futuristic fashions and hairstyles everywhere, and a spaceship clearly based on the Apollo Lunar Module (I think spaceship designs in the future will advance a bit more than that!).  Plus it has some hokey scenes of its own, like the ridiculously goofy zero gravity bar fight scene (Zero G!  How?  I mean, it’s on the moon – there’s always some gravity!).  The riffing on this was pretty enjoyable, particularly for Season One, and, although most of the host segments were forgettable, the one in which Joel spoofs the Zero-G fight scene was absolutely hilarious.  All in all, this is a pretty good Season One episode.

Don’s Rating: 

Related Link:
   (1) Mighty Jack’s MST3K Review (Episode Review)