John Landis had previously directed The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), which employed a similar sketch anthology format.
Plot
Fictional television station WIDB-TV (channel 8) experiences problems with its late-night airing of science-fiction classic Amazon Women on the Moon, a 1950s B movie in which Queen Lara (Sybil Danning) and Captain Nelson (Steve Forrest) battle exploding volcanoes and man-eating spiders on the Moon. Waiting for the film to resume, an unseen viewer begins channel surfing—simulated by bursts of white noise—through late night cable, with the various segments and sketches of the film representing the programming found on different channels. The viewer intermittently returns to channel 8, where Amazon Women continues airing before faltering once more.
These segments feature:
Arsenio Hall as a man who experiences a series of mishaps around his apartment;
Monique Gabrielle as a model who goes about her daily routine in Laguna, California, completely naked;
Lou Jacobi as a man named Murray, zapped into the television, wandering throughout sketches looking for his wife;
William Marshall as the leader of the Video Pirates, who hijack an MCA Home Video ship, uncover a vast amount of videotapes and laserdiscs, and promptly begin illegally bootlegging the media;
Ed Begley Jr., as the son of the Invisible Man, having trouble with his formula;
An alternate version of the "Pethouse Video" sketch was filmed for the television broadcast of the film, with Monique Gabrielle in lingerie instead of appearing naked throughout the segment. However, most European television broadcasts of the film retained the original theatrical version. Bullshit or Not? was retitled Baloney or Not? for the television version.
The American television edit, in addition to the alternative "Pethouse Video" sketch, features an additional bridging sequence between the death of Harvey Pitnik and his subsequent celebrity roast. In it, the mortician successfully cons Pitnik's widow into having the celebrity roast as part of the funeral, and her performance gets such strong positive feedback, it becomes a continuing performance series lasting for weeks.
The DVD release features an unreleased sketch titled "The Unknown Soldier", starring Robert Loggia with Ronny Cox, Bernie Casey, and Wallace Langham. Some television broadcasts of the film featured the sketches "Peter Pan Theater" and "The French Ventriloquist's Dummy", which were not present in the theatrical version.
Amazon Women on the Moon was filmed in 1985 with plans for an August 1986 release, but due to the ongoing legal fallout from director John Landis's involvement in the Twilight Zone accident, Universal repeatedly pushed the release date and issued a gag order on publicity for the film while the trial was ongoing.[3]
Reception
The majority of critics agreed that the quality was inconsistent throughout the film. Variety called it "irreverent, vulgar and silly... [with] some hilarious moments and some real groaners too."[4]Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times felt that the exercise was somewhat unnecessary: "Satirists are in trouble when their subjects are funnier than they are."[5]
Janet Maslin of The New York Times, in a largely positive review, described the film as "an anarchic, often hilarious adventure in dial-spinning, a collection of brief skits and wacko parodies that are sometimes quite clever, though they're just as often happily sophomoric, too."[6]
Certain portions of the film were singled out for praise. "The funniest episode probably is 'Son of the Invisible Man', directed by Carl Gottlieb, in which Ed Begley Jr. plays a man who thinks he is invisible but is not", wrote the Chicago Sun-Times.[5] "The film's best sight gags come from Robert K. Weiss, who deserves kudos for the inspired idiocy of his Amazon Women segments", was the opinion of The New York Times.[6]
Amazon Women on the Moon has a rating of 65% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 20 reviews, with an average rating of 5.7/10.[8] On Metacritic it has a 42% score based on reviews from 11 critics.[9]
^ abEbert, Roger (September 18, 1987). "Amazon Women on the Moon". RogerEbert.com. Ebert Digital LLC. Archived from the original on April 5, 2018. Retrieved April 4, 2018.
^ abMaslin, Janet (September 18, 1987). "Amazon Women on the Moon". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 5, 2018. Retrieved April 4, 2018.
