ironhorse_iv
Originally intended as a pilot film for a TV series to be called "Ring Around the Moon". This pilot project shot in just ten days, was suddenly turn into a feature length movie by producer Jack Seaman, when films like Sci-Fi films became uber popular. In the end, all this was done without the knowledge of fame writer Robert A. Heinlein whom wrote the classic short story 'Destination Moon', in which this movie is based on. To avoid a lawsuit, the studio gave Heinlein credit, in which, Heinlein quickly disowned, because how much he loathed the final project. The result of his choice, would affect his work for years to come. The plot set in a futuristic version of the 1970, has a group of astronauts, leaded by the beautiful, Colonel Briteis (Donna Martell) and her dashing co-pilot, Major Bill Moore (Ross Ford), being infiltrated by an enemy spy, posing as Dr. Wernher (Larry Johns), who inadvertently causes the team to become stranded on the Moon during a photographing space mission. Can the astronauts find their way back to their main base or will the three men crew, perish in the great beyond? Watch the movie to find out, if you want to! Without spoiling the movie, too much; this movie is full of visual flaws. The uniforms for the astronauts is hilarious bad with their short shorts, tight-fitting tee-shirt, and swimming caps. Seeing how cold, it is, in space and it's the conservative 1950s. It's weird to see, how much skin, is shown in this film. The toy models effects like the Frisbee space station are laughable to look at. Then there is the fact, that this movie and 1953's Cat-Women of the Moon use mostly the same sets and costumes, and then released within one day of each other. It's a glorious mess, but since the movie started out as a failed television pilot with a lower budget, it does somewhat explain, why the sets, special effects, and costumes look so cheap and disjointed. Regardless, director Richard Talmadge does his best to pull off this futuristic survivor thriller movie, with nifty interior shot of the space station and splices the film to make it seem as if crew members are walking on the ceiling with magnetic boots. However, these sequence are also hard to watch, due to severe 90 degree Dutch angles. Another alright effect was the somewhat realistic looking, launch that shows the crews gritting their teeth and screaming as G-force crush in on them. Like the other shot, it can come across, as the astronauts looking like they're about to crap, their pants. Then, there is the concept of the odd mix of scientific authenticity and Cold War paranoia, but like the others, it's can be a bit jarring. A good example is how the movie talks about having to weight, less than 90 pounds to be, in the space mission, yet most of the actors, looks like it weight more than that. Also, how exactly, were they going to photograph the dark side of the moon? Another thing, the villain's true identity is uncovered, because he didn't know what the Brooklyn Dodgers are. I guess, if you're not a sport fan; you have to be a communism spy! Well, regardless of all, those flaws, it was still, an entertaining mess. It's when the 3rd act comes, where the most of this movie's fun moments, comes undone. It's here, when the sub-plot idea of marriage comes into view, and overtakes the survivor plot. It's there, this movie really lost, its direction. It really comes out of nowhere and add nothing to the plot. I really don't understand why, Moore's commander, Jovial "Pappy" Green (Hayden Rorke) would virtually order, these two to fall in love and get marry, when the two astronauts rarely show any interest with each other. I guess, it's because the public won't accept to rescue them, if the two, were unmarried, but that's really a stretch. It's really stupid. If anything, its ruin the movie's feminist tone. Despite all, the threats, she got from her fellow officers like getting spankings because her bratty attitude, until this point, the Colonel mostly kept mostly cool and collective. It's here, that she turn into a young naive schoolgirl whom gladly gets married, despite the fact, that this plot was hatched without her knowledge, and she barely know, anything about Moore. I really don't get, what this movie is going for, with its tone. Is this movie was trying to be, misogyny against women or a film for feminists? It's confusing. One minute, the film is talking about how females are equal to men in the military. Then the next minute, the Colonel requests Moore be promoted to general so he'll be superior to her, because Moore felt inferior. To make it, even more baffling, she does this in front of the female president of the United States, and her new husband, says, he didn't give her, anything, but a kiss. Before we can watch the couple finish their kiss, a hasty "The End" card was spastically hacked into the print. How does that make a well-solid film!? This 63 minutes movie is full of stupid snappy editing like that. Not only that, but despite being cast in the part of a strong woman, Donna Martell fails to project any confident or assured presence. Ross Ford's performance felt like wasted, and Hayden Rorke can't act, worth beans. At one point, you can clearly make out that he was reading his lines from cue cards, complete with awkward pauses as he has to pick up where he left off. It's boondoggle. Despite that, the b/w picture looking fine, with little scratches, and has decent sound for its age. Overall: I have to say, it's so bad, it's good. Project Moon Base is a gem of ridiculousness, and deserves to be cherished for its moments of unintentional hysterics. A must-watch.
retrorocketx
Project Moon Base was made in 1953. Science Fiction movies had come a long way in the 3 years since Destination Moon and Rocketship X-M. Here we are given a glimpse of the future, projected to 1970, and it is a future with the US fully embracing space exploration. The look of the rockets and the overall plan for space exploration presented in the movie seems to be very closely based on the Collier's magazine series on space travel which ran from '52-'54. So this movie would have been very current when it first came out. I have to say, it is a wonderful vision of space exploration. The rocketships, spaceport, space station and moon lander are well done miniatures and the star backgrounds and lunar landscape are also well done.Robert Heinlein is credited with co-writing the screenplay, which tells a sophisticated story of (presumably Soviet) attempts to infiltrate an agent into the US space station and destroy it before a moon base is constructed. This is the surface story of the film, which is handled well in terms of how the space program works and how an agent might try to infiltrate it, but wow does it play out poorly. The scenes with the agent in the ship are really cheezy and amateurish. One of the clues that the impostor scientist is really an agent is that he does not know of the Brooklyn Dodgers - an old WWII trick for trapping enemy agents, but it seems silly here. The sabotage plans are foiled by our heroes (in an embarrassingly bad action scene) but the moon lander is stranded on the lunar surface without enough fuel to blast off.So far so good. But the real story lies beneath all this. It is a story of sex and gender politics in the workplace. And this subtheme is dialed way up! It takes over the movie. In the 1950s women began entering the workplace as equals with men, for the first time ever. Oh they had been allowed descent jobs as secretaries (complete with other implications), and during WWII many women took over men's jobs as the men went off to war, but now it is post war...can educated women work alongside men? Can they supervise men? Will men be threatened by this? Many of the sci-fi movies of the '50s explore this theme, but I have not seen one that could surpass the intensity of this movie. It is out of control and really must be seen to be believed.Col. Briteis (Donna Martell) is the commander of the spaceship. To say she has a rough time in the world of men is an understatement. When we first meet Col, a general tells her she was chosen for this mission for political reasons, not for competence, then he threatens to spank her! Wow. Bear in mind this is the beginning of the movie. Of course all the men pronounce her name 'Bright-Eyes' and oh boy there are plenty of winks and nods. Throughout the movie men are constantly correcting her, laughing at her and patronizing her. For the time period of the film, this is probably all in good fun, but from a 21st century vantage point it is hard to watch and is much more uncomfortable than funny. Bright Eyes...er I mean Col. Briteis...dominates the film, and this is a good thing because she is very sexy. She gets my all-time award for a performance during a blast off. Most everyone else in this obligatory scene looks as if the crushing force of gravity is torture, but with her it looks like...ecstasy.To continue the gender politics theme we have a female US President, and an assertive woman reporter. But ultimately the menfolk need not worry. At the end of the movie the alpha male co-pilot is promoted over Briteis, so male authority is re-established in the nick of time. And he marries her while they are stranded on the moon, so '50s family sensibilities are fully protected.I wish that Coronel Briteis was given a role in which she was depicted as competent instead of petulant. That would have made this movie brilliant and way, way ahead of its time. As it is the movie can be awkward to watch. But if Project Moonbase has any claim to fame, it has Donna Martell, the sexiest rocket girl of the '50s.
junk-monkey
An enemy agent sneaks himself on board the first circum-Luna space flight and, when he is discovered, forces the rest of the crew (all two of them) to make the first landing on the moon. Shortly thereafter he gets himself conveniently killed and the other two members have to get married because apart from anything else they are 250,000 miles from earth - without a chaperon! (Did I mention they were a man and a woman with a history who hated each other on sight? Well they were and they did.) For a movie with almost no plot and even less in the way of characters it is remarkably well thought-out in the technical department. Phones in the near future of 1953 were still huge clunking great black Bakelite things with dials on the front, but they had dinky little aerials on hand set and receiver which meant characters could walk about the room talking without a string getting in the way. Like yeah! I mean how likely is that?? There's all sorts of stuff that technically is far above most of the other SF dross of the period: the ship that takes our crew from Earth up to the space station is streamlined but the one that makes the trip to the moon looks like a pile of tin cans taped together. This was 1953, sixteen years before 2001 introduced the concept that spaceships didn't have to look like a torpedo with wings to a wider audience. And in the space station, where everyone was weightless and walked about using magnetic boots,I loved the notice that said: 'Please, Do Not Walk On The Walls' (it was painted upside-down on the other side of the corridor for the benefit of people walking on the ceiling).This movie also contained the best non special effect I have seen for ages. Towards the end, our hero (on the Moon) is in conference with his boss, The General, (on Earth) via the huge wall to wall Enterprise-like TV screen. Our hero paces back and forth his control room. The General on Earth sits behind his desk and talks to him man to man. Every time our hero walks past the screen, his shadow falls across the General's desk revealing the fact that the actor playing the General is merely sat the other side of a big hole in the set's wall, delivering his half of the conversation to an imaginary camera somewhere in the middle distance, while doing a heroic job of ignoring the other actor in the room with him.A very long 63 minutes; most of which was spent waiting for the heroine's rather peachy, hot-pant clad bum to appear again.
