FIRST MAN INTO SPACE (1959)

FIRST MAN INTO SPACE (1959)

Tagline: Far and away the most startling and unexpected adventure film ever made!

(Sci-Fi, Drama, Don’t Go Into Space) [PG]

Note – This movie wasn’t given an MPAA rating, but if it was it would get a PG. 

The conquest of new worlds always makes demands of human life. And there will always be men who will accept the risk.

In this one test pilot, Dan Prescott goes up in an experimental rocket plane and ends up going past the limitations of the test and ends up in space. He ends up getting meteor dust all over him due to ejecting, but his body isn’t found at the crash site. It doesn’t take long before cattle and people are found with their throats cut and the blood drained. Do these killings have anything to do with the rocket plane? What happened to THE FIRST MAN INTO SPACE?

First off this movie ended up far more interesting than I was expecting. I mean, I love a well-acted, “let’s just get to the moon” movie, but this has a lot of punch and actually involves very little “space” like the movie’s title implies. Instead, this is more of a monster movie drama with some tragedy involved. What we get here is a low-budget flick with some pretty decent acting. 

Speaking of acting, the standouts include Marla Landi (who is still with us as of the writing of this review) who plays Tia Franchesca. She doesn’t get a ton of lines in this, but when we do see her, she’s pretty solid. Landi is probably best known for 1959’s THE INVISIBLE MAN, TV series. We also get Bill Edwards who isn’t the lead exactly, but he gets a lot of lines that were actually dubbed. Bill plays Dan Prescott and is good in this at least expression-wise. Edwards was also in the movie THE GIANT BEHEMOTH but was uncredited. Marshall Thompson who plays Charles Earnest Prescott is awesome in this one. Marshall’s career spanned from 1944 to 1991 and his other big sci-fi flick was IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE. 

Special effects-wise we don’t really get a whacky alien design here. They were more trying to depict something that “happened” to a person and the resulting “look”. For being a low-budget movie it’s very effective and the atmosphere provides the necessary amount of wonder and speculation throughout. Essentially this movie never gets boring even with a few lulls in the action. Once it does really get going though, it’s edge-of-your-seat stuff.  

I have a lot of good things to say about this thing. The score and sets are effective and it works on a lot of levels, but it does lack charm. I do wish Tia had gotten more lines and perhaps that Charles had been a little more heart and a little less duty. I also wish that half the movie wasn’t stock footage. 

Overall this one has to land at a 4 out of 7 for me. It was not what I expected and it did what it set out to do. The ending however was a bit weird and really didn’t fit the actions the “monster” displayed the rest of the film. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF MGM BRITISH STUDIOS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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