“I’m a space pilot, not a mechanically-minded wet nurse.”

Justin’s rating: M-O-O-N that spells moon!

Justin’s review: Three months after man first landed on the moon, Hammer Films performed its own lunar touchdown. Moon Zero Two was billed as a western on the moon, albeit one with a very ’60s aesthetic — kind of like what you’d expect if you were raised on some of the older James Bond films or Austin Powers.

It’s 2021 (trust me, check your calendars), and the colonized moon is the hippest, trippiest place to be. Everyone here is ripped right from a futurist calendar of style and fashion, letting us know that surviving in the void of space doesn’t have to sacrifice green hair, egg-shaped chairs, and giant British sideburns in the process. It’s also the kind of place where absolutely everything is labeled with the prefix “moon:” moon dollars, moon bar, moon court, moon suit, and (sigh) Moonopoly.

The first man on Mars, Bill Kemp (James Olsen), now runs a creaky scavenger ship called Moon Zero Two. He’s hired by a not-at-all-suspicious gangster with a monocle to snag a sapphire asteroid and intentionally crash it into the moon so it can be mined. He and his partner attempt to pull off this heist while evading the suspicions of the local sheriff and her thigh-high leather boots and handling the seedy thugs who came along for the ride.

And because that’s not enough story to fill out the runtime, Kemp’s also enticed to help a woman named Clem (Catherine Schell, Space 1999) to find her brother, a prospector who went missing on the far side of the moon. Cue shootouts with revolvers, a conspiracy, and a rootin’ tootin’ salloon in the roughest and spandexiest neighborhood.

While the story is barely serviceable, I found myself entranced with the look of Moon Zero Two. Hammer stretched a small budget in creative and gorgeous ways with models, sets, and outfits drawn from one of the most fashionable eras of modern history. The bright colors are a far cry from the drab earth tones that I associate with ’70s scifi, and I reveled in it.

Another point in this movie’s favor is its strong feminist tone. The security force on the moon — including its head — are all women who look like they’re ready to kick tail and hit the clubs after. And Clem’s pursuit of answers and justice for her brother ends up putting her in a rather powerful position when all is said and done.

Lush scifi eye candy with a western flair from a decade that normally gave us snoozers is enough to earn this movie a coveted Justin Seal of Approval.

Intermission!

• The chunky cartoon intro. I dig the style.
• Also, I think the space suit designs are pretty great — sleek with that retro-futuristic look
• A delay of two minutes will earn you a dressing-down by a snobby British officer
• $12,000 moon dollars!
• Monocles… in… spaaaaace
• It’s Mrs. Darth Vader! Love the helmet, lady.
• Shower doors in the future cover your naughty bits only. And only if you’re a guy.
• Memorial plaques are best hung up in locker rooms
• The girl with the green hair. And the girls with the purple hair.
• All the egg chairs, those are still so cool, wish I had one
• Those poor dancers, absolutely nobody’s watching them
• The curvy cellphones
• “He can go 100% to hell.”
• When your boss is trying to negotiate a deal, don’t put a video of a giant cow behind him
• Turning the artificial gravity off makes everyone move slowy but otherwise normal
• The hitching post outside Farside Five
• The spacesuit with the skull in it… creepy
• Ugh this action music. It’s like the orchestra was instructed to “wing it.”
• Bad guys are required to have a different colored spacesuit from each other