The Bamboo Saucer

Classic sci-fi was getting more rare in the late 60s, but it was not dead yet. The Bamboo Saucer (TBS) is solid 50s B sci-fi in many ways. It has a flying saucer, dashing hero, beautiful lady scientist, stock footage of military jets and even a close-call with a meteorite in space. The first half (after the saucer buzzing), amounts to an average spy story with the mysterious saucer as MacGuffin. After that, the sci-fi adventure takes over. The product of various small-time producers, TBS appears aimed at the television market, but apparently had at least a modest theatrical release too. (note the extra-cheap poster) As a minor trivia note, John Ericson stars. He played the fallen hero "Dutch" in another of 1968's indie sci-fi: The Destructors.

Quick Plot Synopsis
Fred Norwood (Ericson) is a crack test pilot, flying the experimental X-109 (actually footage of the F-104 Starfighter). He is buzzed and chased by a glowing blue flying saucer. His radical maneuvering gets him in hot water with his bosses on the ground. No one saw his flying saucer. No radar blip either. He is scrubbed from the X-109 program as unstable. Fred convinces his brother in law to let him use the laser radar gizmo he's been working on to look for blips invisible to regular radar. Eventually, one is found, but Joe goes up to check it out while Fred sleeps. Joe's plane is broken up in the air. Fred tells FAA investigators about his saucer. This gets him an appointment with Hank Peters (Dan Duryea) in Washington. The NIA has a sketch by a chinese peasant of a flying saucer. Fred says it's his! The saucer landed in Communist China, in an abandoned church. The peasants kept it secret because they disliked the Reds. Hank wants Fred to join his recon team, along with Jack the electrician and Dave the metallurgist. They parachute inside China, aided by Sam (a chinese) and other natives. They stumble upon a Russian team on the exact same mission. One of their scientists just happens to be a beautiful blonde: Anna. They all agree to an uneasy alliance to find the saucer, but keep the Chinese Communists from finding it. The two teams do find the saucer inside the church. They explore it and discover some things. The Russians try to steal it for Moscow, but their pilot dies of mismanaged stresses inside. Dubovsky tries to force Fred to be the new pilot. A fight breaks out. Hank and the Americans prevail. Red Chinese patrols are coming. Fred, Anna and Jack try to figure out the controls. Dave, Zagorsky, Dubovsky and Hank hold them off with guns and grenades. Eventually, the Chinese prevail, killing the four in gun battles. Fred and Anna figure out how to take off, and do so, escaping the Chinese. However, the autopilot engages and zips them deep into space. They have a close call with a meteorite and are on a collision course with Saturn. At the last minute, they figure out how to disengage the autopilot. Fred flies the saucer back to earth. He plans to land it in Geneva, Switzerland, so both nations can claim credit. He gives a little speech about world peace. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
For a fan of 50s sci-fi, there is so much to love. An actual alien saucer, international intrigue, fights, a beautiful blonde scientist, etc. The pace is pretty good and the techno-blather is nice and thick.

Cold War Angle
The moral of the story in TBS, is that the Americans and the Soviets should learn to get along -- ending the Cold War. TBS is a blatant appeal to reconciliation, instead of the more customary metaphors for things going wrong.

Notes
UFOs Got Legs -- By the late 60s, the UFO craze (hysteria?) had begun to be absorbed into American culture. Once an object fear and suspicion, the flying saucer had become familiar enough (and banal enough) to made into kids' toys, night lights, table lamps, and used in local marketing gimmicks. But, the venerable flying saucer had not quite gone completely kitsch yet. TBS captured some of the mystique and cache it still had. The preamble to the movie even suggests that it's dedicated to all those misunderstood souls who've seen flying saucers but are not believed. Even this late in the game, UFOs still had "legs."

50s Roots -- Some of the strength TBS's cache may be due to its original story writer, Rip Van Ronkel, who was very much a 50s guy. He wrote for Destination Moon ('50) and the '59 TV series, Destination Space. Ronkel died in 1965, so did not get to see his story become a film in '68.

Mikel Conrad Redux -- The scenario in TBS is curiously close to that in the 1950 film, The Flying Saucer by Mikel Conrad. In TFS, an American intelligence team (Conrad and his "nurse") explore a remote area (Alaska, in this case) looking for a hidden flying saucer which appeared briefly in public earlier. While searching, the American team become aware of a Soviet team also looking for the same saucer. In the end, they find it. Familiar? A notable difference between the two films is that Conrad's saucer was an earth scientist's invention and was destroyed in the end. No one got it. TBS's machine was alien and all of mankind got it.

Pretty Speeches -- Evidently, the impetus for the story, and perhaps its moral too, was that the traditional Cold War way of thinking -- extreme Us vs. Them patriotism -- was wrong. This was clear in an argument between Fred and Hank after the Americans foil Dubovsky's attempt to capture them.
Hank: "... take them prisoners."
Fred: "You're beginning to sound like Dubovsky."
Hank: "You mean because he's loyal to his side, and I'm loyal to my side?"
Fred: "I mean you keep wanting to blow each other up."
Hank: "Whose side are you on?"
Fred: "i'm on the side of survival. Whose to gain if we kill each other?"

Watch The Skies! -- Fred's little epilogue echoes the messages of many sci-fi movies from the 50s. We have to stop our petty squabbling and stand together to face the aliens. As Fred flies the saucer to Geneva, he says: "You know, when the world sees this ship, they'll realize there are other intelligent beings out there in the universe. And that we'll have to meet them one day. All the nations of this earth better be ready to stand together" Amen, says jack.

Bottom line? TBS is actually a pretty entertaining tale, and one solidly in the classic sci-fi orbit. Fans of 50s B movies about flying saucers will feel right at home. The special effects are modest, but adequate. The saucer set was also modest, but workable. At least there wasn't any WWII surplus electronics in there. TBS is a bit obscure, but worth checking out.

The Destructors

Harold Goldman produced a string of low-budget B sci-fi in the mid 60s. The Destructors (TD) has only a very weak connection to sci-fi, in that In essence, TD is spy/crime story with something sci-fi-ish is the MacGuffin. In this case, a super laser which could be "the ultimate weapon." Such a plot structure had been common in B sci-fi for decades. From the two-color posters, it would seem that TD was given a modest theatrical release -- perhaps as drive-in fodder. The television market seems the more likely target.

Quick Plot Synopsis
Three saboteurs cut power to an optical plant, then pose as power company repair men to gain entry. Inside, they steal a tray of special "laser rubies". One of them, Hans, is shot during their escape. The National Intelligence Agency is called in. Looks like a routine crime, but agent Dan Street (Richard Egan) has a hunch it was more. Hans used to work for Electrosphere Ccrp., who happen to be working on a super laser that uses those rubies. The director, Dr. Frazer is full of hubris about how securely his plant is guarded. (Flash to the dark side) Count Romano (Michael Aransa) is the leader of the thieves. He was to sell the rubies to an asian double agent, but ups his price. He has more in mind. Meanwhile, Street finds the wife of dead Hans. Stassa is a go go dancer, but her back story is that she was a child prostitute to feed her dead beat parents, then became the "kept woman" of Hans, and now is the kept woman of Romano. She's on thin ice for having a relationship with Dutch, one of Romano's henchmen. Dutch is a Korean war hero, disgraced by accusations of revealing secrets under torture. Street figures out that they plan to use garbage trucks to get into Electrosphere's plant. Dutch eventually tells Street this after a couple fist fights. Security is tightened, but Romano has a different plan. He and his men scuba dive through a cooling water intake, right into the boiler room. From there, they gas guards, get their keys and enter the laser lab. Once inside, they photograph the laser assembly. Street thinks something is up, so he and agent Wayne swim in too. They intercept the crooks. Gunfire and fist fights erupt. Dutch saves Street from being shot by Romano by taking the bullet. Before he dies, he gasps about not being a traitor. Romano, Stassa and others are rounded up by the police. Street goes home to his ex-wife. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
Seeing the essence of James Bond rendered in such a low-budget way, has its amusements. It wasn't supposed to be amusing, but it was.

Cold War Angle
There is a rather direct analogy in the super laser being "the ultimate weapon" -- much as nukes were regarded. And, in the Cold War ethos, the bad guys want to have one too. Spies and intrigue and sabotage for all!

Notes
Sci-fi Family -- The team of Goldman as producer and Arthur C. Pierce, as writer, brought us a string of not-too-bad B sci-fi during mid 60s. The team created: The Human Duplicators ('65), Mutiny in Outer Space ('65), Cyborg 2087 ('66), Dimension 5 ('66) and Women of the Prehistoric Planet ('66). All of the above, with the exception of Dim5, were more typical sci-fi fare. Dim5 was more like TD in being essentially a crime and secret agent story that just happened to have a bit of something usually found in sci-fi movies.

Budget Bond -- The character of Dan Street is written as if he were a suave swinging single like James Bond. He talks of womanizing exploits and all the pretty young secretaries in headquarters greet him eagerly. But, Richard Egan just looks old, tired and dumpy. The Bond formula was popular, but not attempts at it succeeded. There are several similarities between TD and The Ambushers ('67). Pseudo-suave secret agent, semi-wife, vile villain who plots to steal some sci-fi MacGuffin to sell to shadowy buyers, etc. etc. Except that Ambushers knew it was parody.

2D People, Except 1 -- All of the characters in Pierce's script are essentially two-dimensional stereotypes from dozens of similar movies. The "suave" womanizer secret agent. The cruel evil villain. The evil henchmen. The "good" woman representing civilized virtue. The fallen hero who atones for his crime by sacrificing himself in the end, etc. etc. The only character who had any depth was Stassa. She came from a rough and abusive childhood. She survived on her own by working her way up the sugar-daddy ladder until she got to Count Romano. Yet, she wasn't so jaded as to not still desire a real relationship based on love, not money. She saw this in Dutch (the fallen hero). But when it came down to brass tacks, she chose being Romano's babe over Dutch's poor girlfriend. Yet, even in the end (arrested), she lamented her choice.

Bottom line? TD is a low-budget poor paraphrase of the James Bond formula. Other than a super laser (which does nothing beyond vaporize a target truck), there is no sci-fi to the movie. The acting is adequate most of the time. Stiff at others. The story would be the same if the crooks were trying to steal a secret formula or secret code machine. Fans of shallow spy thrillers may find enough to like. Fans of sci-fi, with saucers and aliens, or monsters, will likely by bored or angry.

Bombs Over London

This movie might seem like a non-sequitur for the present study, but it's not. Bombs Over London (BOL) was as British film, released in 1937 ('39 in USA) which was essentially a spy intrigue film with a sci-fi element as the MacGuffin. This formula was getting more common in the sci-fi of the mid and later 1960s. (see Notes section for more on this). The two 1968 films coming up next in this study were exactly this pattern -- spy stories with a nominal sci-fi item as MacGuffin. BOL is included here as an historical precedent, though by no means the only one.

Quick Plot Synopsis
A consortium of armament tycoons celebrate the death of an over-inquisative newspaper journalist. Briant, a co-worker of the dead reporter suspects some foul play because he said, just before his death, that he was onto something big. Graham Stevens (the dead man) was covering a big, but lackluster disarmament conference. A primary delegate to the conference, a man named Peters, talks up a peace treaty and dedicates a statue to the event. Peters meets with the arms tycoons and tells them his plan is to wreck the conference for his own revenge reasons. The tycoons benefit from new wars to sell more bombs. Briant uncovers some obscure clues in Stevens' office and works the mysterious word SASKA into one of his editorial cartoons. This begins to rattle the conspirators and entangle Briant in their web. Peters has employed a scientist named Dr. Marsh, who has created long-range remote control devices for aircraft. Peters' plan is to have these robot planes bomb key targets in London. The act of aggression would be blamed on other countries in Europe and a larger war would ensue. Briant and Mary Stevens get closer to uncovering the plot. Both get captured by Peters and his men. Briant escapes and alerts the authorities. Mary is kidnapped and taken to Dr. Marsh's secret control lab beneath a newspaper shop. The planes land in England that night. (November 5th) They take off under Marsh's remote control and bomb the first of five targets: an oil storage yard. Troops surround the newspaper shop. A firefight erupts between the soldiers and Peters' henchmen. More targets are bombed. Briant sneaks into the shop and Marsh's lab, looking for Mary. He finds the remote control console and smashes it. The bombers fall from the sky before Whitehall and Parliament are bombed. Mary is rescued. Briant is a hero with his editor. Peters commits suicide by poison. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
Pre-nuclear sci-fi has a freshness to it, for viewers raised on two decades of nuclear themes. The picture phones (called "television") as well as the remote control apparatus are charming "high tech", but must have been pretty cool in their day.

Cold War Angle
Being 1937, BOL is pre-Cold War. It's pre-Hot War, for that matter. Yet, the bugaboo of its day -- militarism and the threat of war -- provided the impetus for the plot, just as Cold War themes did after the war. Where 50s and 60s sci-fi gave allegorical voice to Cold War themes, BOL is an example of the same being applied to conventional war themes. . In 1937, the drum beat for a looming European war was impossible to ignore. BOL gives some voice to that era's concerns.

Notes
Fawkes Redux -- The date of the plot in BOL, November 5th, would be instantly significant to British audiences, but probably not for American viewers. "Remember, remember the fifth of November; gunpowder, treason and plot..." goes the 17th century poem. The Gunpowder Plot was an uncovered attempt to blow up King James I and parliament in 1605. The infamous (and captured) conspirator was Guy Fawkes. Some three centuries afterward, November 5th is still known as Guy Fawkes Day. There were bonfires, fireworks and the burning-in-effegy of Guy Fawkes. BOL is a modernization of the plot meme, using the symbolic day to cement the parallel.

Robot Pilots -- The science fiction element is BOL was pretty high tech for its day. The planes fashioned by Dr. Marsh amount to modern Predator drones, 50 years ahead of their time. In 1937, even human pilots had trouble navigating by radio beacons. The 1941 movie Robot Pilot would continue the dream of remote control flying. In it, Forrest Tucker is a pilot/inventor who develops a workable remote control for aircraft. Enemy agents are out to steal his invention.

Blitz Preview -- Imagery in BOL presages Goering's Luftwaffe campaign of just a few years in the future. London by night, searchlights crisscrossing the sky, planes droning overhead and bombs falling on the panicky citizenry, fighters dispatched to shoot down the night bombers, etc. Yet, the writers and director were not entirely visionary. London was bombed during World War One, though with far less impact. German Gotha bombers raided by night in late 1917 to avoid interceptor fighters (though not always successfully). This was the imagery BOL was keying off of.

Plane Crazy -- Admittedly trivial, the scant footage of the real airplanes (not the models) appear to show the Miles Magister, slightly disguised with landing gear fairings. The Magister was a low-wing monoplane trainer first used by the RAF in early 1937. Spitfire pilots who would battle the Luftwaffe over London would have trained in the Magister. For the movie's day even the modest Magister had an ultra-modern look to it. Compare with the RAF biplane fighters sent up to intercept the bombers. The Hawker Fury II was typical of the late 30s, but a design only slightly updated from the days of the Red Baron.

Bottom line? BOL is a quaint and somewhat obscure example of pre-war sci-fi. It is primarily a spy mystery with the typical plucky journalist as the man uncovering the plot. The props are modest, but reasonable for the time. The special effects (models of the planes) are weak, but sufficient. BOL makes an interesting foil for more sophisticated films in the 50s. Much of the plot structure and characters are the same. Just replace conventional weapons with saucers or things nuclear. Compare and contrast (as the teachers say) with 1968 films such as Bamboo Saucer and The Destructors.

The Flight That Disappeared

This is a low-budget independent film with a message. The Flight That Disappeared (FTD) amounts to a anti-nuclear moralizing turned into a movie. The writers, Ralph and Judith Hart, and Orville Hampton had a message they wanted to deliver, so they wrapped it in a Twilight Zone style package. FTD is a low-budget film, intended as socio-political preaching more than drive-in fodder. Yet, it is a good example of atomic angst.

Quick Plot Synopsis
Passengers board Flight 60 in Los Angeles for a flight to Washington DC. Among those aboard are Dr. Morris, nuclear theorist; Marcia Paxton, his mathematician associate; and Tom Endicott, rocket engineer. (Much of the movie's first half is made up of character development and stock footage.) Eventually, Dr. Morris, Marcia and Tom all figure out that they're being summoned to Washington for the same meeting. Most likely, they will be asked to create a super bomb and super missile to deliver it. A minor character named Walter Cooper is a mentally unstable "hawk" who tries to convince Dr. Morris that his super bomb must be used first to take out the enemy before they develop a super bomb too. Somewhere over the midwest, the plane climbs over a thunderstorm, but keeps on climbing. The crew cannot stop the climb. The plane flies so high that the passengers begin to pass out. Walter wakes up crazy paranoid and jumps out of the plane. The engines conk out for lack of oxygen, but the plane keeps climbing. Everyone aboard passes out. Air traffic controllers are frantic and searching for the missing airliner. Meanwhile, Tom, Marcia and Dr. Morris wake up. No one else does. The plane is motionless in a foggy dreamscape. A man (The Examiner) calls them out through the door Walter left open. The three are accused of destroying the future and will be tried by a jury of those yet unborn. There is some arguing over semantics, but the jury pronounces them guilty. Their punishment is to be kept in non-time. They make a run for the plane, but are stopped. Just before The Examiner is about to 'freeze' them, a bald man comes up and says the future can't interfere with the "divine order" and has no business judging the present. Tom awakens on the plane back in flight. He talks of his experience, but the passengers and crew think he's delusional from a hit on the head. Later, Marcia and Dr. Morris agree that they had an identical "dream" but have no proof that it really happened. Without proof, they'll just have to assume it was a shared delusion. The plane lands in DC. Mystified air traffic executives meet the pilot and tell him he's exactly 24 hours overdue. Tom, Marcia and Dr. Morris hear this. It is the proof they needed. Dr. Morris tears up his super bomb notes and throws them in the trash. Tom and Marcia link arms and walk off all happy. The End.

Armageddon Averted
FTD is a more aggressive version of Klaatu's warning ten years earlier. In The Day the Earth Stood Still ('51), Klaatu warns the people of earth not to mess with nukes. In FTD, people stand trial for their future use. The Examiner shows images of the possible future (file footage of Dresden and Hiroshima) in which all life on earth is wiped out. Heeding this terrible warning, the three inventors of the super bomb censor themselves to prevent the awful future.

Cold War Spotlight
The nuclear arms debate is carried out by the cast. Dr. Morris has is own misgivings, but goes with the conventional flow of wisdom that he must make his super bomb as a deterrent. Mr. Jameson and Walter Cooper voice the more belligerent tone of hit-em-hard, hit-em-first, etc. The Examiner takes the belligerently pacifist role. Some must perish now, to save those in the future.

Notes
Pacifist First Strike -- Somewhat ironically, the souls of the future perform the exact strategy that Walter Cooper was advocating. In order to prevent armageddon, they struck first. They planned to take out the inventors of the super bomb to prevent it from ever coming into existence. This was exactly what Walter advocated. Use the bomb on the enemy before they invent one too.

Guilt At The Source -- Curiously, the writers have taken the stance that originators -- the inventors -- of a weapon that kills, are ultimately responsible. Those actually pulling the trigger(s) are minor figures. By that (rather liberal) thinking, Smith and Wesson are responsible for gang murders. Exxon killed the girlfriend doused and set on fire by her boyfriend, etc. etc. The presumption being that removing all weapons would remove murder. Mankind has, sadly, proven too resourceful to be thwarted by a lack of obvious weapons. Bare hands suffice, in far too many cases.

Dies Ex Machina -- True to the classical greek theater idiom, a never-before-seen and unnamed bald man (of the future, apparently) steps in at the last minute and gets our heroes out of trouble. He argues that the future cannot circumvent "divine order" and that those of the present have to sort things out for themselves. Where was this bald-guy earlier, during the trial? Was he an archangel who just noticed the future kids misbehaving and had to step in and put a stop to it? Dies ex machina was a weak plot solution back in ancient Greece. It was weak in 1961 too.

Sunset of the Props -- Despite the wording on the poster, it is not a JETliner that disappears. It was a DC-6, four-engined propeller airliner. The script gives some milage to the fact that prop planes were old fashioned, so this doesn't appear to be a last minute change because more stock footage was available for the DC-6. By 1961, most airlines had converted from prop planes to the DC-8 (four jet engines) and the Boeing 707 (also four jets). The choice of setting it on a prop plane is a bit unusual, but could have been for artistic reasons. Just as air travel was transitioning from propellers to modern jets, the old way of thinking (nukes and deterrence) must give way to the modern anti-nuclear dawn. Get it?

Better as a B -- In 1957, Irwin Allen produced a big budget A film attempting to tell pretty much the exact same message as FTD, but generally failing to do so. The Story of Mankind was loosely based on a kids book by Hendrik Van Loon from 1921 that was a one-volume synopsis of human history. Allen took that historical synopsis idea (and the title) and added a trial in which mankind is on trial in heaven for creating the atom bomb. Vincent Price plays the devil. Ronald Colman plays a vaguely milktoast Christ-ish advocate. History is replayed in a myriad of vignettes. Michael Carridine plays Pharaoh. Peter Lorrie plays Nero. Harpo Marx plays Issac Newton, Groucho Marx an American settler, etc. etc. The overall effect is so distracting and ludicrous that it overshadows the moral of the story. The net message is that, yes, mankind is bad, but we can be good too...so there. Quite the non-ending. FTD, as a B film, had a much smaller budget but did a better job of delivering the same message.

Bottom line? FTD is not high cinema art. It amounts to a Twilight Zone episode stretched into a low-budget feature film. But, overlooking the marginal acting and cheap sets, it is not all that bad. FTD does convey some of the ideological passion that swirled around at the height of the Cold War. (The Cuban Missile Crisis is just one year away). Watch FTD as a snapshot of 1961 nuclear philosophy.

Mission Mars

A small production company's effort at science fiction, Mission Mars (MM) is an anachronism. It is a late 50s movie in almost every way, yet shot in 1967, released in the summer of '68. If it weren't for being shot in color, and the groovy electronic keyboard score, MM would be totally at home as a B-movie from the late 50s. The existence of posters tell of at least a limited theatrical release, but much about the film suggests that television was it's intended market. Darren McGavin stars. Nick Adams co-stars.

Quick Plot Synopsis
Edith wakes from a bad dream about astronauts lost in space. Her astronaut husband Mike (McGavin) comforts her. He blasts off for Mars in the morning. They go for a romantic frolic on the beach beforehand. She wants to have a baby. Nick, the mission geologist, has a troubled relationship with his wife Alice. He's a pioneer. She wants stability. He promises this will be his last mission (so viewers know he's doomed). Duncan, the navigator, is single, therefore expendable. Eventually, they blast off in a flurry of stock NASA footage. They dock up with their supply ship and head for Mars. The trip is long and dull, so is filled with exposition about Mars factoids. Mike and Duncan eat reconstituted omelets. Nick eats a smuggled pastrami sandwich. They come across the bodies of two lost Russian cosmonauts floating in space. Where is the third? Once finally at the planet, they descend to land, but must eject the supply module prematurely. They don their space suits and go find the errant supply module, leaving a trail of tethered balloons to mark their path back. Nick stumbles upon the body of the third Russian, frozen stiff. Nick takes him back to the ship. Mike and Duncan find the supply module, but it has a hole burned in its side by someone or something. Their trail of marker balloons are gone. As they approach their ship, a strange creature appears. it flashes Duncan and Mike in the eyes. Nick blasts it with his laser rifle. A bunch of the Polarites appear and attack them with more light bursts and heat. The three get into their ship. They can't take off, for some reason. Ground control suggests they get more boosters from the supply pod. Mike and Duncan do this while the sentry Polarite is asleep in a shadow. (they use solar power, you see) A twelve foot diameter sphere appears near the ship. Duncan goes to check it out, but Polarites attack him, burning him to death. The sphere pulls his body inside itself. The sphere speaks to Mike, saying that it wants one of them alive. The Russian thaws out (alive!) and tells them the sphere is solar powered too. They can't wait for the Martian night, so Nick volunteers to out and shoot the center of the sphere. He senses his next great adventure, so opts to go inside instead. The sphere blows up. (?) Mike and the Russian manage to blast off in the ship. En route home, Edith tells Mike he's going to be a father. Smiles and laughter all around. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
Released in the same year as Kubrik's techno-masterpiece, 2001, MM is a techno-throwback to the way B movies were made in the 50s. Model landscapes, wet suits as space suits, open motorcycle helmets, model aliens and lots and lots of stock footage. For fans of 50s style, MM isn't cheesy, it's fun!

Cold War Angle
This is only faintly present as back story. The Russians and Americans are 'racing' to be the first on Mars. The Russians lost, but maybe won? The fact that one American and one Russian survive to return is a subtle reconciliation message.

Notes
The Okay Stuff -- Fully half of MM is taken up with the human drama of astronauts and their wives and whether they have the mettle for such boldly going where no man has gone before. This sort of NASA drama was very much in vogue in mid 60s "realistic" space fictions. (Countdown was an example of this in '68 as well). Yet, this part of the movie is its weakest -- establishing that all involved had, if not the Right Stuff, some Okay Stuff.

Red Shirts Alert -- Seasoned movie viewer were handed easy clues early on that the characters of Duncan and Nick were not going to survive. Duncan brags that he's a bachelor, so viewers know he's doomed. He's expendable. He might as well have been wearing a red shirt. Viewers know that Nick is doomed before he starts when he promises Alice that he's coming back and that this will be his last mission. He might as well have put ON a red shirt right then.

NASA Stock -- Much use is made of stock footage from NASA. Several programs' clips are used indiscriminately. Most, but not all, are of various Apollo missions: Gantry shots, launch shots, ground crew shots. A set that gets frequent use, is footage of the AS-203 mission. This was an early Apollo effort, but the rocket (with the big white nose cone), carried no astronauts or even craft. It was a test of the Saturn 1B rocket's ability to cold-start in space.

Multi-Multi-Stage -- Note the heavy use and re-use of the NASA footage of a booster stage being jettisoned. This footage was used for that same step in Mars-1's lift-off, but was used again, run backwards, for the docking of the ship with the supply module. It was run forwards again for the ejection of the supply module. It was then run backwards again as part of the landing-on-Mars sequence. Director Nicholas Webster got his mileage out of that clip.

Breathing Room -- Modern viewers scoff at the unsealed helmets the astronauts wear. These were fairly common in the 50s, before the Mariner 4 probe determined that Mars had too thin of atmosphere for men to breathe, and too little oxygen. According to the director's son, Lance, who acted as a gopher on the set (this from imdb), the original prop helmets were sealed, but not to McGavin's liking. (Being a bit tight for his prominent nose). New (motorcycle) helmets with partial shields were made up. Some text was added to the script suggesting that Mars had marginally breathable air, only needed supplemental oxygen. Viola! Nose, script and props harmonized.

Artsy Effort -- Webster was experienced in television production, but had done only a few movies prior to MM. One of them was the tragically annoying Santa Claus Conquers the Martians ('64) Yet, Webster showed he had an artistic side. Note is use of multiple fast cuts and overlays of sound. He used rapid video montages to help perk up the dogged pace of the script. In this, one can see the seeds of "modern" television of the 80s and 90s before the restless-cam fad took over.

Cross Marketing Music -- Decca Records tried to pump a little music sales by getting the single "No More Tears" by the group, Forum Quorum, grafted in as the title theme. The tune is pure 60s pop rock ballad-style fare, but has nothing to do with the film. The movie did not appear to "rocket" the single up the charts. "No More Tears" failed to make the top 100. Of course, it was up against the likes of The Beatles' "Hey Jude", Simon and Garfunkle's "Mrs. Robinson", and The Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash".

Bottom line? MM is fun stuff for fans of the old low-budget films, such as Angry Red Planet ('60) or Missile to the Moon ('59), etc. If those sorts of films annoy you, or if 60s-style jazzy electric keyboard music annoys you, you should avoid MM. If, however, you enjoyed old films like Catwomen of the Moon ('53) or Fire Maidens from Outer Space ('56), then MM will feel comfortably familiar and even a bit cerebral in comparison.