PROJECT MOON BASE

Ross Ford and Donna Martell

PROJECT MOON BASE (1953). Director: Richard Talmadge.

A foreign agent named Roundtree (Herb Jacobs) engineers the substitution of a prominent scientist, Dr Wernher (Larry Johns), for a duplicate whose mission is to destroy the U.S. space station. (From there the Americans hope to eventually build a base on the moon.) During the switch, Roundtree pretends to be a bellboy! Colonel Briteis (Donna Martell) is to pilot a ship to the moon but there is a slight contretemps when she learns her co-pilot is to be her former boyfriend, the handsome Major Moore (Ross Ford of Reform School Girl). "Wernher" comes along with the bickering couple -- who are secretly in love, of course -- but gives the game away when he doesn't know the name of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team -- he must be a spy! 

the space station

Very little happens even after this revelation, as the phony scientist is easily subdued and not very threatening in any case. There's a lot of talk and minimal, if decent, special effects work. Project Moon Base was the pilot for a television program that was released to theaters instead, where people had to pay to see something that wouldn't have been worth watching for free. Hayden Rorke, who plays the project head, later wound up on I Dream of Jeannie, and indeed he plays General Greene as if he were in a sitcom. Barbara Morrison also plays reporter Polly Prattles (!) as if this were a sitcom. James Craven of innumerable cliffhanger serials has a small role. The only really interesting thing about the movie, which was co-scripted (and disavowed) by Robert Heinlein, is that both the chief moon pilot and American president are women. 

Verdict: Pretty bad. *1/2. 

REFORM SCHOOL GIRL

Gloria Castillo

REFORM SCHOOL GIRL (1957). Director: Edward Bernds.       

Donna (Gloria Castillo) has an unfortunate home life living with her miserable Aunt Rita (Claire Carleton) and her lecherous, leering uncle (Jack Kruschen). No wonder she decides to go out for a ride with Gary (Wayne Taylor). Unfortunately the driver is Vince (Edd Byrnes of 77 Sunset Strip), and the car they're in is stolen. Throwing Gary and his own date, Josie (Luana Anders), out of the car, he takes off for a wild ride with a resisting Donna, and runs over and kills a man. Frightened of Vince's retaliation, Donna refuses to tell the cops who the driver was, and is sent to reform school, where things, are, if anything, even worse. 

Edd Byrnes and Ralph Reed

Donna finds herself in the Hastings School for Girls, run by Mrs. Trimble (Helen Wallace). There is also a teacher named David Lindsay (Ross Ford), who is doing research on the tough lovelies but who is unlikely to inspire romantic feelings in any of them. Donna earns the enmity of some of her fellow inmates, including Roxy (Yvette Vickers, who looks like crap in this). Things get worse when the devious Vince has a lady pal call the police pretending to be Donna, and she gives Josie's name to them -- Josie winds up at the Hastings School herself and with the help of the other girls, who hate snitches, decides to get even with Donna. Donna's only friends are Ruth (Jan Englund) and Jackie Dodd (Ralph Reed), a nice boy who sneaked inside the gates to go on more than one date with her. Vince forces Ralph to show him the way inside, but Ralph may have other plans. 

Yvette Vickers and Ralph Reed

Reform School Girl is a modestly entertaining flick with a good lead performance by Castillo [Invasion of the Saucer Men]. Vickers [Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman] is typically zesty, most of the other gals play with vitality, Edd Byrnes overacts a bit but is sufficiently nasty, and Ralph Reed makes an appealing "good boy" to counterbalance Byrnes' snake in the grass. Sally Kellerman has a small role as nasty, violent Marcia; she seems to literally tower over the other girls. Bernds also directed High School Hellcats. 

Verdict: "Chicks" in the hoosegow. **3/4.