Missile to the Moon, The Miss Universe Pageant of B Movies

So sad! Gretchen Carlson has driven the last nail into the coffin of the Miss America Pageant. Sultry, nubile women with angelic gifts no longer rule this pageant...instead lasses playing weird songs on cups (really) spouting PC politics have taken over. Ms. Carlson did away with the swimsuit competition and the pageant, now called a competition, lost over half of their remaining viewers. Fortunately. Gretchen Carlson had no hand in 1958's "Missile to the Moon." This great scifi epic features sultry moon girls played by Sandra Wirth (Miss Florida), Pat Mowry (Miss New Hampshire), Tania Velia (Miss Yugoslavia), Sanita Pelkey (Miss New York), Lisa Simone (Miss France), Marianne Gaba (Miss Illinois), Gaba Renata (Miss Germany), and Mary Ford (Miss Minnesota). If Gretchen Carlson had made this film we would have seen Rosie O'Donnell and Roseanne Barr as the moon girls...scary!

20 years ago Dirk (Michael Whalen) came to Earth from the moon. In that time he impersonated a great rocket scientist and built a rocket to fly back to the moon. As the U.S. government threatens to take over his space rocket and turn it into a useless space shuttle, he commandeers two escaped felons, Lon (Gary Clarke) and Gary (Tommy Cook), and his two assistants Steve (Richard Travis) and the nubile June (Cathy Downs). None of these schmucks knows Dirk is a moon man and June and Steve are in love. On the way up to the moon Gary tries to rape June and Dirk dies in a meteorite shower, hence only the 4 Earthlings reach the moon.

On the moon, they are attacked by rock monsters and abducted by a race of beautiful moon women. Gretchen Carlson would not be pleased as these ladies are sultry and dressed in form-fitting leotards showing a lot of leg and suggesting much bosom. These ladies are played by the aforementioned pageant winners. Lido (K.T. Stevens) is the leader and because she is blind, she thinks Steve is Dirk. Steve finds out he is promised in marriage to Alpha (Nina Bara). Alpha then engages June in a cat-fight, beats her up and sentences her to death. Meanwhile Alpha releases a huge spider to eat the other Earthlings, hypnotizes Steve to fall in love with her and has June tied to a stake outside the spiders lair. Uh oh...the spider eats Miss Germany...so sad. As Alpha kills Lido to seize the throne, June is in mortal danger and all the moon women who seek to help the Earthlings are put on Alpha's death list, too.

Fortunately Gretchen Carlson wasn't around in the 1950s, as if she were, instead of international beauties, Ms. Carlson would've cast frumpy librarians. The ladies are quite appealing and their proclivity toward cat-fights is heartwarming. Will the Earthlings escape the spider creature and the moon women? Will June be torn apart by the spider or by a jealous Alpha?  Will the other moon beauties hook up with the male Earthlings...or each other? This is great cheesecake from the 1950s and is not corrupted by the Gretchen Carlson types of society. For 1950s B movie fun, see "Missile to the Moon," a film made before the likes of Gretchen Carlson destroyed beauty pageants.