With the exception of Saturday Night Live, sketch shows on the TV aren’t nearly as big in the states as they are in the old continent. As a some sort of oddity (and quite frankly luckily as a passing fad) sketch shows started to appear as full length feature films in the mid 70s.

Amazon Women on the Moon is a continuum to this fad, with five different directors including Joe Dante and John Landis at it. The movie derives its name from a recurring bits that follow a poorly made 50s style scifi movie of a expedition crew landing on the moon. These segments don’t offer any humoristic value beyond the intentionally bad quality and forced clumsiness, and you’re likely to get a much better mileage watching any similar 50s scifi movie done with grave seriousness. There are quite a lot of much funnier scifi films out there, believe me.

Being a full length feature film, the skits are long and tend to drag on for too long. The Blacks Without Soul bit with B.B. King got a good chuckle out of me, but fails to evolve beyond its initial idea and should’ve cut shorter. Carl Gottlieb’s Invisible Man spoof is the real gem here with Ed Begley Jr playing a deluded man convinced of having come up with a formula for invisibility, oblivious that people around him are just humouring him.

Amazon Women on the Moon is best viewed to catch a glimpse of the various 80s actors usually seen only in feature films testing their wings in short sketches.

80s-o-meter: 86%

Total: 60%