One Small Step for Destroying Mexico City, One Giant Leap for Climate Change: "Land on the Moon with the Intrepid First Astronauts!" Starring Ken Clark, Michi Kobi, and Tom Conway Written by De Witt Bodeen and Fred Gebhardt Directed by David Bradley American, 1960 I admit this is one of my favourites. It is such a stupid movie. Poorly acted, poorly written, poorly directed. A real gem. It's not quite as fun as Cat-Women of the Moon, but I like it anyway. The one credit to this film is that it really does feature an international cast, which was a step forward given the year the movie was made. The film opens with stock footage of small sounding rockets taking off in various directions from various cities on Earth. Then we see a gavel being pounded three times, and the music swells. The credits roll by, and predictably they feature nobody of major interest. Ken Clark plays the American captain of the rocket. Francis X. Bushman also happens to be in this movie, as the old Space Administration guy. In fact, that's the first person we see in the film. He stands at a desk before an array of microphones. Addressing the whole world with the immortal words "Hello the World," he tells us that he is in charge of the 'International Space Order'. He goes on to say that a very important rocket to the Moon, called Lunar Eagle 1, is about to take off. It will be manned (or personned if you're PC) by twelve people from different countries, the best people that each country has to offer. He introduces the crew: Dr. Erich Heinrich, the German guy. He designed and built the rocket;As they are introduced, we watch each astronaut board the rocket. Oddly enough, the American pilot goes in last, and he takes an overly heroic pose in front of the camera and looks off into the distance. Whereas the others only spend an average of four or so seconds in front of the camera and look less proud, the American stands in front of the camera with that look of his for 18 seconds while the old guy narrates. The old guy says that the rocket will take off with chemical fuel, and then switch to atomic power once in space. I knew atomic power would be worked in here somewhere. We watch the crew board the rocket. It has four very spacious decks, and the decks are sparse looking. I didn't see much in terms of control panels. There are a few miscellaneous gauges on the walls. Also aboard are two cats, two monkeys, two birds, and a dog tied up to the wall. We get the pre-launch buildup. We occasionally cut to stock footage of mission control. Some of the people in this footage are wearing 'McDonnell Douglas' shirts. The crew gets ready, attending their stations. We get our first shot of a small gyroscope thingy that swivels around in place. It is inside one of the control panels. Everybody puts on their helmets. Ruskin (the Israeli guy) is in charge of the log for the mission, and he's making entries right away. They boarded the ship with two minutes left before launch. I thought astronauts were in their rockets for hours beforehand, but never mind. The crew seat themselves in lawn chairs. This isn't the first time I have seen lawn chairs used in rocket movies. Who knows, maybe NASA really uses a similar kind of chair. The rocket and crew are ready to go. Captain Anderson (the heroic American guy) pushes a button for an unknown reason. The countdown starts at thirty seconds. The crew is anxious. The animals seem okay. The engines ignite, and the rocket flies up. We get shots of the crew cringing with the G-forces that accompany a launch. Again, the animals seem okay. During the launch, Anderson gets up from his lawn chair. We hear a loud crashing sound, and the rocket shakes, causing Anderson to roll a bit on the floor. Everything, though, seems okay. Anderson gets everyone to say they're okay. The crew sits up and collectively sighs. They are grateful to have made it. We get a shot of a model rocket flying through space. This rocket looks completely different from the one we saw on the ground. Navigator Markonen (the African guy, who is actually black) tells us that the rocket has so far traveled 1500 miles and is traveling at a speed of 16,000 mph. Anderson switches to atomic power. We get another shot of the gyroscope thingy, and our first shot of an oscilloscope-like device that features a bright dot moving vertically up over the screen. Drs. Hamid (the Turkish guy) and Bomark (the Swedish lady) check on the crew. Dr. Rochester (the British guy) is looking back at Earth through a camera. We see an unconvincing shot of North America, but it appears to have a dark smudge over the southeastern U.S. Rochester explains that it's a major storm center. Hamid walks over, and as soon as he opens his mouth, I know his voice was over-dubbed with a different voice. Call me crazy, but I can't see the voice I heard coming from the mouth I saw. It didn't look or sound right to me. Anyway, Hamid and Rochester have a dumb conversation about whether or not they will make it. Dr. Orloff (the Russian guy) steps into the scene, and displays the immense Russian ego his character will have throughout the entire movie. Then Martel (the French guy) shows up, and speaks. Again, his voice was dubbed. I am certain of that. The 'French' accent he has is awful. I can make a better one, and all I know is 'Bonjour'. Martel is asked if he thinks they will make it, and he replies: "But of course! It's perfectly reasonable that we should make it. I trust ze engines, I trust ze ship. But, what will happen will happen. That's right!"He has an annoying way of speaking. Hamid and Martel talk to each other at one point, and I realized it might well have been the same voice in different accents. Rochester explains the rather bulky camera system to Murdock (the American boy). Today it seems unimpressive, but maybe in 1960 it was advanced. At one point, it prints out a picture of the Earth, and we get to see the picture. The storm that was over the U.S. is all gone. Who knew massive storm systems could dissolve in minutes? Anyway, why was Rochester working the camera? Wasn't the Japanese lady in charge of astrophotography? Ruskin reports that everyone aboard is in good health, except Heinrich (the German guy), whose age is showing. He goes on to say that everyone is acting "artificially calm" to cover up their excitement about the trip. Maybe it seems that way because none of them can act. Never mind. Dr. Bomark checks out Ruskin. She then tells him that Heinrich is not well. What happened to doctor-patient confidentiality? Ruskin calls Heinrich "brilliant", thus beginning set-up for a MAJOR PLOT POINT!! Can you guess what it is? Anyway, Orloff again intrudes and says that he and Russia are brilliant because of their illustrious space exploration record (not counting the secret failures, I'm sure). Orloff's aggressive personal and national pride whips Ruskin into a confrontation, but Murata (the Japanese lady) breaks it up before it forms. Unfortunately, Orloff won't stop: Orloff: "[I] am the best mapmaker in the world!"Ugh, quite a cohesive group we have on mankind's first trip off the Earth. Bomark breaks up this one. Meanwhile, Martel is talking to the monkeys. Markonen is looking through a viewer at a cloud of sparkly things ahead. He reports that the ship is in some unusual magnetic fields. We get a shot of the oscilloscope, the dot jumping to the left. Apparently, that's bad. Then we see a radar screen. We get a shot of the rocket. Finally, we reach the Inevitable Meteor Storm. 
They appear to us first as a swarm of fake-looking asteroids. Markonen sees them approach, freaks out and calls Anderson. They're on a collision course. Again, we see the oscilloscope. The rocket swerves port (relative to my television screen). We see the asteroids flash by out the window, and they make bleeping and whirring sounds. Everybody watches with fright. They pass without incident, and the rocket puts itself back on course. Orloff is quick to take credit (claiming their evasion was thanks to a Russian invention), but Heinrich bursts Orloff's ego a bit. Rocket exterior shot. We see Murata in the shower behind a curtain, of course. She's in the bathroom with Bomark, who is getting dressed. They comment on how nice this shower is. It cleans with ultrasound and massages with air jets, thus eliminating water. Both Bomark and Murata want one of these showers in their respective homes. In a really stupid scene, a shirtless Anderson accidentally barges in on the women in the bathroom, and backs out respectfully. After being asked why he didn't knock, he says that they're not at the Waldorf. That doesn't explain why he didn't knock, or why he is walking around without a shirt. I guess he always lounges about without a shirt when he's got guests in his home. Murdock is talking to the cats, Mimi and Adolofo. He tells them (literally) not to worry. Their job is to breed once they're on the Moon, to see if procreation can proceed there. Rocket exterior shot. They're on course to begin the "retro procedure" in an hour and a half. Vargas (the Brazilian guy) says they're in line to orbit over the crater Menelaus. I was surprised to learn this is actually a crater on the near side of the Moon. It's 26 kilometers across. 
Fig. 1 - Menelaus Crater We get another shot of sparkly things in space. Markonen shouts (and he does shout a lot) that it's an approaching meteoric dust cloud, impossible to avoid. What's this, I asked, a second Inevitable Meteor Storm? 
Anderson prepares to fire a penetration rocket at it. That cloud must be dense. We see a laughable shot of a tin can (like the kind that beans come in) slowly creeping out from the belly of the rocket. Anderson fires. A small rocket emerges from the tin can, and we get a shot of a smoky 'explosion' of some sort. A second rocket is to be fired, but Anderson says there's no time. He orders the crew to keep their hands off metal surfaces as the interior of the ship could become electrically charged as they pass through this cloud. The lights go out to enhance the mood. Upon seeing this 'cloud', I realized it wasn't so much a cloud as it was a wall. We get a bizarre shot of the Lunar Eagle 1 flying through an irregular hole in a piece of transparent Plexiglas or something equivalent. There are some small explosions in the ship, and general chaos ensues. However, the rocket is okay. Now, Murdock takes credit for the penetration rocket, claiming that as an American invention. Orloff hands him that one. Rocket exterior shot. Anderson and Markonen share some clichéd words about the receding Earth. They are preparing for 'reversal', where they must point the rocket the other way to slow down. We get a pointless 14-second long shot of a starfield with planets and clouds of fog drifting by. I counted two of these small-looking planets flying by. Who knew the space between the Earth and Moon was so crowded! Adding to my wonderment is some quiet but weird 'space-music', with the warbling whistles of a theremin and other ethereal sounds. Next, we see the rocket reversing direction and firing engines. During this little maneuver, Murata loses her balance and almost falls: Murata: "Thank you" [she was caught by Vargas]He sounded so creepy when he said that. Landing is scheduled to happen in an hour and a half. Heinrich, Murdock, and Ruskin are working out the formula for deceleration on the Moon. Murdock, being the math wiz that he is, seems to derive the following formula from his head: 
(Taking into consideration the Moon's gravity is 1/6 that of Earth's.) I'm no astrophysicist, but I have the sneaking suspicion that this formula is utter nonsense. Heinrich and Ruskin say that the kid is brilliant. Then Ruskin goes into a spin. He says that a German man named Bernauer originally derived that formula, and that same man killed his family during the Holocaust. It's supposed to be dramatic. Before Murdock can say anything, he gets called over by Bomark and Rochester. They tell Murdock that Heinrich is the son of said Bernauer, and that Heinrich changed his name out of shame. This is the MAJOR PLOT POINT!! The odds are incredible. Somebody at the International Space Order didn't do their research on this one. We see that Ruskin and Heinrich work well together, so Murdock is advised to keep mum about this. Why would you tell some teenager this? Rocket exterior shot. The crew suits up, and prepares for landing. They happen to be landing in a very rough area pointed out on a photo by Rochester. We get another shot of the gyroscope and oscilloscope. Then we see a shot of the rocket takeoff in reverse as it slowly descends to the lunar surface. We see some sparklers with the approaching ground behind that is supposed to be a dramatic downward view. They touch down, and their landing is accompanied by some strange sounds. Everybody praises his or her respective gods, except the Russian. They call Earth to report in, and get congratulatory messages. The way all twelve of them crowd around the radio made me smile in a non-complimentary way. Ruskin makes an addition to the log. He says the excitement among the crew is great but controlled. Then he says the following passage, which I think should go down in bad movie history: "Now, I'm turning on my invisible electromagnetic ray screen... which forms a protective shield over our faces..."HOOHAW, we have a winner! This movie couldn't afford glass or even plastic visors for their helmets?! Even Ro-man in Robot Monster had a glass shield over his face! Maybe I'm wrong about this. I hope so. Let's move on. Everybody is ready to go, except Martel, who is supposed to stay behind and be the loser who never sets foot on the Moon. They bring magnetic meteor deflectors, and an air detector with them. Anderson, of course, gets to go first. From inside the airlock, we see the Moon circa 1960. It is a fake looking landscape, with pointy mountains in the distance. The ground is cracked with large faults perhaps a foot or so wide, and smoke billows out of a hole near the rocket. Next scene. We see more landscapes and it looks similar to what we saw before, except in the center-right of my television screen, a figure can be seen clearly walking away slowly from the rocket and into the shadows. WTF?! Mr. Magoo must have been in charge of film continuity. Anderson slowly climbs down the ladder. We cut to a shot from the surface. We see the base of the rocket resting on the ground, and some soundstage structures at the top of the screen. Either the cinematographer was a) blind, or b) really, really arrogant in assuming that we wouldn't see or care about such a distracting error. If one is trying to create the illusion of being on the moon, wouldn't a proper set be paramount? After a while, those structures were all I could look at. Everybody comes down the ladder. We get a shot of a boot in the dust. One guy picks up a handful of it and spills it down. It seems to fall at regular Earth acceleration. We see more moonscapes. A crater near the rocket is bubbling (?!) and emitting smoke. Equipment is lowered to the surface via winch. Ruskin is reporting and says that no air is detected. The soil is pumice dust, 2-3 inches thick. For all I know, this could be accurate. We see a shot of meteors streaking along curved paths through the airless sky.
Some of them land near the rocket with small explosions. Ruskin says they were successfully deflected by the magnets they have with them, though one of them landed at the very foot of the ladder. After some standing around, everybody walks off in a line. The actors are trying to pretend that there's less gravity, but their walking comes off badly. We see a 27-second long scene of the dozen crewmembers walking around a bubbling crater very slowly and oddly. Some of them aren't even trying to pretend they're on the Moon. Then we see a 30-second long scene of them walking over a cracked landscape very slowly and oddly. After a bit more walking, the music very suddenly and loudly swells, and the flag they have with them is driven into the soil. It's an International Space Order flag, and it looks like one you'd find at a golf course. Ruskin narrates: "The planting of this flag symbolizes the internationalization of the Moon, to prevent individual nations from any further dispute."Bad prediction. There are now six American flags on the Moon, but never mind. Finally, the scientific exploration can begin, and we start it off with more walking. Everyone looks down into a boiling cauldron inside a deep pit in the surface. There's more walking, followed by another meteor attack. This time, the meteors slam into a nearby pile of rocks, dislodging some of them. They fall and bounce cheesily around the astronauts. This happens twice. Once everything is safe, Orloff takes charge. Bomark and Hamid are assigned to look for air (their word, not mine). I'd say they've been given a pretty easy job. Of course, that depends on your definition of 'air'. It is an 'air detector', not necessarily an 'oxygen detector'. Everyone starts his or her work. Bomark and Hamid walk off alone together. In the next 27 seconds, we watch them walk over a crack and far away from the camera. The two doctors approach a cavern that seems to be well illuminated from inside. They cautiously enter, finding weird rock or crystalline tree-like objects sticking out from the floor. Some of them have mushroom-like growths on them. Bomark pulls one off, and it catches fire in her hands. Isn't that a sign of air? Apparently not, because they don't mention it. Outside, the others have gathered around a pile of rocks. Orloff, being a geologist, looks them over. Meanwhile, Markonen is staring off into space. A big lump of gold is found in the pile, but underneath that is a glowing rock that Orloff seems to be enamored with: "It's like fire, like liquid fire! We're the first people to set eyes on a stone like this!"Markonen doesn't seem so impressed: "It's beautiful... but evil! Evil and sharp, like the Jewel of Media*!"Orloff decides to name his glowing rock 'The Media Stone'. When asked what's wrong, Markonen says he 'feels' something, and he seems distantly concerned. Back in the cave, Bomark and Hamid look around. The air detector, which is a box with an attached bladder that appears to breathe, detects air around them. They both remove their helmets and breathe deeply. Then they proceed to kiss passionately. That came right out of left field! Holding hands, they walk into a deeper section of the cave. As they walk away, a glowing presence appears behind them and traps them inside by sealing the cavern entrance. Orloff is eager to look for more precious stones, and Anderson warns him to hurry because they're running out of air. They blow up a section of a cliff wall with some small explosives, and a stream of liquid starts pouring out. Huh? This is an astounding discovery by itself: water on the moon. However, when Orloff runs up to it and immerses his hands in the stream, we find out it's not water. It's lava, or something corrosive. He screams, his hands burning. Everyone rushes over, and Murata wraps up his hands. He says he deserves it. He's damn right. Orloff and Murata return to the rocket. Meanwhile, the others realize Bomark and Hamid are missing. They begin searching. They follow Bomark's and Hamid's footprints into the cave, and they go right up to the now closed-off section. It has been sealed with a solid wall of ice. After some taps with a hammer, they slowly march out of the cave. Suddenly, Rochester screams. He's sinking into the sand. Anderson calls for the 'magnetic buoy' to pull Rochester out, but alas, it is too late. We get a dramatic 19-second long shot of Rochester's hand sticking out of the sand and clawing at the vacuum. He vanishes into the sand. Ruskin too nearly gets pulled in, but he is saved by the others and with the help of the magnetic thing. And so, in two hours of exploration, three people out of twelve vanished or died. The crew returns to the rocket. There, the atmosphere is quiet. The sun has set on the landing site, and won't rise again for fourteen Earth days. The temperature outside is absurdly low. Meanwhile, Ruskin adds to the log: "The heavy lead in Rochester's boots contributed to his sinking into the pumice dust. These are the circumstances which contributed to the death of Dr. William Rochester.To summarize: a)Rochester had lead in his boots for some reason;I got it. Markonen and Ruskin share a depressed conversation about the crew's losses. Ruskin says they can't search because it is too cold outside. Markonen will pray for the lost ones. Ruskin continues with the log, and says that astrophotography activities will continue. Ah, how insensitive. Anderson assembles the crew on "A-Deck". He tells everyone that they have lost contact with Earth. Then the lights go out, and weird symbols scroll across a control panel. They look like hieroglyphics, but not human ones. Somehow, for a reason that is never explained, Murata can read them. She translates: "I speak for the Great Coordinator of the Moon. We advise and inform you: return to Earth at once! You have done enough damage. You have been bombarding us for years incessantly. Leave us in peace. We read your minds. We know your every thought. We cannot speak as you do; we communicate by thought waves. We live in a great sealed city below. We are not enslaved by your earthly emotions: greed, lust, passions of conquest. We cannot allow you to stay here for you would only contaminate our perfect form of harmony. [Bomark and Hamid] are here, they say they are in love. We are studying this curious emotion. If we find that love turns to evil, we shall destroy them, you, and your kind. Remember, we have the power to immobilize you at will."Using common sense, the others think this is some kind of hoax. After all, nothing lives on the Moon. Ruskin in particular thinks that this is some Earth power trying to drive them away. Orloff gets suspicious glances. Heinrich starts wheezing and gasping, and the others come to his aide. He's suffered a heart attack. Why would someone who is old and who has heart trouble be sent to the Moon? Am I crazy to question that fact? Everyone leaves, except for Ruskin. Heinrich confesses his father's identity. Ruskin is, needless to say, shocked and angry. Heinrich asks for forgiveness, and wants to be friends. Meanwhile, more symbols appear. Murata translates. The aliens want the two cats left behind for study. So, the cats are left on the surface. I hope their cage is airtight, because it had air holes a moment earlier. A mysterious and evil shadow comes and takes the cats away. And so, on that upbeat note, the rocket takes off. According to Ruskin, the rocket left the Moon at 6700 hours. Again, I say WTF?! What time zone is that? They left based on the warning given by the aliens that may or may not be on the Moon. I guess they have no regard for the two astronauts they're leaving behind. Everything seems okay. How often have I said that now? Of course, something goes wrong. The Media Stone, which was sitting on the floor, suddenly catches fire. The dog barks and alerts everyone. They put it out in a boring and pointless scene. Orloff explains what happened: "The oxygen fused [the Media Stone] into fire when it came into contact with the gold."Since when is fire a substance that can be obtained by fusion? Oh well. Rocket exterior shot. Anderson signals Earth to get a position, but their signal is cut off. We see the compass acting funny. How is a compass useful in space? The crew thinks it could be the Moon people. Of course, Markonen spots meteors ahead.
Markonen gives the odd coordinates of ".34.3". That sounds more like an IP address than coordinates for something in space. Finally, Murdock starts pulling his weight. Anderson calls for him to derive a solution for the rocket to avoid the meteors with. He generates this, er, interesting thing: 
= .7 ½ = .7 + .5 = 1.2 See, he really wanted to say 1.2. But I digress. We see a shot of the gyroscope thingy. The rocket swerves, and the meteors fly by. They survived a double whammy. Everyone thanks the kid, though Martel says that he still has faith in the mechanical brain. We hear a loud whistling sound surround the ship. Nobody seems to care. Rocket exterior shot. Vargas tells us that the rocket has entered orbit about the Earth at an altitude of 500 miles. The crew gathers. Communication with Earth is still out. Heinrich is feeling better and is now up and about. Markonen shows up and tells Anderson that something is wrong. A few people complain of being cold, and Markonen says that the temperature outside is very low and falling. The internal temperature is also falling below room temperature. We get a lame effects shot of what is supposed to be Earth freezing over. It appears as a whitish haze covering a picture of Earth. The crew watches with horror as the freeze spreads south down North America. Murata shows the crew some images of various cities, in particular New York, Washington D.C., and a city I couldn't recognize. In each image,we see the city freeze over. Heinrich speaks. He has an idea about what is happening. He says the Moon people are halting all molecular activity on Earth by extracting all the "thermos particles" from the atmosphere, thus lowering the temperature. Heinrich says it is the principle of the H-bomb in reverse. Orloff agrees. Heinrich suggests that the Moon people used "implosion bombs" to achieve this, and that these bombs were the source of the strange whistling sounds heard earlier. Huh. Well, I've sat through most of this movie already. If it tells me that there are Thermos Particles in the universe, I'll believe it. The company that actually makes Thermoses might have a lawsuit here. Besides, who knew H-bombs did their work by filling the air with heat particles. I was thinking more along the lines of fission. Anyway, Heinrich urges that they do not descend, lest they get caught in what is being called 'The Big Freeze'. They must solve this, so he and the other geniuses go to work. Meanwhile, Vargas picks up some radio transmissions out of London. It says that North America is frozen over, and the whole world is cooling off. This explains why mission control isn't talking anymore. I guess global warming is no longer a concern. Martel decides to open his yap: "We are insulated. We are safe in here. Yes, but for how long?"I have the feeling this guy could converse with himself. Martel says that the engines are overworked, though if they were currently in orbit, why would they be running? Heinrich finds a solution to The Big Freeze, after 64 solid seconds of work. Here's the condensed plan: 1)Build a small atom bomb using parts lying around the Lunar Eagle;This, says Heinrich, should provide enough energy to thaw The Big Freeze. By now, my brain had died. I was seeing the movie, but not watching. This plan would need two people in the space taxi, and because their chances of survival wouldn't be great, they should draw straws. Anderson goes along with this plan. Martel has built the bomb, using parts lying around the ship. Just like MacGuyver! Orloff checks on him, but as he's leaving, he sees Martel tamper with the bomb. He confronts Martel, and as it just so happens, Martel is a fellow communist who wishes ill upon North America. He tells Orloff that with North America out of the way, the communists can rule the world. Orloff doesn't like this plan at all. I guess he's an early supporter of Glasnost. What follows is a very badly done fight scene between Martel and Orloff, which consists mainly of each man hugging the other and getting pushed around. Orloff tries to hit Martel, but his hands are all burnt and bandaged, so he can do little. Wrestled to the floor, he cries out for Anderson. The pilot arrives and pushes Martel away. Not to be outdone, Martel comes at Anderson with a knife, but Anderson knocks Martel out cold with one punch. Orloff repairs the bomb. The crew draws for the suicide mission. Guess who gets selected... Heinrich and Ruskin! They enter the space taxi following Ruskin's final log entry. Their destination is the volcano Popocatépetl, just outside Mexico City. I don't think the Mexicans would like an atomic bomb detonated near their city. Ruskin says goodbye to the dog. Markonen agrees to take care of it. 
Fig. 2 - Popocatépetl The space taxi was filmed in some vacant soundstage with no background. I guess the filmmakers were getting tired of this movie and wanted to end it as soon as they could. We get a good shot of its control panel, and find little staring back at us: one gauge (perhaps an artificial horizon), one controller thingy, a light, and a speaker. Here I noticed yet another bizarre trait of this film. The soundtrack music we hear throughout this scene is definitely used as incidental music in Plan 9 From Outer Space. As I explained in that review, they got their music (rather illegally) from a music library, so I can only assume the music guy for this movie got lazy and started using stock music. The penetration rocket blows a hole in the atmosphere (we don't see this), and then the taxi departs the Lunar Eagle. The taxi is a tiny model, which we see fly through space. Inside, Heinrich and Ruskin chat about regrets and their doubts about survival. We get a brief shot of fighter jet controls, definitely not the interior of the space taxi. They drop the bomb (we don't see this either). Markonen watches from the ship and reports what happens to the crew. The taxi pulls up. The bomb explodes, and we see stock footage of an eruption on the Sun's surface, filmed during an eclipse or something. The taxi gets sucked into the explosion. I thought explosions pushed things away, but never mind. Heinrich says a final goodbye, and we see the taxi diving to the Earth. There is a stick involved. The taxi explodes. Markonen saw the whole thing, and looks up gravely from his viewer. He says a prayer. We hear more whistling sounds, and the rocket starts getting cold again. They've been caught in The Big Freeze. Their windows and control panels freeze over. I'm pulling my hair out, wondering how much longer the 'excitement' will continue. We see the exterior of the rocket freezing over. The lights dim, and everyone huddles together, expecting to die. Everything goes quiet. More alien symbols appear on the controls. Murata translates them. The aliens have judged, based on Ruskin and Heinrich's sacrifice, that humans are good. They also base this belief on observations of Bomark and Hamid, whom the aliens have in suspended animation. They welcome humanity to visit the Moon any time in the future. The crew is all smiles. The aliens also decide to unfreeze the Earth, but it wouldn't have made a difference. Only North America was frozen solid, so billions and billions of humans would have survived. We part this movie with a matte painting of a sunrise over the Earth's curved horizon.
THE END!!!
Three people did not return to Earth, so that gives the Moon a 75% survival rate. I wouldn't call that a happy ending. Second, a genocidal maniac and an old man of failing health made it onto this mission, so obviously no thought was given to the intense psychological and physiological screening processes that real astronauts are subjected to. Add to this the nonsensical mathematics and the pseudoscience used in the film, plus the bizarre writing, and you have one classic movie. It even addresses climate change! Hey hey, a movie forty years ahead of its time! I'll sum up the alien involvement in the film. The aliens see humans land. They kidnap two humans, and tell the rest to leave. When they do leave, the aliens decide to attack Earth (or North America) anyway, for no given reason. The humans evade this attack, and shortly thereafter the aliens apologize and say that humans are actually nice. This must be one stupid race. The main problem I have with this movie is that it is boring towards the end, and each bad incident that befalls the crew is more exhausting to watch than the last. One Inevitable Meteor Storm was enough. Two was acceptable. However, the writers decided to throw in two more Inevitable Meteor Storms on the way back to Earth. All the 'excitement' was wearing me out, the way Armageddon wore me out. The trick to this movie is not to get too attached to the plot. Then you don't get sucked in and thrown around by the film's various climaxes. Just stay detached, and watch with casual interest. 12 to the Moon can be fun, if enjoyed in moderation. So, if you like cats, lots of meteors, or aliens that speak Japanese, 12 to the Moon is for you. * - Media in this case is pronounced 'meh-DEE-uh', so I don't know if I have the spelling right. April 22, 2004 Back to main site? |
