Well, it certainly tried to be.
Like UHF or Stay Tuned, Amazon Women on the Moon feels like a movie made by and for pop-culturally obsessed weirdos – those of us who misspent way too much of our youth daydreaming in front of the TV set, bouncing between late-night horror marathons, sitcom reruns, soaps, gameshows, self-help infomercials, random Cable nudity and twice the legal dosage of commercials. The movie is about the experience itself: the fine art of channel surfing, back when that meant something – and sometimes it felt like our lives depended on it. It was never about what was on, it was about what you might be missing.
Also, it was released on Home Video today in 1988, after a September 18, 1987, theatrical premiere.
It’s a deeply ‘80s phenomenon. Before the rise of cable, if you wanted to change the channel, you got up and turned the dial manually – or you got your kids to do it – and with only three or four networks, there wasn’t much point. But by the mid-80s, wireless remote controls were everywhere, and suddenly, magically, attention spans got shorter. Why sit through commercials when you could just flip to different commercials on another channel? Or bounce between Cosby and Sledge Hammer? Amazon Women on the Moon gets this. It doesn’t just spoof bad movies as the title suggests; it mimics the experience of randomly hopping between them, flicking past fields of static and landing on something even stranger. Flicking could be a lot more fun than just settling on one thing.
The format owes a lot to Landis’ own Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), which helped refine the sketch-driven, parody-heavy film. That one was an early Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker effort too, packed with absurdist gags, mock commercials, and an extended kung fu movie pastiche. In the 70s this style was everywhere with titles like The Groove Tube, Tunnel Vision, and Loose Shoes – they all tried variations on the formula – but by the time History of the World: Part I arrived in the 80’s, things had mostly moved on. Meanwhile, oddly enough, horror anthologies were having a golden age, with Creepshow, Twilight Zone: The Movie, and Cat’s Eye proving there was money in bite-sized storytelling.
But when Amazon Women on the Moon came along in 1987, the sketch-comedy movie was a bit of a relic. Monty Python had already perfected it, and ZAZ had moved on to full-length spoofs like Airplane!. The SNL players had graduated to full-length features like The Blues Brothers, Trading Places, and Three Amigos, abandoning the short-form structure. In a way, Amazon Women feels like a last stand for the format, a final attempt to rage against the flickering light.
And yet, for all its scattershot energy and occasional groaners, it lands some absolute gems like Ed Begley Jr. as the Invisible Man (who is very much not invisible). It’s an all-star grab bag of surreal, late-night comedy – sometimes brilliant, sometimes forgettable, but always reaching for something strange.
It may not be the greatest movie ever made, but John Landis and Joe Dante revel in our generation’s brand of TV obsession. They understood that, like them, we didn’t just watch the tube, we studied it. And this film is the pop quiz to prove we were paying attention in class.