BAD MOVIE HOSTESS: MOONA LISA (1963-1975)

 My fellow movie host geeks and I are grateful to John L. for his better photographs of this lady as seen above. Moona Lisa (Lisa Clark in real life) was an active movie host for twelve years beginning in 1963.

Though Moona Lisa is most often associated with San Diego’s Science Fiction Theater, her longest-lasting show, she also hosted Moona’s Midnight Madness in St Louis for over a year and for eighteen months had even stepped in to replace one of the legends of the Movie Host world – Seymour AKA Sinister Seymour AKA Larry Vincent – as the host of Los Angeles’ iconic b-movie show Fright Night.

The slinky Moona Lisa hosted her programs from her personal Moon Base, often with the Earth seen in the lunar sky through a window, as in the above photo. When the Apollo astronauts landed on the moon in 1969 Lisa Clark employed a gimmick pioneered by the legendary movie host Zacherley the Cool Ghoul and inserted her Moona Lisa character into the footage, presenting her greeting the arriving astronauts.  

Other bits of Moona Lisa schtick included her greeting “Hello, Earthlings” and her farewell “Happy hallucinations, honeys” in every episode.

During the show Lisa would offer commentary on the atrocious films being shown while sitting in various seductive poses on “moon stone” furniture, sometimes with a snake wrapped around her body. The movies our heroine showed were the usual bad movie show staples: things like The Hideous Sun Demon, The Day The Earth Caught Fire, The Giant Behemoth, etc.

Like her sister movie host Karen Scioli AKA Stella, Lisa Clark wrote her own material.  One memorable bit aired during the British Invasion of the 1960’s when Moona Lisa added recurring sketches featuring the Roaches, who were a Beatles spoof.

Moona Lisa had a twin sister named Cosmosina, with both roles being played by Clark herself, but if she had ever needed anyone to pinch-hit she had her very own real-life twin sister Laura Elliot. For a time Lisa and Laura did a stint as the Doublemint Twins, giving them a secondary claim to Pop Icon status to rival Ghoulardi’s later stint introducing us to “the Looove Boat.”    Originally posted August 26th, 2011.

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