User Reviews

What's fun about this "first men into space" movie is watching how the movie tries so hard to convince the viewer that it is in fact a serious dramatic effort displaying the "cutting edge of science" and then shoots itself in the foot over and over again with laughable special effects and goofs.

I almost fell out my chair laughing when the astronauts climbed into the control room and it became instantly obvious that the astronauts were expected to sit in patio lounge chairs to help them endure the crushing stresses of lift off. And then after going through the motions of the trip to the moon - blah blah meteor showers blah blah sonic showers blah blah random lines of dialog meant to convey character and group dynamics...just before the actual embarkation onto the surface, one poor actor has to stand in front of the camera all by himself and babble into his flight log about the 'invisible ray shield' that is supposed to keep his helmet sealed...instead of, you know, a transparent visor or a simple bubble helmet. I mean, geez, considering the quality of the acting in this movie (nothing against the actors - they just don't have ANYTHING to work with) you wouldn't think they'd mind if the helmets obscured the actors' faces, would you?

Oh, and apparently cocker spaniels, monkeys and house cats are immune to the forces of lift off, even though it almost kills the oldest astronaut. The dog just sits on the end of a leash tied to a wall, and the cats and moneys ride out the whole thing in cages.

And then they are ON the surface of the moon, and it's just ludicrous. It's so obviously a sound-stage made of lathe wood, paper mache and gray paint that it considers vast viewer effort to suspend disbelief and not look too hard. I tended to squint at the screen a lot, and that really helped. And it turns out that the nations of the world spent millions of dollars to send 12 people to the moon, but they only supplied the astronauts with 2 hours of oxygen for their space suits.

And let's see, blah blah blah quicksand pit, blah blah meteors blah blah two of the astronauts disappear, blah blah the aliens living in the moon want the cats, blah blah they take off, blah blah another meteor shower (or maybe the same one) on the way back, the aliens decide to freeze the earth, blah blah cooperation and selfless sacrifice, blah blah, and the special effects budget completely runs out and you can clearly see the stick holding the model of the rocket-ship in front of the camera.

Then blah blah blah, the selfless sacrifice convinces the aliens, the moral, and THE END.

Frankly, I preferred "Rocket Shop X-M" and "First Spaceship to Venus". Why didn't someone think to call Issac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, Murray Leinster or Lester Del Rey, four 'hard science' science fiction writers of the era who would have been available for cheap?

And yet, you can't hate a film like this. The actors were given cardboard characters to play (which is natural when you've got TWELVE PEOPLE FIGHTING FOR SCREEN TIME in a two hour movie, unless the screenwriter and directors are geniuses.) but they really did their best with the material. And the movie takes a pretty bold step (way before "Star Trek") by asserting the need for an international crew (including Russians, Jews, and Blacks) in a time when White Manifest Destiny was the rule in the movie industry. As lazy as the movie was with the technical details and the science, it was ABOUT something and had a message of hope and destiny that you rarely see outside of Disney films any more.

Don't waste your time seeking this one out, but if it falls into your hands, you might get a kick out of watching.

The problem with judging science on the basis of MST riffs is that MST writers get science wrong every bit as often as the movie makers. The science in this film is accurate and well considered. To wit, 1) The "steam" is outgassing (which somehow people believe in the movie Deep Impact but not in this film, because MST told them to laugh at it, and they aren't thinking for themselves, alas.) In 1960, it was assumed that there would be constant, dangerous lunar outgassing. As it ends up, the outgassing probably was over by 3.5 billion years ago, but in 1960, we knew only a little bit about the phenomenon.

2) The dust pits are of regolith, which NASA was very concerned about when choosing Apollo landing sites. Look it up.

3) The moon has an atmosphere. Look it up.

4) Walking "slow and stupid" under lesser gravity was also accurate, and since no one had been on the moon in 1960, they guessed how that would look, and they guessed pretty well. It's easy to laugh at this in retrospect, but I never saw even an attempt to get this right in other moon films of the era.

and so on. The movie makers got this all right, which for the date of the film in startling and admirable. A lot of contemporary s-f films to this one were ridiculous in comparison. (Yes, they had the typical and inaccurate meteor shower scene, but you can't have everything.) A lot of current s-f movies have much worse science. Much! It is also admirable to see a diverse cast, including, gasp, women. NASA took over twenty years to catch up with the imagination of these filmmakers, and Kubrick didn't get that right in 2001, either, filmed ten years later, so kudos to the filmmakers for that.

The movie is a little slow, admittedly. But there is a plot, a heroic sacrifice, and, my favorite part, the earth people don't win. They scurry home barely alive, their asses kicked by aliens. That seems more realistic than all the earth-wins s-f films that posit aliens with profoundly advanced technologies who bother to visit other planets and then can't figure out how to beat up an inferior species with gumption, rain, the magical ability to pilot alien craft, or table salt.

Thus, to summarize, the science in this science fiction film is far better than average, even comparing it to today's films. There is a plot, but it's a little bit slow. And the acting is not that wonderful.

Although most of the reviewers of this film have panned it, I am going to give it a decent review. I would have renamed the film, however, as Murphy's Law Goes to the Moon. If anything can go wrong, it will. What makes the film a bit unbelievable (other than the science) is all the complications and things that go wrong. Starting with the international bickering (American vs Russian, Israeli vs German, Russian vs German, etc. These stereotypes then lead to physical problems on the way to the moon. Then the stage is set for unhappy inhabitants of the moon to rebuff their visitiers. Two lovers get lost looking for life, one guy sinks in quicksand, and two guys are lost on a bombing mission. If anything can go wrong, it will. Hollywood ending.

When this film started out, I was expecting one of those films that is trying to depict space travel in a sort of realistic way. Or as realistic as a film of this type can be. However, this film was just completely more strange than I envisioned it to be as I watched it via the cult television show, Mystery Science Theater 3000. This film just did so many things differently and into totally unexpected directions, which is why I gave the film a two rather than one. Because, in the end, it was still rather bad and not every unexpected turn is a good one. The budget for this one seems rather high too, for a film from 1960 at 150,000 dollars, and so when you are using lawn chairs as seats on your super high tech rocket, I cannot give you a pass. Just another in a long run of space films that MST3K has riffed and I do have to say it was one of the funnier space movies they did. Watching it though, this film along with nearly every space travel movie they have done has one thing in common, but I shall get to that later.

The story has a group of twelve people setting out on an expedition to the moon. It is a joint expedition with many countries involved, though the captain is an American, heck ya! Their goal, to land a space craft on the moon and to study it. And what a spacecraft it is! It is nicer and larger than the one in First Spaceship on Venus! Multiple floors and they even get to bring along a doggy, a couple of kitties, some birds and monkeys! This trip will be a riot! That is, until the deadly meteorites come close to striking the ship, and this is what nearly all the space travel films that MST3K have in common. A scene where meteorites come close to hitting or in some case do hit the ship and place it in peril! Then they finally get to the moon where things seem banal to start, but then you have two crew members going off from the others to make out, you have one of the twelve getting sucked to his doom in kitty litter and yet another burning his hands because he just had to touch the strange running liquid! Turns out there are moon people on this planet and they say leave the cats and get off! Of course, the two lovebirds are still on the planet and literally now prisoners so what does our crew do? They promptly run the cats out and haul butt out of there. How heroic is that? More meteorites and then the earth is freezing and self sacrifices are made as well as traitors revealed and in the end they spend probably less than 25 percent of the film actually on the moon.

This film made for a very funny episode of MST3K as it was much funnier than a couple of the other space films they have done. I was just not expecting the whole moon people thing in the film as that made this film totally crazy. I also do not recall heroes that fail this badly except maybe Adam Chance from the film, Agent from H.A.R.M! I think that it does benefit from this being a Mike hosted show, for me anyways as I always thought he was a better host. Joel seemed very hit and miss to me, while Mike always seemed more on point; however, this is jut an opinion and a personal preference. I always laugh out loud more often in Mike episodes and I laughed out loud during this one a lot!

So, the film did some things that were sort of interesting, but they also did some pretty lame stuff. The budget seems way too big for them to say they have invisible shields over their face rather than just have them wear helmets with glass in them. Yes, they actual say that they have an invisible shield over their face instead of just having a glass plate. It did go where I was not expecting, but they just did not stay on the moon long enough...if you're going to mention moon people and insinuate that they are there, show them. The whole last part of the film was rather idiotic as the earth starts freezing and I kept expecting them to go back to the moon, but no, the moon really was not in this film all that much considering it was in the title.

An international group of ten men and two women are chosen to embark on a trip to the moon. Things go awry when the group discover an alien civilization that's intent on destroying mankind. Seriously undermined by pedestrian direction by David Bradley, further marred by DeWitt Bodeen's blah, talky, and largely uneventful script, painfully obvious use of stock footage, hokey (not so) special effects, a draggy pace, bland characters, extremely silly forced and silly conflicts between several of said bland characters (naturally, the Russian guy is an arrogant and antagonistic jerk), merely okay acting from a decent cast (hunky Ken Clark makes for a decidedly dull slab of beefcake while only Tom Conway manages to distinguish himself as the obnoxious Russkie), flat cinematography by John Alton (there are way too many static medium master shots featured throughout), tacky costumes (the spacesuits look like jumpsuits with motorcycle helmets!), and a disappointing lack of any cool monsters, this clunker overall proves to be an insipid and instantly forgettable time-waster.