Destination Moon (Irving Pichel, 1950) [RePoPo]

******************************************************************************* Destination Moon (Irving Pichel, 1950) ******************************************************************************* ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Technical Information ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Type..................: Movie Container file........: AVI Video Format..........: H.264 Total Bitrate.........: 2148 Kbps Audio format..........: AC3 192 Kbps (Untouched) Audio Languages.......: English 1.0 Subtitles ripped......: Spanish Resolution............: 704x512 Aspect Ratio..........: 1.37:1 Original Aspect Ratio.: 1.37:1 Color.................: Color FPS...................: 25.000 fps Source................: PAL DVD (interlaced) Duration..............: 01:31:02 Genre.................: Sci-fi IMDb Rating...........: 6.2 Movie Information.....: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042393/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Release Notes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Plot Synopsis by Mark Deming Producer George Pal assembled an impressive roster of behind-the-camera talent -- including noted science fiction author Robert Heinlein and artist Chelsey Bonestell -- for this pioneering sci-fi adventure. Scientist Dr. Charles Cargraves (Warner Anderson), former Air Force General Thayer (Tom Powers), and industrial tycoon Jim Barnes (John Archer) believe that it's time that the U.S. blazed new trails and found new adventures. Convinced that exploration of space is the wave of the future (and that America's dominance in space is vitally important if they are to continue to dominate the Earth), the three men begin planning and constructing a spaceship called "Luna" in the Mojave Desert that will take the men to the moon and back. However, anti-American forces begin flooding the press with propaganda against the moon mission, and finally the men make their way to moon without the aid of the federal government. While the men are thrilled to succeed in their mission, it turns out that they miscalculated the amount of fuel needed to return -- and that the rocket needs to drop a lot of weight if it is to return to Earth. Destination Moon won an Academy Award for Best Special Effects of 1950; the film also features a brief appearance by cartoon favorite Woody Woodpecker, who helps explain how rockets work. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CAST Warner Anderson - Dr. Charles Cargraves John Archer - Jim Barnes Tom Powers - General Thayer Dick Wesson - Joe Sweeney Ted Warde - Brown Michael Miller Erin O'Brien-Moore - Emily Cargraves ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CREW ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Irving Pichel - Director George Pal - Producer Robert A. Heinlein - Screenwriter / Book Author James O'Hanlon - Screenwriter Rip Van Ronkel - Screenwriter Lionel Lindon - Cinematographer Leith Stevens - Composer (Music Score) Duke Goldstone - Editor Ernst Fegte - Production Designer George Sawley - Set Designer William Lynch - Sound/Sound Designer Lee Zavitz - Special Effects Walter Lantz - Animator ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SOME REVIEWS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bosley Crowthers, June 28th 1950 Considering the fact that the scientists have not yet reached the moon—unless, perhaps, the Russians have pulled a fast one on us—we're afraid that the motion-picture audience will have to accept on faith the possibility of the excursion that is accomplished in "Destination Moon." For the sole demonstration in this picture which George Pal has produced in rich, luscious Technicolor and which opened at the Mayfair yesterday is how four American scientists, in a rocket ship fired into space, ride out to the moon, look it over and then ride back again. This, as we say, is a project which, for want of accomplishment as yet, still smacks of the ventures of Buck Rogers or the earlier imaginings of Jules Verne. And even though Mr. Pal assures us that everything which happens in this film has been checked with the highest authorities for what you might technically expect, this corner withholds its opinion of the voyage's plausibility. However, we've got to say this for Mr. Pal and his film: they make a lunar expedition a most intriguing and picturesque event. Even the solemn preparations for this unique exploratory trip, though the lesser phase of the adventure, are profoundly impressive to observe. For instance, it is arresting to hear an eloquent scientist proclaim that the first nation which can use the moon for launching missiles will control the earth. It is thrilling to be told, in deepest confidence, that this is the greatest miltary fact of our age. And it is awesome to watch the mechanics constructing that giant rocket ship. But, most of all, it is exciting to climb aboard the ship with those four men (two jumps ahead of the sheriff with a stop-order on the whole trip), to wiggle and squirm with them in agony as their silver tube roars into space and to join in their general amazement at the various phenomena which occur. It is even a little amusing to watch the inevitable comic character float about in non-gravitational freedom when he becomes a "free orbit," whatever that means. And the emergency necessity for the scientists to go outside their ship (i???ntheir inter-space suits) to do repair work while the ship is in flight cues quite a scene. After the highly perilous landing of the rocket ship on the moon, accomplished by turning its nose up and backing in against the pressure of its propelling jet, the subsequent explorations on the moon are a trifle tame. Nothing to see but old, dead mountains and craters with cracked and scaling sides. There isn't a single beautiful female nor even a Russian scientist anywhere, although we're led to be on the lookout for the latter—just in case. Indeed, there is no apparent reason for anyone wanting to settle on the moon, and the picture's departure there-from is no particular cause for regret. As a matter of fact, the return trip is downhill all the way, despite the evident efforts of the scriptwriters to make it hum. For, in tossing away much equipment in order to lighten the ship for its take-off from the moon, the gentlemen apparently jettisoned what they had left of a script. And the pointed suspension of the adventure in midair is a weak and dull way out. However, that may be reasoned. Apparently Mr. Pal did not want to be scientifically liable for returning any voyagers from the moon. Everything else he can argue—the departure, the adventures in space, the look of the moon, even the broadcast that is beamed to the earth from there. And in the performance of these adventures, we can just as well assume that the male cast employed for this picture acts as moon voyagers would. Actually, their human reactions are nothing to their gadgeted ship, their miraculous observations—and those are all we advise you go to see. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- scifimoviepage.com More sci than fi, this fairly serious 1950’s vision of what a moon landing might like be one day has no astronauts being confronted by alien monsters on the moon or anything of the sort. Scientifically accurate (for its day) to the 9nth degree, Destination Moon instead boasts astronauts who use too much rocket fuel in landing on the moon and then have to get rid of excess weight so as to be able to escape the moon’s gravitational pull again. You can see German rocket expert Hermann Oberth served as technical advisor on the film, but it’s not particularly exciting watching a bunch of guys in spacesuits dump some oxygen tanks on the surface of the moon to be honest. Maybe the movie should have stuck more closely to the plot of Rocketship Galileo, the juvenile 1947 Robert Heinlein novel on which it is based. In Heinlein’s original novel three boys and their uncle build a spaceship in their backyard which they use to travel to the moon where they discover Nazis, all of which is ridiculous of course but sounds much more exciting than dullard astronauts sawing rungs off ladders. (Heinlein also contributed to the screenplay along with John O’Hanlon and Rip van Ronkel, which unbelievable as it sounds is not a complete nom de plume. The author’s real name was Alford van Ronkel.) "Heinlein's original novel had Nazis on the moon!" According to this more serious-minded movie the first mission to the moon was to be sponsored by American big businesses because government can’t get its act together. Unknown enemies (commies obviously, but never mentioned by name) would conspire to stop the mission from ever happening, trying to sway American public opinion against it. The trip itself would be made in an atomic-powered V2 rocket. The surface of the moon would have tall mountains and a surface like that of a dry lake bed. As predictive science fiction Destination Moon of course gets a lot wrong, and therein most of its interest lies: it is representative of what people in the 1950s thought a rocket trip to the moon would be like one day. Big business falls in line by the way, because the American military tells them that “the race is on — and we'd better win it, because there is absolutely no way to stop an attack from outer space. The first country that can use the Moon for the launching of missiles... will control the Earth. That, gentlemen, is the most important military fact of this century.” In fairness the movie gets a lot right though. There is quite some “for beginners” focus on space travel issues such as weightlessness in space, the properties of vacuum, and the like — all of which makes it about more scientifically accurate than 90% of most science fiction movies today. Besides, it was produced by George Pal of War of the Worlds and Time Machine fame back then for $586, 000 — a tidy sum back then. Also, its idea of the surface of the moon isn’t that far off. The special effects are quite good for its time (it deservedly won an Academy award). One can easily imagine Stanley Kubrick having watched it whilst “researching” 2001: A Space Odyssey and saying, “I can do this better…” The movie’s biggest problem though is its plodding pace and nondescript characters. Only one of the characters is notable from the others, namely the one played by Dick Wesson, and that is only for his heavy Brooklyn accent and annoying folkish demeanour. One almost pictures Vin Diesel having based his grinning buffoon performance in Find Me Guilty on him. Incidentally, in Destination Moon the first words to be spoken by the first man on the moon are: “By the grace of God, and the name of the United States of America, I take possession of this planet on behalf of, and for the benefit of, all mankind.” We kinda like Neil Armstrong’s better . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And you call yourself a scientist, (www.aycyas.com) Of all the science fiction films of the 1950s that are today acknowledged as "classics", Destination Moon is the least known and most under-appreciated, probably because it offers so little to the casual viewer. Ironically enough, it is the very qualities that make this film so important that doom it as entertainment: its technical accuracy; its deliberately low-key, almost documentary approach; and above all its deadly earnestness – there are no cheap thrills here. Sadly, this means that although Destination Moon is a landmark in the development of the science fiction film, and a pioneering work in the true sense of the word, it can really only be correctly estimated by the viewer who approaches it with some knowledge of its historical importance, and an active sense of good will. You will find no aliens, no monsters, no ray-guns, no strange women in leotards – and no "love interest" – in Destination Moon; just a painstakingly factual account of how mankind might go about building a rocket that would take him to the moon. Despite this (or perhaps because of it: this was, after all, an era when the expression "Popular Science" was not an oxymoron!), at the time of its first release the film was enormously successful, grossing about ten times its outlay. Those us of living in a time when space shuttle flights are so commonplace as to barely rate a mention on the news any more might find it hard to understand what the fuss was all about. To appreciate – indeed, to enjoy Destination Moon as it deserves, we must put ourselves in the place of the audiences of the 1950s, first confronted with a concept so radical, so outrageous, as a rocket to the moon – and then told that it could really happen. (The film is rightly listed in NASA’s official timeline of the history of space travel.) Destination Moon was made at a time when humanity stood on the brink of an amazing step forward, and by people who were among the first to grasp that such a thing was possible. While the onscreen action is, unfortunately but undeniably, rather stodgy, the production as a whole is nevertheless infused with a sense of wonder, of optimism, of simple faith in man and what he could achieve. Destination Moon is remarkable – and, looked at from the correct perspective, thrilling – for being the only space flight film made in the heyday of the science fiction film to be truly about space flight. This is not a story about being on the moon, but of getting there; the adventure is all in the doing. Destination Moon was the brainchild of writer Robert A. Heinlein and producer George Pal, the latter of whom managed to sell a studio on the idea of making a serious film about travelling to the moon after the concept was initially dismissed as "too fantastic". (Film studios weren’t the only ones who thought so: in 1948, The American Journal Of Physics published a paper in which the authors explained exactly why a human being could never travel to the moon; their chief error was assuming that the 4:1 fuel:rocket launch mass ratio of the V-2 rocket could not be bettered.) From the start, the project was undertaken with the utmost seriousness. Experts were brought in to ensure its authenticity, most notably Hermann Orbeth, an authority on rockets who had previously worked with Fritz Lang on 1929’s Die Frau Im Mond (the only other "realistic" space flight film made to that time), and Chesley Bonestell, the astronomical artist whose glorious paintings and illustrations did so much to bring "outer space" into the collective American consciousness during the late forties and early fifties. Together with Pal and Heinlein, these men managed to infuse their other collaborators with their own belief in the realities of space flight, and to have Destination Moon produced under a policy of accuracy above all. The results of this mindset are evident throughout the film, which not only illustrates what was known at the time of its production, but is also startlingly prescient about the things that would happen when man finally ventured into space. When the film opens, Charles Cargraves and Tom Thayer are intent, not upon the moon, but merely upon putting a satellite into orbit. The failure of the enterprise is a crushing blow to both men – to Thayer in particular, who has destroyed his career, "campaigned himself right out of the service", in pursuit of the conquest of space – but they show themselves to be made of the right stuff, squaring their shoulders and going back to the drawing-board. Two years later, things have changed. When Thayer visits Jim Barnes, he is no longer intent merely upon launching a satellite, but upon being the first to reach the moon itself. Barnes is understandably sceptical, but is swayed by the news of Cargraves’ "atomic engine", and still more by Thayer’s argument that the mission is one of national defence; that whoever reaches the moon first will be able to build missile bases there. This call to his patriotism, combined with his love of scientific pioneering, is enough to convince Jim Barnes, who succeeds in recruiting his fellow industrialists to the cause, arguing that they, and only they, have the resources that the program requires, and that they can get the job done in the time it would take the government to finishing debating the point. The moneymen are intrigued but hesitant; and again, it takes Thayer’s exhortations about missile bases on the moon – "There is absolutely no way to stop an attack from outer space!" – to seal the deal. (Although it erred in putting the construction of the rocket into the hands of private industry – a distinctly Heinleinian notion – one of most interesting things about Destination Moon is its anticipation of the fact that the main impetus for the space race would ultimately be military, not merely scientific.) The film-makers’ commitment to accuracy was laudable, but it presented them with a substantial difficulty: how to communicate in a comprehendible fashion the concepts on which their story was based, to an audience that (it was assumed) possessed little if any knowledge of them – without turning their entertainment into a lecture on astrophysics. To their credit, the writers avoided one common pitfall: they do not have Cargraves, Barnes and Thayer telling each other things that they most assuredly already know, in order to convey that information to the audience. However, in avoiding one trap, the writers unfortunately fell into another – one that makes Destination Moon extremely difficult for a modern audience to swallow: scared of talking above their audience, they talked down to it instead. The first manifestation of this comes while Barnes and Thayer are pitching their case to the industrialists. Barnes himself, being in aeronautics, has a grasp of the theories of rockets and space travel; his peers, understandably, do not. This leads to the most unexpected part of Destination Moon: a "training film" starring none other than – Woody Woodpecker! The recalcitrant bird – and the audience, of course – is given a swift lesson in the practicalities of rockets and moon landings; and by the end of it, Woody himself is thoroughly convinced, although the industrialists – who, somewhat unbelievably, chuckle goodnaturedly all the way through the cartoon – do require more flag-waving from Thayer before they commit to the project. (In what is clearly a step taken to spike the critics’ guns, Woody initially dismisses the notion of a rocket to the moon as "comic-book stuff". "LIFE Magazine doesn’t think so!" retorts the narrator, showing him an issue that just happens to carry a cover story on – the production of Destination Moon! [April 1950, for those interested.]) Now, all of this is amusing, in a kitschy sort of way; but what happens next is not. Having successfully launched their pioneers in their rocket, the makers of Destination Moon then felt the need to explain all the mysteries of space travel itself – and it is here that the film not only becomes difficult to take in its own right, but bestows upon the science fiction films that followed it, apparently in perpetuity, a terrible legacy: the Odious Comic Relief©. Enter Joe Sweeney, who reluctantly becomes part of the crew when his senior is struck down by appendicitis on the very eve of the mission. Joe (to the surprise of no-one who has suffered torments courtesy of his hideous progeny over the ensuing decades) is a blue-collar working joe (get it?), perpetually wisecracking, and hailing from, yes, Brooklyn. (He doesn’t like space because, as he so eloquently puts it, there’s "no beer, no babes, no baseball!") Joe’s layperson status means that he is ignorant of all aspects of space flight, and therefore must – conveniently enough – have everything explained to him. Unfortunately, Pal & Co. thoroughly overreached themselves here: so eager were they to ensure that the audience missed nothing, that Joe’s ignorance proves to be of a truly startling magnitude. (At one point, he must even be reminded that, "There’s no air in outer space!" "There’s room for it!" he replies, unconvinced.) It is impossible now to gauge how people reacted to Joe Sweeney in 1950 – whether they appreciated his presence, or whether they found his character a piece of unforgivable condescension, as viewers today are certain to do. In any case, it is difficult to believe that anyone ever found Joe other than unbearably irritating and unfunny – although whether this would have been the case had an actor other than Dick Wesson been chosen for the part, it’s hard to say. I’ve never seen Wesson in any other film, so I don’t know whether his role here reflected his actual persona, or whether he was "acting". Let’s hope the latter. Either way, he is astonishingly annoying; heck, even his teeth are annoying! The supreme irony of Destination Moon, of course, is that while its painstaking accuracy had no influence whatsoever upon the film-makers that copied it, its single biggest mistake – viz., Joe Sweeney – would be unfailingly reproduced in almost every science fiction film made during the years that followed. In the end, however, you have to forgive the makers of Destination Moon both Joe and Woody, in simple recognition of how much they managed to get right – and to predict. The model rocket that Barnes demonstrates to the industrialists is more than three-quarters "reaction mass"; today’s rockets are over 90% fuel. The Woody Woodpecker cartoon explains concepts such as overcoming gravity, travel in a vacuum, reverse thrust, and parachute-assisted landings; while the crew must deal with problems including the effects of G-force (real, but overestimated), weightlessness (overcome by magnetic boots), space-sickness, and the difficulty of swallowing in zero gravity. Whole scenes envision what would happen when mankind did ultimately travel into space. The rocket crew marvels at its view of the Earth, anticipating the staggering images that would be broadcast for the first time in 1968 by Apollo 8. (The views of the Earth shown are also an accurate representation of what anyone travelling in a ship following the same flight path as the Luna really would see.) A problem with the ship’s aerial forces Barnes, Cargraves and Sweeney to don their pressure suits and do an EVA, something which both the Soviets and the Americans would achieve in 1965. There is a problem as the Luna is about to land on the moon, and Barnes must make an abrupt readjustment; the Apollo 11 crew would experience a similar difficulty. Once on the moon, Barnes and Cargraves are contacted by radio from the Earth – although due to the particular framework of the movie, it is the media that contacts them, not the government. Most memorable of all, however, is the moment when the moon is first "claimed", an honour that Barnes graciously concedes to Cargraves. The acting in Destination Moon is rarely better than competent, but it reaches its pinnacle here, as Warner Anderson’s Cargraves must speak around a distinct lump in his throat in order, "By the grace of God, and in the name of the United States of America", to claim the moon "for the benefit of all mankind". (Excluding, we assume, that portion of mankind at whom American missiles would soon be aimed.) The plaque that today rests upon the moon’s surface reads, "Here men from planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind". You can only wonder how far life imitated art. Of course, it is only natural that Destination Moon wouldn’t get everything right, and there are a few flubs here and there. The Luna is a single stage rocket, and a far cry in its design from the three-stage system that would finally get the job done. (Another instance of "copy the mistake": almost every space film for the following decade or so would reproduce the sleek, silvery lines of the Luna for its own rocket.) It also lands on the moon itself, rather than the ship orbiting, and the crew descending to the moon’s surface in a landing module, as would ultimately be the case. These errors are excusable. More problematic is the simplicity, not to say naivety, with which space travel itself is undertaken. When forces on Earth begin to move against the Luna project, attempting to prevent lift-off, Jim Barnes comes up with a startling idea: rather than wait a month, as planned, they will exploit the next possible launch window – which is only seventeen hours away. "But we haven’t had time to train a crew!" objects Cargraves. "Then we’ll go ourselves," counters Barnes, and they do, just like that – dragging the wholly uninformed and unprepared Sweeney along with them. And despite all the expert input, there are a few design flaws in Destination Moon. The worst is the painfully unconvincing "star fields" with which the Luna is surrounded at all times. These were actually realised using car headlights – and unfortunately, it looks like it. The "stars", almost identical in colour and intensity, and closer together than real stars ever were, are a major distraction throughout the otherwise well-executed EVA sequence. Another mistake, a more surprising one, is Chesley Bonestell’s design for the surface of the moon, which looks like a huge dried lakebed, all dramatic cracks and geometric patterns. Bonestell himself afterwards lamented his error, claiming, not that he could have known what the moon looked like, of course, but that he could have deduced it. Be this as it may, Bonestell’s paintings are one of the true highlights of Destination Moon, and even if his moonscapes are wrong, they’re such a pleasure to look at that we have no trouble overlooking the fact. (Oh, and by the way: I’m perfectly well aware that after my strictures against Outland for ignoring facts in order to "look cool", this sails perilously close to hypocrisy. If Outland had gotten as much right as Destination Moon, I would have cut it a little slack, too.) By now you might be asking, with all this "science stuff" in Destination Moon, is there any story? Well, yes, some – but not all that much, and what there is, is at all times subservient to the film-makers’ commitment to the practical and the possible. The machinations of the rocket project’s enemies on Earth allows for a race against the clock to complete the building of the Luna, and then another race to take off before a threatened court order can be invoked. Once the crew is in space, it is discovered that Sweeney mistakenly greased the ship’s aerial (time for a lecture, Joe!), which has naturally frozen in place, and must be cleaned before it will extend. This leads to the EVA, and to the first of the film’s two "suspense" sequences. As Barnes and Sweeney are dealing with the aerial, Cargraves moves down the rocket to inspect the engines – and, when he finds it is not long enough, slips his safety line. (In dramatic terms, that Cargraves would do such a thing is easily the least believable part of the story.) Engrossed in his work, Cargraves does not notice that his magnetic boots have lost contact with the surface of the rocket. The next instant he is floating in space, and it takes some very quick thinking on the part of Barnes to resolve the situation. The other dramatic set-piece comes at the climax of the film, when it is discovered that Barnes’ emergency manoeuvring during landing used up too much fuel. Even when everything that can be unloaded from the ship has been, it is still too heavy – meaning that one of the crew must stay behind if the others are to make it back to Earth…. (Problems involving a lack of necessary fuel became a popular plot point in many of the films that followed Destination Moon. Here, while the method of calculation is accurate, the notion that rocket fuel is – or can be – calculated down to the single pound is less so.) What is interesting about these two sequences is the degree of tension that director Irving Pichel managed to generate, given that we know in our hearts that nothing bad is going to happen to anyone. Other films may have been willing to dispose of their space explorers – or at best, to allow them to sacrifice themselves – but Destination Moon isn’t like that: it’s far too optimistic a work, too certain of man’s ability to rise to any challenge. And yet suspense is created. While we know that everything will turn out all right, we don’t know how: that is where the interest lies. In its details, as well as in its conception, Destination Moon is an intellectually enjoyable movie. Science fiction films may claim to be, intend to be, about "the future", but they very often say a great deal more about the time in which they were produced; and Destination Moon is no exception. The film is not only a fascinating snapshot of the political climate of America in 1950, but is often so in wholly unexpected ways. For one thing, the screenplay is amazingly critical of the government – so much so, that had the film been made by people of rather more leftish leanings, it is likely that they would have found themselves summoned for a chat with Senator McCarthy and his colleagues. But there is, of course, a profound philosophical difference between criticising a government for being too hawkish, and criticising it for not being hawkish enough; and it is the latter of which Destination Moon is guilty. The opening section of the film constantly bemoans Washington’s "peacetime" attitude, berating it for cutting appropriations, for not seeing the military necessity of continuing the rocket program. Furthermore, the screenplay implies, there is a specific reason for this attitude….one that Tailgunner Joe himself would have heartily applauded. Destination Moon is a Cold War film par excellence, and never more so than in its claim that both the government and the media are deeply infiltrated by enemy agents working to undermine the American Way Of Life in general, and the rocket program in particular. Some of the assumptions that are made, and the way in which they are made, are nothing short of staggering. For instance, in the opening scene, Cargraves’ first rocket has barely lifted off before it crashes back to earth. Not for a moment does it occur to Cargraves that something could have been wrong in his design or execution; this must be sabotage, he claims, and Thayer instantly agrees. (Later we are told that the Secret Service "knows" that this was the case.) Having recruited industry to their cause, Barnes, Cargraves and Thayer get their rocket built, but learn that taking off will be another matter. Cargraves produces a newspaper headlined by a story about mass protests against the launch. "That’s not public opinion!" says Thayer angrily. "It’s a job of propaganda!" "Manufactured and organised!" agrees Barnes. "Somebody’s out to get us!" At no time do they give any indication of why they think this; it is so, it must be so, and that’s all there is to it. Similarly, when Cargraves must report that their request to test their atomic engine has been denied, Barnes is furious, seeing it as one more orchestrated barrier – the inference being, apparently, that no-one could really be concerned about something as trivial as the dispersal of radioactive material. (Given that the time of Destination Moon’s production was also that during which the U.S. government commenced its program of secret experiments, in which uninformed individuals, both military and civilian, were deliberately exposed to radiation, these scenes are rather chilling. Nor does "the Commission"’s suggestion that the crew shift the atomic engine test to "the South Pacific" make things much better, given the radiation exposure suffered both by the indigenous population and by U.S. servicemen during the atomic testing in the Marshall Islands.) It is then that Barnes comes up with his radical suggestion that they lift off as soon as possible. "There’s no law against taking off in a spaceship, because no-one’s ever done it!" he points out, further arguing that if the three of them ask permission, "they" will find another way of stopping them. Sure enough, at the last minute a court order is served, forbidding the take-off (and inferring that "they" have infiltrated the court system, as well). The crew-members respond as any good Americans would: by evading the order and making a dash for their rocket, laughing and jeering at the server from the safety of the elevator. (I’ve long been fascinated by the ability of Americans to hail their country as the greatest in the world because of its laws and institutions, while simultaneously thumbing their noses at those very laws and institutions, apparently without any sense of contradiction.) What is most intriguing about these scenes is that "they" are never identified: the word "Communist" is never uttered at any point in the film. Then again, in 1950, it was scarcely necessary to utter it. (The closest we get is Barnes complaining about "red tape", which I don’t actually think was intended euphemistically.) It is also remarkable, given the overall tenor of the film, that the technological abilities of this unnamed enemy are freely conceded: "they" are not just planning on going to the moon, but capable of getting there; this, a full seven years before the launch of Sputnik shook the United States out of its sense of complacency, and kicked off the space race in earnest. Destination Moon is unique in the annals of the science fiction film for the clarity and conviction of its vision, and for its refusal to take a single step outside the boundaries of what its makers believed to be the truth. Even 2001, that other great "space travel" film, is not so pure. Indeed, the only films that come close to Destination Moon in this respect are two other George Pal productions: Conquest Of Space, which is in every way an inferior creation, and When Worlds Collide – perhaps. (Ah, but what’s that on the horizon in the final scene…?) In one sense, Destination Moon was hugely influential – "space" films flourished for over a decade, until reality began to supersede fantasy – and in another, not influential at all. While other film-makers were quick to jump on the bandwagon, they had little if any interest in imitating their model’s integrity. Even the very first copycat film, Rocketship X-M (inspired by the media coverage of Destination Moon’s production, the makers of this knock-off managed to get their film written, shot and into the cinemas a month before Destination Moon was released!), had its astronauts encountering a group of Martians. It is not difficult to see why this would have been the case. Destination Moon’s authenticity really left other film-makers with nowhere to go – except into the realm of exploitation. You can just imagine the kind of conversation that potential copyists – just for laughs, let’s call them "Roger", "Jim" and "Sam" – might have held upon viewing the film: Roger: That’s a pretty good film. I could make it cheaper, though – and it wouldn’t take me two years! Hmm….needs something to spice it up – a better title, for a start--- Jim: One that’d look good on a poster. Attack Of The---something-or-other. And we need something to get the kids in – aliens, or monsters--- Sam: Sexy dames, and plenty of ‘em! And indeed, this is exactly how the space film would evolve – or degenerate – over the following years. Destination Moon, meanwhile, continued to be the sole occupant of the tiny niche it had created for itself, until events in the real world made it redundant. Looking at the film today, it is far easier to see its faults than its virtues. The acting is low-key to the point of invisibility (Dick Wesson’s excepted; if only he were invisible!), and the script so determinedly matter-of-fact that it sails perilously close to being outright dull. Plus, there’s no sex, and no violence; no aliens, and no monsters; just pure science, of a kind that today we all take for granted…. The 1950s were truly the golden era of the science fiction film, and the importance of Destination Moon in that context cannot be overestimated. If these days it is a struggle to appreciate the film as it deserves to be appreciated, that in itself is a strange kind of compliment. Perhaps the very highest praise offered to Destination Moon comes from those who dismiss it as too real to be entertaining. This is a film that, on a certain day in 1969, effectively ceased to be science fiction at all. And how its makers must have gloried in that! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE NOTICE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check you have installed the right codecs, as listed in this .nfo file, before trying to play it. VLC will play this file without having to install any codec. If you don't like the codec(s), container, resolution, file size, languages or any technical aspect on this rip, keep it to yourself and go and do your own. 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Raptor_Pilot (2008-11-02)

I've been looking for this movie for a long time.
Thank you very much, the quality is fantastic.

adrianx55 (2011-02-28)

Good d/l. Many thanks, will seed.

Gabri77 (2013-08-04)

Thx!

fin2 (2014-05-23)

Sadly, this release is not very good. There is frame-blending in the video throughout the entire movie, likely due to an incorrect deinterlacing method being used while transcoding it. It makes the picture jerky and blurry. The picture is decent otherwise, and the audio is good.