AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON (1987)
Article 5447 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-8-2017
Directed by Lots of Directors
Featuring Lots of Actors
Country: USA
What it is: Comedy hodgepodge

Comic vignettes are shown, most of which lampoon TV and old movies.

This movie is in the tradition of films like THE GROOVE TUBE and TUNNELVISION, and the fact that I didn’t use the phrase “grand tradition” back there is because neither of those movies impressed me, and neither does this one. The vignette style is inevitably hit or miss; for every routine that hits, you’ll have two or three that miss. The fifties science fiction movie parody of astronauts encountering matriarchal societies (think QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE) might have worked if it hadn’t settled for only the most obvious of targets, and the running jokes (including Lou Jacobi as a person who gets trapped in his TV set popping up in other sketches) are pretty lame. There are a few highlights. I like the bit which posits a theory about the identity of Jack the Ripper, the one where a funeral ceremony turns into a public roast featuring several well-known comedians, the movie parody SON OF THE INVISIBLE MAN (which has no fantastic content, which is part of the joke), and an ad for a double-album of music by a black artist who has no soul (featuring songs like “MacArthur Park”). And, if you haven’t turned it off when the credits start to roll, you’ll catch a surprise exploitation movie parody which features footage of Bela Lugosi, another of the movie’s better moments. Beyond that, a decent moment here or there doesn’t really redeem the rest of them. Still, it may be worth watching it for curiosity’s sake to simply see who all pops up at one time or another, a game that the movie doesn’t give away; the list of stars I mention above is exactly as they are introduced at the beginning of the movie.