Amazon Women on the Moon

MOVIE #1,890 • 🍿🍿🍿 • 08.15.24 In the four years between this — officially “John Landis presents Amazon Women on the Moon” — and the tragic Twilight Zone: The Movie, Mr. Landis toiled in obscurity as penance for overseeing that fateful production. JK! He directed THREE features including hits Spies Like Us and ¡Three Amigos! (as well as executive producing Clue). That’s Hollywood baby! Fair is fair, what can you say? Look, Landis’s heavy involvement aside, these non-sequitur, kitchen sink spoof comedies do nothing for me (See: 1974’s The Groove Tube). But this is Joe Dante Week and my completionist ways have led me here, so let’s get into this garbage.

Anchored by a fake B-movie (the titular “Amazon Women on the Moon”) this features over 20 skits and fake commercials, with an array of ‘name’ and/or recognizable actors (see below), so many of which are horribly miscast (I like Griffin Dunne but he can’t do broad, goofball comedy, for example). There are various callbacks as the skits start to intertwine with one another and its best moments are when actually funny people, like David Alan Grier, get to go off. It turns out that it is helpful when actual comedians are hired to do this insanely wacky brand of comedy.

Dante (among five credited filmmakers) directed four bits here, starting with a short phony advertisement starring Joe Pantoliano and a very meh sketch called “Critics Corner.” His third (and probably best segment of the film overall — the bar is low, folks) is a parody of Unsolved Mysteries which asks the question, what if Jack the Ripper was actually the Loch Ness Monster. This is stupid but stupid in a good way…


And his last and longest contribution is called “Roast Your Loved Ones,” wherein the always great Robert Picardo plays funeral director who turns wakes into comedy roasts featuring Rip Taylor, Henny Youngman and other new up-and-comers doing schtick. It's completely one-note but otherwise fine. I guess Dick Miller was busy.

The best thing I can say about this is that nobody involved was decapitated by a helicopter. (SORRY)

Look at this cast list...

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Amazon Women on the Moon is a 1987 American satirical science fiction film that parodies the experience of watching low-budget films on late-night television. The film, featuring a large ensemble cast including cameo appearances from film and TV stars and even non-actors, was written by Michael Barrie and Jim Mulholland, and takes the form of a compilation of 21 comedy skits directed by five different directors: Joe Dante, Carl Gottlieb, Peter Horton, John Landis, and Robert K. Weiss. It was released on September 18, 1987.