12 TO THE MOON (1960)

12 TO THE MOON (1960)

Tagline: Ride the Excitement Orbit to the Moon with the First Space Explorers!

(Sci-Fi, Adventure, Watch Out For The Moon) [G]

Note – This movie did not originally have an MPAA rating, but I am pretty sure it would have been a G. 

There seems to be something unusual under here. Clear these rocks away.

In this one, a group of 12 astronauts from various countries embarks on a journey to the moon where they encounter meteors and other terrors that defy explanation. Can the 12 TO THE MOON overt an all-out attack on mankind from a faceless alien race that has deemed us all too dangerous to exist. 

First off, this is a bit like DESTINATION MOON if that movie had reduced its production quality significantly and just added something more mysterious to the moon rather than just the moon itself. I will say that the overall feel of the movie is a little too “global” for my taste, but the actual cast was good. 

Where this movie succeeds is in giving a few of these characters decent backstories. One of them is the son of a former Nazi who killed the other one’s entire family and is doing everything he can to distance himself from that, two of them are in love, and so on. It’s all pretty dramatic for a sci-fi flick that mostly centers around the fact that whatever lives on the moon hates our guts. I mean, overall as a human race. I also liked the concept of having mysterious aliens on the moon but the kind of communication they choose to use in the film is a bit nuts. I won’t say anything beyond that. The spacesuits were also surprisingly great. They state that the visors on the helmets are invisible and electronically generated, which sounds cool, but my guess is they were just trying to save money.  

I also liked that the moon in this movie has some crazy rocks that are all kinds of dangerous and even had some gold on it as well as breathable air. I think at this point the writer was just throwing all kinds of ideas out there and that’s pretty fun. 

Acting-wise we get a pretty decent cast, but the standouts include Ken Clark as Capt. John Anderson. Clark is mostly known for playing Steve Benton in ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES. We also get Michi Kobi as Dr. Hideko Murata. A couple of awesome things about her is that she lived to be 91 and did voice work on the TV series “Courage The Cowardly Dog” as late as 2002 after taking a 13-year break from acting projects. She even appeared on Law & Order. We also get another sci-fi appearance for Anthony Dexter who plays Dr. Luis Vargas. He is probably most famous for playing Luther Blair in FIRE MAIDENS OF OUTER SPACE. There are a few lines in this movie delivered with very obvious pregnant pauses in the dialog seemingly for no reason. To date, this is the only sci-fi movie from the 50s or 60s where one of the actors does those pauses. I mention this because I wasn’t sure what actor Josh Craig from THE MONSTER OF PHANTOM LAKE was really going for with his wildly exaggerated pregnant pauses. The few lines in this movie might have been what influenced him to do that, because so far like I said, I haven’t seen it anywhere else. 

Where this movie drops the ball is in the actual storyline. Going to the moon is awesome and all, and even just that, might have worked like in DESTINATION MOON. However, what the moon aliens that we don’t see, do to earth and the crew of the Lunar Eagle One decide to do, to combat that is pretty freaking crazy and seems like it would have done more harm than good. I will leave that for you to decide, but overall I have to give this thing a 3 out of 7. As much as I thought some of the ideas were cool, the bad ideas were just too overly bad to score this thing any higher. For sci-fi fans that love space travel, this is a decent one-time watch I guess, but I wouldn’t recommend buying it or anything like that.

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