FIRST SPACESHIP ON VENUS (1962)

FIRST SPACESHIP ON VENUS (1962)

Tagline: Man's Most Exciting, Most Incredible Journey!

(Sci-Fi, Drama, Metal Insects) [G]

Note: This movie was not given a rating by the MPAA. It would have landed a [G]. Most sites list it as coming out in 1960, but I am using the 1962 release date for this review. This movie was released in a double feature with VARAN THE UNBELIEVABLE. 

In this one, a metallic spool is found on earth during some construction and they quickly figure out that it’s from Venus. Because where else would it be from? It doesn’t take long before a mission is sent to Venus to check it out because they feel like an intelligent race must have made it. In the 50s and 60s, if you had a chance to go to space, you were freakin going to space. 

First off, I was very surprised at how cool this movie was. The rocket ship alone looks better than most of the spaceships we got in the 1950s. Granted, this was made in the ’60s, but it’s a big jump in creativity. The design work permeates through the rest of the movie as well. I watched the color version of this one and it’s visually very impressive. We have a robot that plays chess and drives around. The atmosphere on Venus looks awesome and this movie doesn’t just try and give us a desert in California or somewhere and tell us it’s Mars. They really go all out to give us a cool-looking Venus atmosphere. The inside of the spaceship looks like Andy Warhol threw up inside it. That’s actually a compliment aesthetically. 

The score is actually pretty solid as well. That is partly because it parts of it were borrowed from THE WOLFMAN. The pacing in the first half is steady, but it is not without its issues which I will get to later. The characters were rough as well. I actually really just didn’t want to see the chess-playing robot or Sumiko Ogimura MD because Sumiko was taking care of everyone. You got burned, you went to Sumiko, you got jacked up by a metal spider, you went to Sumiko. You need emotional support; you went to Sumiko. She was awesome. When we get to the second half of the movie things really pick up and it's basically time to figure out what happened to Venus. The message kind of serves as an anti-nuclear war warning, or at least a warning against having technology that can kill us all. That part of the story is actually pretty tragic in a way, but it also prevented something bad, so you will have to watch it to find out everything that was going on with this.

Where this thing goes wrong is in not giving us a better bit of dialog. I liked the fact that we got a pretty decent cast and this is yet another movie that shatters the myth that movies haven’t been diverse for quite some time, but unfortunately the relationships don’t drive the plot forward. Everything kind of hinges on the mystery behind Venus. 

On the good side, Venus in this movie is pretty freakin spectacular for the time period as I mentioned earlier. There is also enough going on to fill a 79-minute run time, plus we get metallic insects and that cool chess-playing robot so there is still plenty to enjoy.

I give this one a 5 out of 7. Just the effort alone made it a much better watch than I expected.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF VEB DEFA-STUDIO FUR SPIELFILMEAND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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