Amazon.com: Project Moonbase : Donna Martell, Hayden Rorke, Ross Ford, Larry Johns, Herb Jacobs, Barbara Morrison, Ernestine Barrier, James Craven, John Hedloe, Peter Adams, Robert Karnes, John Straub, Richard Talmadge, Jack Seaman, Robert A. Heinlein: Movies & TV
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This has to be one of the cheesiest science fiction films I've ever seen. It's certainly no PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE but it would be stretching a point to even call it a B movie. That is surprising seeing as how Robert A. Heinlein is credited as one of the creators. He had little time for cheesiness.
The story is a simple one of conceived in the cold war. The US is sending a reconnaissance ship around the moon to gather information prior to a landing attempt. The Soviets are desperate to stop the effort and infiltrate an agent onto the crew as a saboteur. He is not caught out soon enough and, in the chaos of the fight, the ship goes off course. The only choice for survival is to go ahead and land.
There is more going on in the story than just the race to the moon and the cold war. The mission was originally assigned to an up and coming major (male). For political reasons, he is reassigned as co-pilot and command is given to a woman, a Col. Briteis (pronounced "Bright Eyes"). She is not a bad woman but it is apparent that she has been promoted to colonel for PR reasons and because she looks good in a skirt. Her indecisiveness and tendency to turn towards her co-pilot for advice and help is somewhat demeaning of what women are able to accomplish.
Possibly the silliest thing about the film is the costumes. The uniform for the US Space Force seems to be shorts, a t-shirt and the dumbest looking skullcap ever to grace the screen. The sets are fairly low budget as well.
All of that seems bad but I did find the show entertaining to a degree. It captured the spirit of the 50s and was fun in small doses. The "science" is rudimentary but generally correct. That must be Heinlein's doing. I suspect a female commander and a female US president were also. This show, while not as technically excellent as DESTINATION MOON, did have more of a story to it.
there is no way to say how awful this is, and i make this statement behind heaping amounts of forgiveness and understanding for its creation in the early Cold War years....actors just barely able to say their lines, a story so corny as to stretch credulity beyond all reckoning, sets apparently done by teenagers for a high school production. you watch a film like this expecting bad, but entertainingly so. but this was just....BAD
As long as you remember when it was written - before 1953 - this is a fun, empty-headed little romp in space, with cold war (ohh, those naughty Enemies of Freedom!) references and a (brace yourself) moon landing! The scientific accuracy is a cut above most movies of the time; the plot and acting are not worse than usual for the era and genre (keep in mind that the usual was Teenagers From Space). The female lead looks good in shorts, but is not very believable as career military. (Neither is the general, who even in the 50's might have raised some eyebrows talking about spanking young women.) People demanding modern political correctness in their sexual politics should look elsewhere (probably, they should avoid 1950's Sci Fi in general). The rest of us will be entertained in solid B movie fashion, if pleasantly appalled at a few points.
Great! This movie has all the hokey, low-budget B movie stuff that a true lover of 50's sci-fi might ever want. The character of "Bright Eyes" is especially entertaining. No true collection should be without this!!
I have a very time finding something to praise for this Galaxy Pictures film (released by Lippert Pictures). Though it has a woman in command of the moon voyage in the form of Colonel Briteis, in the end she requests her co-worker be promoted to Brigadier-General before she agrees to marry him. Does she want to be in charge or not? In the end, no, she wants a man to order her around. Feminists will be steamed seeing this. The special effects are bad and there are ridiculous scenes of Colonel Briteis sitting in front of a screen changing the scenes for no reason. Much of the script is half-baked--in spite of Heinlein's name in the credits--and unconvincing. Much the best part is the film opens from the point of view of "the enemies of Freedom" trying to sabotage the mission. Maybe the film would have been better if it stayed at the "enemies of Freedom" POV. The film is a victim of Cold War politics and is hard to watch now. Also it is too short at 63 minutes. Perhaps it was the initial chapter of a serial--that would have been interesting; perhaps a 1953 version of "Space:1999" would have resulted. Come to think of it, "Space: 1999" was better than this. The villain is found out too easily and too conveniently dies falling off a rocky hill on the moon. The film had much potential that failed to follow through. I suspect if they added half an hour and improved the special effects just a little it would have been a classic. This is no classic, this is a bad movie. And to compare it to Kubrick's "2001" is worse than ludicrous. I would have liked to see Colonel Briteis slug the guy for being the jerk he was. But women aren't supposed to beat up men, more's the pity.
Definitely can tell this was made in the 50's, but as with all the "Killer B's" (B movies) this one was a cut above and you could definitely tell that Heinlein was one of the writers.
Excellent well done movie for science fiction fans. This movie was ahead of its time.Would have been even better if filmed in colour like the first movie I purchased from this same writer called DESTINATION MOON a George Pal production written by Robert A.Heinlein a man with a vision of the future released august 1 1950.Project Moonbase was released Two years later in B/W.I would guess that filming in colour was very expensive in the early 50s which has become a standard today.Shipping was very fast and excellent packaging from Amazon.ca.Much appreciated THANKYOU.
This film gets two stars purely for comedy value. The general threatens to put the female colonel over his knee and spank her, and she just caves in! There are a few real gems like that in there but I won't give too much away. The one thing that would fit in perfectly today is the political spin. After the spaceship lands on the moon and can't take off they reclassify it from a spaceship to a moonbase. Brilliant.
Video quality is pretty bad, I'd certainly love to see this remastered, but as early sci-fi adventure movies go this is definitely one worth checking out. And of course it's based on a Robert Heinlein story so it's actually a must see for fans of the genre.
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