#10 – On the moon you have to use your tail for sex

Avatar is set on a ‘lush, inhabitable moon’. But even lush, inhabitable moons face the terrors of deforestation and human greed. Not to mention that the place is overrun with monsters who engage in sexual endeavours with their tails. They use these same tails for a disconcerting number of other activities including for flying dragons. With an organ so versatile I imagine there is a wrong end of the stick or two to be had.

 

#9 – Jaws gets gash

In Moonraker, Bond discovers a plot to commit global genocide, and a mission to stop it takes him in to outer-space. After having alluded the death-grip of the Bond films’ best ever henchman, Jaws, on a plane to Africa, in a cable car in Brazil and on a canoe on the Amazon river, he manages to persuade Jaws to join allegiances with him on the moon and they save the planet. Jaws becoming a good guy wins over Dolly. Dolly and Jaws get it on. End.

 

#8 – Mental illness

The moon has always been associated with madness. The word ‘lunatic’ comes from ‘luna’ (moon), and werewolves are sent into unrelenting, bloody rages at the sight of it. Duncan Jones’ dark and lonely lunar thriller Moon proves that being on the moon makes you all the more vulnerable to its maniacal grasp. You would have thought Kevin Spacey as a computerised pal would be all the company you’d need in outer space, but it’s not enough for Sam Bell who begins to hallucinate a second self aboard the lunar station…or does he?

 

#7 – Dr. Evil fornicating with Frau Farbissina

In Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me Dr. Evil not only steals Austin’s mojo but turns the moon into a “Death Star” equipped with “giant laser”. In order to stop him, Austin’s lady Felicity Shagwell must, well, shag Fat Bastard. As if one irksome sexual encounter weren’t enough for this sequel, when Dr. Evil drinks some of Austin’s mojo he is compelled to get it on with Frau Farbissina. We don’t know what’s worse about this moon-related movie, Dr. Evil’s plans for world domination or the two most gruesome moments of copulation in cinema?

 

#6 – Snack-related havoc

When NASA’s TV channel starts losing viewers, they decide to hire a “ordinary shmoe” to launch into space alongside Buzz Aldrin and Race Banyon. Homer wins by default and is sent on a catastrophic space mission. Smuggling a packet of chips on board, he manages to break the on-board ant farm with his head and opens the shuttle door to help them out. Journeys to the moon always incur disaster, one way or another.

 

#5 -“You’ll share man’s greatest thrill as you rocket through space to the lost moon city of alluring, ferocious cat-women.” –Cat Women of the Moon

We’ve reached the half-way point and if ‘blue phallus’ and ‘lasers’ weren’t enough to halt your lunar-landing desires, then the cat women of the moon “Flaming into a wild lust to destory man and conquer the world” should. According to this 1953 film, on the moon you will be “goaded into a den of blood-thirsty moon-monsters” and tempted into the “deadly cave of moon gold.” So not only is the moon infested with lecherous she-cats but full of tacky moon related paraphernalia to boot.

 

#4 – Monoliths

Stanley Kubrick is the master of the bizarre and the terrifying, and his 1968 take on 2001: A Space Odyssey just had to be mentioned here, even though the link to the moon is tenuous at best. But here is the reason not to visit the moon that transpires…
You may find a monolith on the moon which beams a powerful radio signal to Jupiter, and (bear with us here), whilst on your way to Jupiter you will discover that the AI system aboard your shuttle is psychotic and will try to kill you. So don’t land on the moon – please – lest this unlikely but unfortunate series of events should follow.

 

#3 – The man in the moon

All you have to do is look at the terrifying images from 1902’s A Trip to the Moon, one of the first films in which the moon starred (what a scientifically inaccurate pun), and the terrifying face of the man in the moon will be enough to warn you off outer-space adventures for good. In this silent movie, the astronauts’ shuttle is launched from a cannon, they are captured by a race of moon-men, and despite the fact that the running time is barely fourteen minutes, it has taught us a valuable lesson about moon based escapades. A ‘trip’ to the moon indeed.

 

#2 – It is likely to be made of cheese

You may, like Wallace and Gromit, in their Grand Day Out have illusions of a delicious moon entirely made of your favourite coagulation of milk protein. But think of the smell! Imagine an object of 3500km diameter and the powerful stench it would emit. Repugnant.

 

#1 – Apollo 18 never made it back

You’ll have to go and see this decades-old lost footage from NASA’s abandoned Apollo 18 mission for yourself to discover why after two American astronauts were sent on a secret expedition, the U.S. has never returned to the moon…

 

Now that you have made your way through a brief cinematic history of all films that have ever featured the moon, ever, even just for a brief moment, perhaps even just in speech, do let us know if there are any more movie moon mishaps we have missed. Go on, try me.