Odds are you’ve never of the 1961 movie “Nude on the Moon,” but if its name sounds familiar that’s because in 2002 the name was borrowed by the B-52’s for their double-disc CD anthology. 

The movie Nude on the Moon is a fairly standard early 1960s sci-fi flick for the first 20 minutes. A scientist and a professor are working on getting themselves to the moon. Now keep in mind that it was in 1961 that the first human orbited the earth, and we’re nine years away from walking on the moon (and the Summer of love) so the idea of two random dudes just up and going to the moon using the science of boiling different colored liquids in beakers seems completely plausible. I won’t hold the modern standards for moon travel against anyone involved.  Now the fact they had a three million dollar budget in legal tender to get to the moon, I will. I understand a dollar went further in the 60’s, but the actual cost for Apollo 11 was 334 million.

Other than that, those first 20 minutes are … not bad. Well, there are some pretty terrible pacing issues. The movie opens up with a cartoon spacescape. The theme song plays, a star faintly twinkles and the song plays. The entire song plays and the screen never changes. No action. No dialogue. No credits.  Absolutely nothing happens for nearly two minutes, we just listen to this song. And it’s not even a B-52’s song like Rock Lobster, because that would have been interesting. At around the 15-minute mark, as our future astronauts, hop in their Chrysler, it’s as big as a whale, and go driving around downtown and one asks the other to put on some music. Then we’re treated to about 3 minutes of footage of them listening to this song, driving around doing absolutely nothing until they see a faded sign by the side of the road that says 15 miles to the Love Shack.

Where this movie starts to go off the rails is when the scientists are ready to do their cosmic thing. You see they don’t want to attract a crowd so they don’t tell the press they’re going to the moon. This allows them to take off from their private Idaho. And because building spaceships, even prop ones, we don’t even get to see the outside of the ship except from extreme close up, or extremely far away. On the way to the moon in the sky (called the moon), both of them spontaneously fall into a deep sleep.

When they wake up they’ve landed on the moon. And it looks nothing like they expected. It looks like a tourist trap in Florida where all the building and furniture is made from fossilized coral. They exit the ship in their space suits, which frankly makes them look more like power rangers than astronauts. 

They begin to roam around and explore when they come upon a wall with a ladder. One climbs up, and spots about 52 girls who aren’t nude, but are topless, like they’ve been involved in some sort of hot pants explosion. And there are a few men and children around as well, and they’re wearing little more than a gold Speedo. So I guess “nude on the moon” is a bit of false advertising, and it should just be “topless on the moon.”

Professor climbs up and down the ladder, and without telling the scientist two what he saw, the scientist climbs up the ladder and sees the same. Neither one ever acknowledges what they see. Neither says “Wow” or Ahoooogha” or “You have to see this to believe it” or even call to out the aliens “Is that you, Mo Dean?” Yes, they’re aliens. You can tell by the visible headband with a pipe cleaner antenna.  

The never-nude men capture the scientist and the professor,  a topless woman bonks them on the head with a magic wand that makes sci-fi sounds, and then they throw them in a well.  They try to get out when they bang bang on the door baby

The queen of the nudes calls a meeting of her citizens and tells them she thinks these guys are groovy, and that they’re just here to learn more about the universe. So everybody just be cool and chill out. We can let them roam if they want to, roam around our world. Also, the queen is telepathic and doesn’t speak. And her citizens also don’t speak either, and they’re not telepathic, so it’s not like anyone can object. 

Our heroes are freed and they go about their work of taking photographs of the moon and its citizens, and taking notes, telling it like it T - I -S. They’re both eyes up and respectful to the topless women, almost like they’re practicing real good objective science. 

What we’re treated to for the next can only be described as … odd. 

For twenty-five excruciating long minutes, We see this highly evolved scantily clad race of extremely beautiful aliens, running, and frolicking, hugging and kissing, dancing and loving, wearing next to nothing cause it’s hot as an oven, They’re also engaging in all sorts of idyllic leisure activities the sexiest of which is a hot potato, and this is is wonderful until someone accidentally over throws a ball, Westley parties out of bounds and falls into a greenhouse and they institute the death penalty as punishment. 

In the early 60’s the only way to get around obscenity laws, was to documentaries on nudist colonies. And that’s basically what we’re treated to.  It’s supposed to be titillating with all the nips and other good stuff, but what we get is something as erotic as a cheese nip and as sexy as a National Geographic. Any novelty of nudity has worn off after about three minutes. Clearly, it’s meant to be sexy, since it fakes a nudist colony documentary,  and there’s no reason to fake one except to be erotic, but also it isn’t at all erotic, as they’ve been framed into a scientific unsexy context. And also the kids running around. All of this happens with a soundtrack ripped off of a similar era Disney documentary, 

How do I know it’s a fake nudist colony? Well, besides the fact they’re not actually on the moon, there are tan lines. Lots of tan lines. 

So after a painfully long 25 minutes of this, with minimal boring dialogue, our dynamic duo is about out of oxygen, so they need to go Power Rangers. But the scientist wants to stay because he’s in love with the queen, and she’s in love with him, despite just meeting a few hours ago, and never exchanging any dialogue. The professor talks some sense into them and they head home. 

When they get home, they have difficulty proving that they ever went to the moon, when the scientist falls in love, he sets down his camera and forgets it like the president of the deadbeat club. They aren’t sure that where they were was the moon since they napped both on the way there and back. I’m not sure they were on the moon either since their view of Earth had all the continents backward and the revolution of Earth is counterclockwise. Perhaps they accidentally went into that mirror universe where Spock had a beard or something. 

Given the painfully slow pacing of this movie throughout, I’d have to say this movie is about as much fun as watching a TIN ROOF, RUSTING.

Nude on the Moon is available streaming on Plex