With their latest rocket experiment ending in flames n’ failure, Dr. Charles Cargraves (Warner Anderson) and his rocket lovin’ bud, General Thayer (Tom Powers) seek some outside cash to achieve their ultimate goal, sending man to the moon!
They soon enlist smooth-talkin’ aeronautics tycoon Jim Barnes (John Archer) to convince his equally loaded peers to invest in the project… and he isn’t afraid to enlist a then-popular animated bird to lend a helping wing (more on this below dear readers!) to that end!
Before long the project is complete, but the local populace are having a bitch-fest about the radiation they believe the project will surely release… even though the rocket, the Luna, uses steam propulsion… so our heroes decide to launch the rocket early, because fuck the public, that’s why!
With Cargraves, Thayer, et. al. (along with wise-assing substitute radio operator Joe Sweeney (Dick Wesson)) acting as crew, the group soon find themselves in space… but after a hard landing on the lunar surface wastes gobs of their fuel, their chances of getting home are in jeopardy… space jeopardy!
Directed by Irving Pichel, and written by a cadre of screenwriters including science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein (Starship Troopers), Destination Moon manages to steer clear of the leaden pace of many 1950’s more scientific-minded space pics, and instead offers a yarn filled with suspense and clever effects.
That’s not to say the pic doesn’t contain plenty of speculative scientific jargon and tech (some of which is on the money, especially with funding for space technology coming from the private sector), because it surely does… but the plight of the protagonists provides plenty of sci-fi spectacle to balance things out… and the story is well structured with each section of the rockets journey, from creation to utilization, engaging and full of tension once the crew gets to space.
As the film was produced by George Pal (1953’s The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine) you can rest assured there are a plethora of early 1950’s special effects wizardry utilized to make us believe in the daring journey to the stars at hand including large matte paintings, clever sets, wire-work and even a smattering of stop-motion!
On the other side of the coin, there are some unintentionally hilarious moments as our heroes look like they are going to absolutely bust a nut in ecstasy every-time G-forces effect the ship… and the appearance of Woody fucking Woodpecker in a sizzle reel to get investors to fund the rocket it’s jarring as all fuck… and it seemingly goes on forever (but in the positive corner this was entirely new animation produced just for the film).
Accompanying Destination Moon on this Film Masters blu-ray are a duo of audio commentaries (one a scholarly analysis of the film courtesy of Film Historian Justin Humphreys, and the other a thirty nine minute fact and anecdote-packed interview recreation with the late fright flick archivist Bob Burns by film Historian Tom Weaver), a new “making of” mini-doc, a restored version of the film’s trailer, and a pressbook gallery.
Also included is a second disc featuring Lesley Selander’s Flight to Mars from 1951…
Things get a bit lower stakes with this one, as we get our ragtag group of philosophizing scientists and such on board a rocket and blasted to space with the first fifteen minutes of this one, so we get none of creation of the technology needed for the mission which proved really entertaining in Destination Moon… it also goes without saying we don’t get any Woody Woodpecker here… we don’t even get a Chilly Willy cartoon…
After tangling briefly with a meteor shower our crew touches down on Mars… roughly… and after trudging through snow under red skies the gang finds man-made structures… and those that built them!
Will our heroes find friends on the Red Planet or are the intentions of the aliens much more sinister?!!
First things first, the martians here truly suck ass… they sport left-over spacesuits from Destination Moon… when they aren’t dressing like they just stumbled out of a Flash Gordon serial… and consist of normal looking middle-aged men and a lady or two.
As you may have surmised, this is much more of a pulpy sci-fi yarn… we do get some postulating and such, but the inclusion of the aliens make this much more “unrealistic” than the former film in this release, and the concentration here is on the alien society more than the journey it took to get there.
The sets are retro-future cool, and are presented via matte paintings and such, but they lack the impact of those in Destination Moon… and the suspense is much reduced here as well.
As before, we get special features to supplement the feature including another commentary track from Humphreys, a look at the more science-heavy sci-fi features of the ‘50s, a mini-doc on the film’s producer, Walter Mirisch (1956’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers), and a restored version of Flight to Mars’ trailer.
Also included in the package is a full color booklet with a new essay by Author Sloan deForest.
Two voyages into the deep reaches of space presented two different ways, this pairing of Destination Moon and Flight to Mars is an enjoyable dip into the early days of 1950’s space-obsessed sci-fi!
