Thursday, July 17, 2008

Spanked Women on the Moon

I'm really proud of what I'm about to unleash on you today. It's cheesy alright, but only a True Geek like me could have found the following scene. It's from the 1953 science fiction B-movie Project Moon Base. The film has an IMDB rating of 2.1 at the time of this writing and was parodied by Mystery Science Theater 3000. You get the picture.

Basically, it's a poor man's version of Destination Moon, and this is actually how I located it. I had just watched the George Pal classic, I was browsing the excellent SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review site, and before long, I had discovered that there was another moon mission film based on the work of Robert A. Heinlein: "Project Moon Base", a much lesser effort and rightfully forgotten. But, there was talk about a spanking scene!

It's only a threatened spanking, but hilarious nonetheless. The whole film is hilarious in a "so bad it's almost good" way. Especially its attitude towards women, which is just horribly dated - a typical confused 1950s mixture of faux feminism and patriarchic condescension. One of the protagonists is a female astronaut officer, but what starts out as an attempt to portray gender equality in the military / space program soon collapses into embarassing sexism.

I mean, to begin with, the character is called Colonel Briteis! Get it? Bright eyes. And she is constantly patronized by her male colleagues. “Can I help you up? Can I strap you in?” (Yeah! Bondage!) Those were the post-WWII days with their double standards, when women were encouraged to seek higher education and professional training, but expected to then meekly step aside and let the men take charge.

Socially, "Project Moon Base" is very much a product of its time. And a dull sci-fi snoozer with wooden acting and cheap special effects. But I like the following scene. The "soundproof" line really had me in stitches. Ah, they don't make 'em like this anymore...



(In the unlikely case that you want to see the whole movie, the MST3K episode is available on Youtube, and there is a BOO! TV treatment on Google Video. See, I told you I was a True Geek. Actually, the soundtrack of my clip is a combination of these two versions, because I wanted to get it as clean as possible, without any outsiders blabbering. Can't believe I spent an hour editing sound files for this piece of celluloid crap...)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's a movie of "Moonbase"? Well, I never!!!

Good old Heinlein, you can always count on him for a spanking reference.

Anonymous said...

Somehow, Adele, I knew you would be the first geek to comment.

This scene is priceless. I love the way she isn't even shocked. No "You wouldn't dare do such a thing!"
Just a petulant "If you do..." Ah, gotta love that postwar sexism! I have to use the name Briteis someday.

Anonymous said...

That little piece of movie history was priceless! Walking around with her uniform unbuttoned is a spanking offense all by itself. The set would be easy to recreate, if only you had some equally talented actress...

Tigerbutt

Anonymous said...

So many movie spanking threats are throwaway lines that get a bit lost, but this one is a great eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation. Thanks for posting it Ludwig.

He should have spanked her, and then told her the room was soundproofed afterwards!

Indy said...

You spent an hour editing this, Ludwig? Surely you have better things to edit!

On second thought, I am very grateful for the chance to view this scene without the rest of the movie! Amazing how they made a military scene seem more like Gidget and her dad (anachronistically speaking).

I think I'd rather see I Will Fear No Evil on the big screen. I'm sure that few spankings to orgasm and women wearing only body paint will make up for the plot.

Ludwig said...

Indiana: Surely I have better things to edit? Well, yeah, of course there are countless worthier movies, not to mention bona fide spanking clips (I still have lots of unreleased footage).

But cobbling the soundtracks of the two "Project Moon Base" versions together (MST3K and BOO! TV) was a different challenge, one I wouldn't have had otherwise. So that was interesting on a purely technical level, regardless of the movie's content.

When I'm in that mode, I'm like Gene Hackman's character from "The Conversation": "I don't care what they're talking about. All I want is a nice fat recording."

Anonymous said...

On the subject of classic SciFi and spanking, there's a (sadly only) threatened spanking in the original Star Trek episode Elaan of Troyus.