I've never seen George Pal's vision of space exploration but I just love the film's spacemen, ships and fabulous lighting. Like many of my favourite Sci-Fi movies, this looks like phrophetic 1950's film-making.
I like those models and set designs, but the effects work looks pretty weak compared with the team's earlier work on War of the Worlds. The story has a reputation for being a huge turkey, so watching it with lowered expectations might be a good idea.
Pal also produced Destination Moon, which is well worth checking out. Pretty slow in the early parts of the movie to our modern eyes -- they spend a long time explaining what "space travel" is and how "rockets" work, so the audience of yesteryear wouldn't be hopelessly lost -- but a lot of great stuff as it proceeds.
The story of DM was by Robert Heinlein, who also wrote a film called Project Moonbase that I saw once on tv as a wee tyke and would love to see again, to find out if it was as demented as I remember.
Another astronautic film worth seeing is Robinson Crusoe on Mars -- it's from 1964 so it's probably a bit later than you were thinking of, but very much in the 1950s spirit, and a hell of a lot more intelligent than you'd ever guess from the title. Plus you get a pre-Batman Adam West as one of the supporting cast!
I like those models and set designs, but the effects work looks pretty weak compared with the team's earlier work on War of the Worlds. The story has a reputation for being a huge turkey, so watching it with lowered expectations might be a good idea.
ReplyDeletePal also produced Destination Moon, which is well worth checking out. Pretty slow in the early parts of the movie to our modern eyes -- they spend a long time explaining what "space travel" is and how "rockets" work, so the audience of yesteryear wouldn't be hopelessly lost -- but a lot of great stuff as it proceeds.
The story of DM was by Robert Heinlein, who also wrote a film called Project Moonbase that I saw once on tv as a wee tyke and would love to see again, to find out if it was as demented as I remember.
Another astronautic film worth seeing is Robinson Crusoe on Mars -- it's from 1964 so it's probably a bit later than you were thinking of, but very much in the 1950s spirit, and a hell of a lot more intelligent than you'd ever guess from the title. Plus you get a pre-Batman Adam West as one of the supporting cast!