It was a bit surprising to find this budget film opening with the colorful Paramount title screen, with its ring of stars surrounding a majestic mountain peak on its project list. This eighty-one-minute imaginative adventure, predicting what thirty years in the future will be like, also predicted that George Pal's phone would not ring much after this disappointment. His spaceships have the look of a Revell or Monogram model kit. They do gleam a brilliant white against a dark universe, and these colorful scenes probably provided a bit of awe for young baby boomers and their parents. The dials on the space station are as big as automobile steering wheels, with levers and toggle switches that appear to be built by Fisher-Price. Some of the weightless effects do work well, and the facial distortions speeding through space are effective if a bit disturbing. However, the Mars landing and landscape would have been right at home on the Saturday morning television cartoon circuit.
The essentially unknown male cast will become familiar faces a decade later on television, including Walter Brooke (above center with Michael Fox and Ross Martin), Eric Fleming, William Redfield, Vito Scotti, and William Hopper. Phil Foster, not surprisingly as the “in your face” Brooklyn electrician, is the one most hope will not make it back to Earth. He is repeatedly complaining or questioning their mission in a desperate attempt at levity from an unfunny script. How this dimwit passed the space program, no one knows. So unknown were these actors at the time, the cast is not listed until the very end. Perhaps guilt pushed the producers to add them during their final editing session. In an amazing turn of events, their moon mission changes overnight by an order from command headquarters. They are to go straight for Mars. “That is at least an extra two-day drive, buddy!” The beauty of science fiction is that one can propose anything dreamed up.
Brooke plays the General of the space station and its designer. Now there is an envious resumé. After spending untold millions on the circular space station, he now questions its purpose. In Hollywood’s subtle jab at those “odd Protestant people,” he now thinks man has no right to invade God’s creation and attempts to destroy their spacecraft. His judgment was actually impaired due to an illness called “space fatigue.” I know the feeling halfway through this film.
Note: This George Pal Production was directed by Byron Haskin from a screenplay by James O'Hanlon. The music is by Nathan Van Cleave. It is certainly not the worst science fiction movie of the era, but the passing of seventy years has not been kind to the film, either.
