A perfectly plausible story of five astronauts who take off in a 1950s space ship, make a wrong turn, and land on Mars instead. After that, things get kind of hairy.
I understand this was rushed into production while George Pal's far more lavishly budgeted "Destination Moon" was being shot, with the aim of beating the bigger and more publicized film into theaters. Well, the haste, the lesser budget, and the lesser thought, shows in "Rocket Ship X-M." Not that it's a BAD movie. I mean, it's not a Buck Rogers serial. But the difference in quality still shows.
The five astronauts are Lloyd Bridges, Osa Massen, John Emery, Noah Beery, Jr., and Hugh O'Brian. All are professionals and pull off their roles without disgracing themselves, though neither can any be outstanding. How could anyone give an outstanding performance while uttering lines like, "Reduce speed level two"? Lloyd Bridges was evidently lucky enough to have his hair stylist stashed aboard somewhere because his Lenny-Briscoe haircut is never mussed. Noah Beery, Jr., is the requisite ethnic or regional type, in this case the Texan who uses double negatives and brags about the size of his state.
The script, written by Kurt Neumann with additional dialog by Orville K. Hampton, at times stretches its arms out towards the literary. Osa Masson gives a colorful description of a Swiss lake under the moon, "the water like cold coffee." Somebody had to think about those lines. And Bridges manages a quote from Kipling. Okay -- Kipling -- but the quote is an apt one and someone had to have read the poem before writing the script.
What the film has in the way of the odd sparkle in the dialog, it mostly lacks in science. Robert Heinlein was not the technical adviser here, as he was on "Destination Moon." When "meteorites" zip past the errant space ship, they do so with an ear-splitting WHOOSH. The distant earth looks like a map in a high-school geography text, with starkly etched tan continents and primal blue oceans and not a cloud in sight. ("Destination Moon" got that right.) The astronauts walk around in outer space as if they were in their living rooms, although some objects have a habit of arbitrarily popping up into the zero-gravity air.
Osa Masson, an attractive young scientist, gets some occasional needling from the men. There are comments about her icy devotion to science and her "feminine intuition." She asks if they think she should have stayed home and baked and raised children. "Isn't that enough?", asks Bridges. It's very un-PC, naturally, but Bridges ends up suggesting that it's possible "to go too far in the other direction too," a fairly reasonable observation, not exactly anti-feminist.
Osa Masson is a tough babe and can take care of herself. What was far more disturbing was Morris Ankrum as the Big Mahoff back on earth, briefing the reporters on why we need to go to the moon. His explanation? "To establish unassailable bases" so that we "can control the peace" -- just as we're controlling the peace now, I guess.
I understand this was rushed into production while George Pal's far more lavishly budgeted "Destination Moon" was being shot, with the aim of beating the bigger and more publicized film into theaters. Well, the haste, the lesser budget, and the lesser thought, shows in "Rocket Ship X-M." Not that it's a BAD movie. I mean, it's not a Buck Rogers serial. But the difference in quality still shows.
The five astronauts are Lloyd Bridges, Osa Massen, John Emery, Noah Beery, Jr., and Hugh O'Brian. All are professionals and pull off their roles without disgracing themselves, though neither can any be outstanding. How could anyone give an outstanding performance while uttering lines like, "Reduce speed level two"? Lloyd Bridges was evidently lucky enough to have his hair stylist stashed aboard somewhere because his Lenny-Briscoe haircut is never mussed. Noah Beery, Jr., is the requisite ethnic or regional type, in this case the Texan who uses double negatives and brags about the size of his state.
The script, written by Kurt Neumann with additional dialog by Orville K. Hampton, at times stretches its arms out towards the literary. Osa Masson gives a colorful description of a Swiss lake under the moon, "the water like cold coffee." Somebody had to think about those lines. And Bridges manages a quote from Kipling. Okay -- Kipling -- but the quote is an apt one and someone had to have read the poem before writing the script.
What the film has in the way of the odd sparkle in the dialog, it mostly lacks in science. Robert Heinlein was not the technical adviser here, as he was on "Destination Moon." When "meteorites" zip past the errant space ship, they do so with an ear-splitting WHOOSH. The distant earth looks like a map in a high-school geography text, with starkly etched tan continents and primal blue oceans and not a cloud in sight. ("Destination Moon" got that right.) The astronauts walk around in outer space as if they were in their living rooms, although some objects have a habit of arbitrarily popping up into the zero-gravity air.
Osa Masson, an attractive young scientist, gets some occasional needling from the men. There are comments about her icy devotion to science and her "feminine intuition." She asks if they think she should have stayed home and baked and raised children. "Isn't that enough?", asks Bridges. It's very un-PC, naturally, but Bridges ends up suggesting that it's possible "to go too far in the other direction too," a fairly reasonable observation, not exactly anti-feminist.
Osa Masson is a tough babe and can take care of herself. What was far more disturbing was Morris Ankrum as the Big Mahoff back on earth, briefing the reporters on why we need to go to the moon. His explanation? "To establish unassailable bases" so that we "can control the peace" -- just as we're controlling the peace now, I guess.