Amazon Women on the Moon

Amazon Women on the Moon DVD

In this irreverent spoof of late-night television humorous sketches mock varying forms of the media and other 1980s phonemena. Excruciatingly funny sketches include B.B. King making a public plea for "Blacks Without Soul" featuring the insipid talents of Don "No Soul" Simmons David Alan Grier as well as wacky spoofs of 1950s black-and-white films including "Son of the Invisible Man" starring Ed Begley Jr. as the batty son who firmly believes he is as invisible as his father--except that everyone can see him--and "2 I.D.s" starring Rosanna Arquette and Steve Guttenberg as yuppies on a disastrous blind date. Everything from tabloid vignettes 1950s sci-fi films late-night porn and infomercials are spoofed in this star-studded collection of skits.

Amazon Women on the Moon [VHS]

Contrary to popular rumor, this 1987 collection of comedy skits is not about a group of female employees from Amazon.com on a mission to the lunar surface. It's a series of unrelated spoofs and sketches designed to resemble an aimless night of TV channel-surfing, and the satirical targets include grade-Z science fiction films of the 1950s, sex films of the 1930s, hospital soap operas, and Playboy video centerfolds. There's a charity drive in which legendary bluesman B.B. King pleas for donations to help "Blacks Without Soul," and Ed Begley Jr. thinks he's the son of the Invisible Man, which would be fine if he weren't as visible as everyone else. The various sketches feature an all-star cast including Rosanna Arquette, Griffin Dunne, Carrie Fisher, Michelle Pfeiffer, the late Phil Hartman in an early role, and many others. It's strictly hit-or-miss, and many of the sketches fall flat, especially since the subjects being spoofed (the title sketch is a send-up of the actual 1954 movie Cat Women on the Moon) are funny enough without being satirized. Even though Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide describes most of the sketches as "astonishingly unfunny," this can be a very amusing movie if you're in the mood for a no-brainer with a lot of familiar Hollywood faces. Now a modest little cult film, it's the kind of disposable entertainment that maintains its appeal almost in spite of itself. --Jeff Shannon