John Landis's Revival of the Sketch-Comedy Anthology: Amazon Women on the Moon

AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON 

(Kino Lorber, US, 1987, rated R, 85 mins)

Two years after the 1975 debut of Saturday Night Live on NBC, director John Landis got in on the sketch-comedy action with Kentucky Fried Movie. After a string of box office hits, including National Lampoon's Animal House and The Blues Brothers (starring SNL's John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd), he returned to his run-and-gun roots with this unofficial sequel, which reunited him with director Robert K. Weiss, a writer on the 1977 film, along with Peter Horton, Carl Gottlieb, and Joe Dante of Gremlins fame.  

Amazon Women on the Moon duplicates the experience of watching late-night TV in the 1980s by combining a B&W Universal-style horror movie, grade Z science-fiction adventure, scare-mongering hygiene film, hokey paranormal program, and ridiculous commercials for useless products. 

Arsenio Hall, from another Landis hit, 1988's Coming to America, stars in opening sketch "Mondo Condo," which offers the most extravagant physical comedy, as the victim of a literally killer condominium. Other notable performers include Michelle Pfeiffer, from Landis's 1985 Into the Night, and her then-husband Horton as new parents baffled by Griffin Dunne's sarcastic OB-GYN in "Hospital" and Rosanna Arquette as a single woman with a high-tech system for screening prospective dates, like Steve Guttenberg, in "Two I.D.'s." 

The movie parodies include "Son of the Invisible Man" with Ed Begley Jr. as a nude scientist convinced no one can see him (they definitely can), Carrie Fisher as an Iowa innocent who gets a lesson about social diseases from Paul Bartel's Big Apple doctor in "Reckless Youth," and the title entry, "Amazon Women on the Moon," with Lana Clarkson and B-movie queen Sybil Danning as Amazonian lunarians who capture the hearts of three American astronauts, including John Travolta's brother, Joey (tragically, Clarkson's life would come to an end in 2003 at the hands of producer Phil Spector). 

One of the running gags, "Murray in Videoland," involves Lou Jacobi as a middle-aged man relaxing on his recliner in undershirt and boxers when he gets sucked into his TV. He ends up on the moon with the astronauts and at a funeral where a gaggle of insult comedians, including Rip Taylor and Henny Youngman, make fun of Belinda Balaski's not-so-dearly departed husband ("Critic's Corner / Roast Your Loved One"). 

Not all of the commercials work equally well, but standouts include Joe Pantoliano as a spokesman for "Hairlooming" and David Alan Grier as singer Don "No Soul" Simmons whose piano renditions of AM radio hits are exactly as soul-free as advertised ("Blacks Without Soul"). Further notable participants include Henry Silva, Ralph Bellamy, and Howard Hesseman. 

Though this Landis-produced project wasn't a critical or box office hit upon original release, it would find new life by way of home video and cable TV exposure, where it felt more at home than in a theater. 

This special edition includes a lively commentary track from Busted Guts podcasters Mike McPadden and Kat Ellinger, a fine featurette with Landis and Dante, dailies from Dante's archives, deleted scenes and outtakes, and sketches from Dante and Horton that didn't make the cut for thematic reasons, i.e. they're more amusing in theory than in execution. Overall: recommended.

Amazon Women on the Moon (Special Edition) is available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. Images from Qwipster, IMDb, and Movie Poster Shop.