Douglas Fowley | Through the Shattered Lens

With Arleigh away in Boston, I originally thought that this weekend would present the perfect opportunity to turn Through The Shattered Lens into the web’s premier site for Twilight fan fiction and soulful Edward Cullen gifs. I was even planning on writing a post about how, by simply using time travel as a plot device, one could do a massive Twilight-Divergent-Hunger Games crossover. (Essentially, Katniss and Tris would work together to raise Bella’s self-esteem but there was a lot more to it than just that….)

It was going to be glorious but then I got distracted by a 1953 film called Cat-Women of The Moon.

Cat-Women of the Moon attempts to imagine what will happen when mankind finally attempts to launch an expedition to the moon. According to this film, it will involve four men and one woman sitting around on a rocket and trading sexist quips.

Among our crew:

Laird Grainger (Sonny Tufts) is the philosophical but tough captain who talks about the eternal mysteries of the stars.

Helen Salinger (Marie Windsor) is the ship’s navigator. She also happens to be — GASP! — a female. When asked why she should be allowed to step foot on the moon with the men, she replies, “Somebody needs to cook your meals!” Because, you know, it’s 1953…

Then there’s Walter Walters (Douglas Fowley) who is secretly New Mexico’s biggest supplier of meth. Oh wait — sorry, wrong Walter. Walter Walters is just some guy with a mustache who won’t stop talking about how he’s going to use the moon to get rich.

And then there’s Kip (Victor Jory) and Doug (Bill Phipps), two all-American boys who deal with their problems by first considering their options and then shooting anyone who happens to be standing in their way.

Anyway, once the rocket finally does reach the moon, our intrepid crew discovers that not only does the moon have an atmosphere but it’s inhabited by both a giant spider (which looks a bit like an ill-conceived piñata whenever it dangles over the heads of our astronauts) and the Cat-Women of the Moon (played, the opening credits tell us, by “THE HOLLYWOOD COVER GIRLS”).

Now, if you’re like me, you probably saw the film’s title and then assumed that the film would be about women who were half feline. You would be wrong. Despite the film’s title, the Cat-Women don’t have much to do with actual cats. Instead, they’re the last 8 members of an ancient race. They all wear black leotards and, when Doug asks where their “menfolk” are, they reply that they have no need of men.

Oh, and get this — they spend all of their spare time dancing!

Seriously,whether they’re actually descended from cats or not, the Cat-Women rock! If I ever manage to trick Richard Branson into sending me to the moon, I’m joining up with the Cat Women! Sorry, Earth men, y’all were fun and all but I’m a cat woman at heart…

Except, according to this film, the Cat Women might not be on the moon anymore. Apparently, the moon’s atmosphere was evaporating and the Cat Women needed to steal the rocket so they could go to Earth and, as their leader puts it, convince all the women on Earth to rise up and destroy all the men.

Seriously, I was totally on her side. Solidarity, sisters!

So, what do you think happened? Did the Cat Women’s plot succeed or did our brave crew somehow manage to save the patriarchy?

You’ll have to watch to find out. The film is only an hour and 8 minutes long and, if you’re like me and you enjoy watching movies that are so bad that they’re good, you’ll find a lot to enjoy in Cat-Women Of The Moon!

Can we just be honest about something?

Most of us are a little bit scared of the elderly.

Oh, we try to deny it. We talk about how they’re “real characters” or we attempts to convince ourselves that their eccentricities are actually signs of an incurable zest of life. We tell ourselves that old people remind us of the value of carpe diem but, ultimately, they creep most of us out because, when we look at them, we see our own future. Regardless of what we do today or tomorrow, we’re all going to eventually become old. Perhaps that’s why there’s a whole industry devoted to keeping old people out of sight and out of mind.

Today’s entry in the Daily Grindhouse, the obscure 1974 film Homebodies, is effective precisely because it understands that unpleasant truth.

Directed by Larry Yust, Homebodies tells the story of Mattie (Paula Trueman). Mattie is one of seven elderly retirees who are the sole residents of a condemned apartment building. All around them, buildings are being torn down and replaced with new apartments. When an uncaring social worker (Linda Marsh) shows up and informs them that they’re going to be forcefully relocated to an assisted living facility, Mattie take matters into her own hands. She realizes that every time there’s an accident on a construction site, work stops for a few days. Hence, if there are enough accidents, work will be stopped indefinitely. Mattie and her fellow residents (some reluctantly and some not) are soon murdering anyone they view as a threat. While this is effective initially, things get complicated once Mattie starts to view some of her fellow residents with the same contempt that she previously reserved for construction workers.

Homebodies is one of those odd and dark films that could have only been made in the 70s. When the film begins, one would be excused for expecting to see a heart-warming comedy about a bunch of plucky seniors outsmarting the forces of progress and real estate. After all, the elderly residents of the condemned building are all appropriately quirky and, as played by Paula Trueman, Mattie doesn’t seem like she’d be out-of-place as one of the prankers on Betty White’s Off Their Rockers. Linda Marsh’s social worker and Kenneth Tobey’s construction foreman both seem like the type of authority figures who one would expect to see humiliated in a mawkish 1970s comedy film.

Instead, Homebodies turns out to be an effectively creepy and dark little film. When the elderly residents of the apartment building fight back, they do so with a surprising brutality that’s all the more effective because of the harmless exteriors of Mattie and her fellow residents. Paula Trueman makes Mattie into a truly fascinating and frightening monster. When a few of her fellow residents start to question Mattie’s methods, you truly do fear for them because Mattie has truly proven herself to be capable of just about anything. While Trueman dominates the film, the entire cast is excellent. As a classic film lover, I was happy to see that one of the residents was played by Ian Wolfe, a character actor who will be recognizable to anyone who has ever watched TCM.

(Remember the old man who gave the lecture at the observatory in Rebel Without A Cause? Him.)

I first saw Homebodies on YouTube and I was going to share it below but, apparently, the video has been pulled from the site. That’s a shame because it’s a film that definitely deserves to be seen, if for no other reason than to appreciate the performances from a cast of underrated character actors who, sadly, are no longer with us. Unfortunately, the best I can offer is this Spanish-language trailer for the film.