Nude on the Moon is a 1961 American science-fantasy exploitation film co-written and co-directed by Doris Wishman and Raymond Phelan under pseudonyms. The story follows two scientists who use an inherited fortune to build a rocket, travel to the Moon and discover a strangely peaceful civilisation of telepathic, topless women. Like several early Wishman films, it belongs to the nudist-film cycle of the period, but what makes it stand out is that it moves the usual nudist-camp formula into a low-budget outer-space fantasy, which gives the film its odd and unmistakably cult reputation.
The film’s most distinctive location is Coral Castle in Homestead, Florida, which was used for the Moon sequences and even acknowledged in the film’s credits for its cooperation. That choice is a huge part of the film’s identity, because Coral Castle’s carved stone structures, pathways, coral furniture and eccentric monument-like atmosphere make the “Moon” look less like a studio-built science-fiction set and more like a surreal Florida tourist attraction transformed into an alien world. Rather than relying on elaborate effects, the production used a very real and very unusual South Florida landmark to create its extraterrestrial setting, which is a large part of why the film still feels so peculiar and memorable today.
Coral Castle
Coral Castle appears in The Wild Women of Wongo (1958), Nude on the Moon (1961), and a number of documentary and television productions about the site itself.
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