Wesley Britton's Blog - Posts Tagged "space-opera"
Guest Post: Bruce Dettman appreciates 1950’s Rocketship X-M
ROCKETSHIP X-M
By Bruce Dettman
While accepted today as a legitimate and much respected part of mainstream cinema, there was a time, not so very long ago, when the science-fiction film was more often than not relegated to the arena of juvenile entertainment, when it was considered low-brow or at best adolescent fodder for the under twelve audience who in the 1950s flocked to Saturday afternoon kiddie matinees to gobble down Juicy Fruits, inhale Pixie Sticks and scream protests when the tasteless projectionist ran unwanted cartoons like Casper, The Friendly Ghost or Little Iodine instead of the much preferred Daffy Ducks and Bugs Bunnies. For this generation, science-fiction usually equated with Hollywood’s then penchant for rear projecting and enlarging as many animals and insects in the animal kingdom onto the big screen as could be conceived, from over-bloated arachnids (Tarantula), to ants (the exceptional Them) to grasshoppers (The Beginning of the End) to giant wasps and snails (Monster From Green Hell and The Monster That Challenged The World) and then unleash them on some vulnerable American metropolis -- from New York to San Francisco -- with only Peter Graves or Richard Denning or John Agar standing in their way. There were exceptions, of course, sci-fi based productions that were not only aimed at the pre-pubescent crowd but adult audiences as well, efforts such as Howard Hawks’ The Thing From Another World, Robert Wise’s The Day The Earth Stood Still, Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers and George Pal’s War of the Worlds, but these groundbreaking pictures were rare and far apart, not that the kids of my generation cared all that much. Give us monsters and incredible situations and some good popcorn (not to mention no parents) and we were pretty much happy campers.
Another arena explored during the early part of the 1950s was space travel. World War II had given the world the new potentially catastrophic double feature of crude missiles and the atom bomb, and people were becoming intrigued by the thought that man’s next frontier -- if he made it that far-- would be an interstellar one. While few science-fiction films were produced immediately after the war, science-fiction as a literary form had amassed a large and growing audience with writers such as Isaac Asimov, Alfred Bester, Arthur C. Clark, Frederick Pohl, Robert Heinlein and many others skilled in speculative prose and regularly churning out highly inventive stories and novels that a lot of the public was gobbling up. The writing was not only on the printed page but on the wall as well and two particular Hollywood players were reading it, producers George Pal and Robert Lippert, the results being the former’s much heralded Destination Moon and the latter’s somewhat maligned and disrespected Rocketship X-M, both released in 1950.
Rocketship X-M was hurried into production with a very quick shooting schedule designed, it was said by everyone, to beat Destination Moon to the screen, something the decade’s later monster magazines would continually hammer into its adolescent readers when writing about the movie. It was more or less accepted that Rocketship was a rushed and much inferior job, that it paled next to George Pal’s bigger budgeted and widely publicized and celebrated film accomplishment and that everyone who was a legitimate and serious science-fiction fan should appreciate the fact and if not openly boycott it then at least approach it in a somewhat condescending manner. There was only one problem with all of this, at least for a lot of the kids into this sort of film during the 1950s. Destination Moon might have been more grounded in legitimate scientific principles. Its intent might have been more serious, its aspirations more lofty, its documentary-like execution more realistic. But it wasn’t half as entertaining or fun. It was in fact, well, dull.
Rocketship X-M, on the other hand, was a great ride in more ways than one. Unlike other later films of the period that dealt with space travel, duds like Cat Women of the Moon, Fire Maidens From Outer Space and Queen of Outer Space, Rocketship was a deadly earnest production, light on scientific logic perhaps, but heavy on drama, thrills and with a grim and emotionally charged scenario to present and a very capable director/writer (Kurt Neumann) and likable cast working with conviction to make this all come together.
The plot centers around a four man (plus one female) crew making the first flight to the moon. For the record, the group includes the brains behind the whole business, Dr. Karl Eckstrom (John Barrymore wannabe John Emery), his dedicated (and cold fish) assistant Lisa (Osa Massen), pilot Floyd (Lloyd Bridges), Engineer Bill (Noah Beery Jr.) and astronomer Harry (Hugh O’Brien) who also acts as the navigator.
This ground-breaking giant step for man gets off to a fast start with the crew engaged in a friendly chit chat session with some press representatives up to just five minutes before their scheduled takeoff (the countdown voice heard over the proceedings sounds suspiciously like Hugh O’Brien) where everyone delivers homey and humorous sound-bites for the few reporters assembled (including Judd Holdren, TV’s Commando Cody) until they bid good-bye to Dr. Flemming (Morris Ankrum, the figure holding down events at home) and board the X-M. This flight is so hush-hush that no one, not even the reporters, are aware of it until they are summoned, apparently unbriefed, to the takeoff site. Forget CNN and Wolfe Blitzer.
The RX-M is a nifty looking ship, the cabin festooned with all manner of metal cylinders fastened to the walls, portholes for convenient viewing and hammock-like bunk beds. One thing the designer left out was anything to hold onto in the middle of the ship should gravitational problems arise or even a chair for pilot Bridges. This would become a deciding factor as the story progresses.
Once the predictable liftoff is over and the crew experiences the painful effects of “G” forces on their vulnerable bodies (lots of predictable face grimacing here in a scene that would be repeated in nearly every space opera to follow) the soon to be cliché moments of meteor showers and zero gravity are eventually showcased. The real wrinkle of the story, however, is that things ultimately go very wrong with their thrusters and after following a cataclysmic accident where they are all rendered unconscious – remember the absence of those chairs (?) -- they wake not to find themselves approaching the Moon but rather Mars.
Remarkably, this staggering re-route doesn’t bother anyone too much. The group is initially surprised by this radical and unforeseen change in plans, but they soon grow accustomed to the idea and even excited (except Noah Beery’s folksy Texan who laments not being able to wear the sophisticated spacesuits deemed necessary by the moon’s unfriendly atmosphere; oxygen masks and leather jackets will do on the Red Planet) by the notion of being able to explore the alien surface.
In atmospheric footage, (tinted red and filmed in Red Rock Canyon, ), the crew, armed with one pistol and a hunting rifle, explore the inhospitable and stark terrain eventually realizing from buried artifacts and other signs of a dead civilization that Mars once supported intelligent life. In fact, it still supports life but no longer the intelligent sort, only human mutations, the result of what appears to have been an atomic war.
Eckstrom wants the people of the Earth to learn of this, a warning perhaps of what could also befall their own planet if mankind doesn’t wakeup and smell the plutonium, but Bill and he are killed by Martians while trying to get back to the ship. With a severely wounded Harry in a near comatose state, Floyd and Elsa manage a quick liftoff from the lunar surface leaving the devastated Martian throwbacks behind and with all a go to return to Earth except for one small but essential detail, they haven’t enough fuel for the return flight. Gadgets are checked and rechecked as are computations and calibrations. There’s just no way around it. They are going to crash. Yikes. In a 50s movie!!!!
This is where the film nose-dives a bit into hokey land. Lloyd Bridges, in a later interview, stated that he argued against the film’s contrived conclusion but director-writer Neumann would not budge and stuck with the unrealistic exchange between Floyd and Lisa (O’Brien is totally out of things by now) who, with only a few minutes to live before the R X-M crashes into the planet, divulge their great affection for each other. They aren’t frightened anymore, just secure in their new found love. As they embrace and the ship hurls to inevitable destruction Neumann’s dialog is admittedly pretty bad:
“We can say we’ve had years together”
“There’s not that much difference between the future and the past.”
“I’m not afraid anymore.”
Rocketship X-M can be forgiven this climatic pathos because until this point it’s a great roller coaster of a cinematic ride. Although lambasted almost from the get-go as a very bottom of the barrel production, it really does not come off as such, certainly when compared to later examples of the genre such as Flight To Mars or the aforementioned Fire Maidens from Outer Space. Director Neumann keeps things on an even keel with a nice balance between action sequences and the crew’s interaction even if the politically correct crowd will wince at some of the early dialog between Bridges and Massen:
“I suppose you think women should only cook and sew and have children?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
Ferde Grofe’ provides an effective musical score that anticipates future fantasy films with his use of the eerie Theremin, and director Neumann, who would later direct other genre films The Fly, Kronos and She Devil helms with a good feel for mounting tension and a pervasive sense of danger and mounting doom..
From a personal standpoint it was Rocketship X-M, not Destination Moon that made me turn the desk in my bedroom into a control panel using a forgotten go cart steering wheel and a lot of radios and gizmos from my father’s garage. It was Rocketship X-M that made me wonder about space and other worlds and got me reading science-fiction.
It was Robert Lippert’s little B picture Rocketship X-M that got me dreaming bigger things than I would have dreamed before.
And it is Rocketship X-M, not the take itself too seriously Destination Moon, that I still recall with greater appreciation and fondness.
By Bruce Dettman
While accepted today as a legitimate and much respected part of mainstream cinema, there was a time, not so very long ago, when the science-fiction film was more often than not relegated to the arena of juvenile entertainment, when it was considered low-brow or at best adolescent fodder for the under twelve audience who in the 1950s flocked to Saturday afternoon kiddie matinees to gobble down Juicy Fruits, inhale Pixie Sticks and scream protests when the tasteless projectionist ran unwanted cartoons like Casper, The Friendly Ghost or Little Iodine instead of the much preferred Daffy Ducks and Bugs Bunnies. For this generation, science-fiction usually equated with Hollywood’s then penchant for rear projecting and enlarging as many animals and insects in the animal kingdom onto the big screen as could be conceived, from over-bloated arachnids (Tarantula), to ants (the exceptional Them) to grasshoppers (The Beginning of the End) to giant wasps and snails (Monster From Green Hell and The Monster That Challenged The World) and then unleash them on some vulnerable American metropolis -- from New York to San Francisco -- with only Peter Graves or Richard Denning or John Agar standing in their way. There were exceptions, of course, sci-fi based productions that were not only aimed at the pre-pubescent crowd but adult audiences as well, efforts such as Howard Hawks’ The Thing From Another World, Robert Wise’s The Day The Earth Stood Still, Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers and George Pal’s War of the Worlds, but these groundbreaking pictures were rare and far apart, not that the kids of my generation cared all that much. Give us monsters and incredible situations and some good popcorn (not to mention no parents) and we were pretty much happy campers.
Another arena explored during the early part of the 1950s was space travel. World War II had given the world the new potentially catastrophic double feature of crude missiles and the atom bomb, and people were becoming intrigued by the thought that man’s next frontier -- if he made it that far-- would be an interstellar one. While few science-fiction films were produced immediately after the war, science-fiction as a literary form had amassed a large and growing audience with writers such as Isaac Asimov, Alfred Bester, Arthur C. Clark, Frederick Pohl, Robert Heinlein and many others skilled in speculative prose and regularly churning out highly inventive stories and novels that a lot of the public was gobbling up. The writing was not only on the printed page but on the wall as well and two particular Hollywood players were reading it, producers George Pal and Robert Lippert, the results being the former’s much heralded Destination Moon and the latter’s somewhat maligned and disrespected Rocketship X-M, both released in 1950.
Rocketship X-M was hurried into production with a very quick shooting schedule designed, it was said by everyone, to beat Destination Moon to the screen, something the decade’s later monster magazines would continually hammer into its adolescent readers when writing about the movie. It was more or less accepted that Rocketship was a rushed and much inferior job, that it paled next to George Pal’s bigger budgeted and widely publicized and celebrated film accomplishment and that everyone who was a legitimate and serious science-fiction fan should appreciate the fact and if not openly boycott it then at least approach it in a somewhat condescending manner. There was only one problem with all of this, at least for a lot of the kids into this sort of film during the 1950s. Destination Moon might have been more grounded in legitimate scientific principles. Its intent might have been more serious, its aspirations more lofty, its documentary-like execution more realistic. But it wasn’t half as entertaining or fun. It was in fact, well, dull.
Rocketship X-M, on the other hand, was a great ride in more ways than one. Unlike other later films of the period that dealt with space travel, duds like Cat Women of the Moon, Fire Maidens From Outer Space and Queen of Outer Space, Rocketship was a deadly earnest production, light on scientific logic perhaps, but heavy on drama, thrills and with a grim and emotionally charged scenario to present and a very capable director/writer (Kurt Neumann) and likable cast working with conviction to make this all come together.
The plot centers around a four man (plus one female) crew making the first flight to the moon. For the record, the group includes the brains behind the whole business, Dr. Karl Eckstrom (John Barrymore wannabe John Emery), his dedicated (and cold fish) assistant Lisa (Osa Massen), pilot Floyd (Lloyd Bridges), Engineer Bill (Noah Beery Jr.) and astronomer Harry (Hugh O’Brien) who also acts as the navigator.
This ground-breaking giant step for man gets off to a fast start with the crew engaged in a friendly chit chat session with some press representatives up to just five minutes before their scheduled takeoff (the countdown voice heard over the proceedings sounds suspiciously like Hugh O’Brien) where everyone delivers homey and humorous sound-bites for the few reporters assembled (including Judd Holdren, TV’s Commando Cody) until they bid good-bye to Dr. Flemming (Morris Ankrum, the figure holding down events at home) and board the X-M. This flight is so hush-hush that no one, not even the reporters, are aware of it until they are summoned, apparently unbriefed, to the takeoff site. Forget CNN and Wolfe Blitzer.
The RX-M is a nifty looking ship, the cabin festooned with all manner of metal cylinders fastened to the walls, portholes for convenient viewing and hammock-like bunk beds. One thing the designer left out was anything to hold onto in the middle of the ship should gravitational problems arise or even a chair for pilot Bridges. This would become a deciding factor as the story progresses.
Once the predictable liftoff is over and the crew experiences the painful effects of “G” forces on their vulnerable bodies (lots of predictable face grimacing here in a scene that would be repeated in nearly every space opera to follow) the soon to be cliché moments of meteor showers and zero gravity are eventually showcased. The real wrinkle of the story, however, is that things ultimately go very wrong with their thrusters and after following a cataclysmic accident where they are all rendered unconscious – remember the absence of those chairs (?) -- they wake not to find themselves approaching the Moon but rather Mars.
Remarkably, this staggering re-route doesn’t bother anyone too much. The group is initially surprised by this radical and unforeseen change in plans, but they soon grow accustomed to the idea and even excited (except Noah Beery’s folksy Texan who laments not being able to wear the sophisticated spacesuits deemed necessary by the moon’s unfriendly atmosphere; oxygen masks and leather jackets will do on the Red Planet) by the notion of being able to explore the alien surface.
In atmospheric footage, (tinted red and filmed in Red Rock Canyon, ), the crew, armed with one pistol and a hunting rifle, explore the inhospitable and stark terrain eventually realizing from buried artifacts and other signs of a dead civilization that Mars once supported intelligent life. In fact, it still supports life but no longer the intelligent sort, only human mutations, the result of what appears to have been an atomic war.
Eckstrom wants the people of the Earth to learn of this, a warning perhaps of what could also befall their own planet if mankind doesn’t wakeup and smell the plutonium, but Bill and he are killed by Martians while trying to get back to the ship. With a severely wounded Harry in a near comatose state, Floyd and Elsa manage a quick liftoff from the lunar surface leaving the devastated Martian throwbacks behind and with all a go to return to Earth except for one small but essential detail, they haven’t enough fuel for the return flight. Gadgets are checked and rechecked as are computations and calibrations. There’s just no way around it. They are going to crash. Yikes. In a 50s movie!!!!
This is where the film nose-dives a bit into hokey land. Lloyd Bridges, in a later interview, stated that he argued against the film’s contrived conclusion but director-writer Neumann would not budge and stuck with the unrealistic exchange between Floyd and Lisa (O’Brien is totally out of things by now) who, with only a few minutes to live before the R X-M crashes into the planet, divulge their great affection for each other. They aren’t frightened anymore, just secure in their new found love. As they embrace and the ship hurls to inevitable destruction Neumann’s dialog is admittedly pretty bad:
“We can say we’ve had years together”
“There’s not that much difference between the future and the past.”
“I’m not afraid anymore.”
Rocketship X-M can be forgiven this climatic pathos because until this point it’s a great roller coaster of a cinematic ride. Although lambasted almost from the get-go as a very bottom of the barrel production, it really does not come off as such, certainly when compared to later examples of the genre such as Flight To Mars or the aforementioned Fire Maidens from Outer Space. Director Neumann keeps things on an even keel with a nice balance between action sequences and the crew’s interaction even if the politically correct crowd will wince at some of the early dialog between Bridges and Massen:
“I suppose you think women should only cook and sew and have children?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
Ferde Grofe’ provides an effective musical score that anticipates future fantasy films with his use of the eerie Theremin, and director Neumann, who would later direct other genre films The Fly, Kronos and She Devil helms with a good feel for mounting tension and a pervasive sense of danger and mounting doom..
From a personal standpoint it was Rocketship X-M, not Destination Moon that made me turn the desk in my bedroom into a control panel using a forgotten go cart steering wheel and a lot of radios and gizmos from my father’s garage. It was Rocketship X-M that made me wonder about space and other worlds and got me reading science-fiction.
It was Robert Lippert’s little B picture Rocketship X-M that got me dreaming bigger things than I would have dreamed before.
And it is Rocketship X-M, not the take itself too seriously Destination Moon, that I still recall with greater appreciation and fondness.
Book Review: A Child of the Federation by Fabrice Stephan
A Child of the Federation (Human Star Pilots Book 4)
Fabrice Stephan
ASIN B08TZJCST1
ISBN: 9798700286237
Published February 2nd 2021
https://www.amazon.com/Child-Federati...
Reviewed by: Dr. Wesley Britton
While I sometimes feel like I’m drowning in an overwhelming flood of new novels in science-fiction, I am often surprised how impressive so many new efforts are. That’s especially true when authors present universes and multi-verses painted on wide and deep canvases full of ideas that are tantalizing, if not always easily comprehensible. In other words, impressive doesn’t always mean engaging.
One problem reviewing such sagas is trying to squeeze a useful summary into one or two paragraphs. It’s possible to list some of the major plot points, spell out the major conflicts and main players, but does that tell readers much about the spirit and flavor of the books?
In this case, that’s even more tricky as I’m jumping into the “Human Star Pilots” epic four books into the series. Before A Child of the Federation, Stephan gave us Human Star Pilot: Human Star Pilots Book 1, Interstellar Star Pilot: Human Star Pilots Book 2, and Space Station Acheron: Human Star Pilots Book 3. And I’ve read none of them.
Over the four tomes so far, the universe Stephan created is so vast, ageless, and sprawling, odds are few readers will quickly wrap their minds around what is involved, no matter in which book they first jump into the saga. It’s a story with many plots and sub-plots. The main rudder for the fourth novel is the main character of the forty year old star pilot, Isara. As a “child of the Federation,” she knows next to nothing about who she is until a surprising journey of self-discovery takes her back to the planet of her origins, Filb, the planet which witnessed a horrible ecological catastrophe. She is more special than she knows, even moreso than being one of only six pilots capable of surviving the training of managing hyperspace jumps learned from a borrowed Alien technology. That means she has to live with nanobots in her body that keep her alive during warp jumps.
To describe a few things about the Federation, it’s worth noting this isn’t a Federation Gene Roddenberry would recognize: it’s mainly an economic confederacy of which earth is a relative newcomer. Also facing ecological disaster, earth needs the technology of ancient aliens who apparently no longer exist. The interplay between members of the Federation and the levels of political maneuvering are, well, confusing. While Stephan is masterful at world-building, the further away the story moves away from Isara’s personal evolution, the more lost in the trees I got.
So my final reaction to the book is that it’s a challenge worth exploring if you really like complex universe building, multiple story-lines, very dense back-stories, and occasional memorable scenes in between all the description of a universe easy to get lost in. And, no doubt, more to come.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on May 10, 2021:
https://waa.ai/mC9j
Fabrice Stephan
ASIN B08TZJCST1
ISBN: 9798700286237
Published February 2nd 2021
https://www.amazon.com/Child-Federati...
Reviewed by: Dr. Wesley Britton
While I sometimes feel like I’m drowning in an overwhelming flood of new novels in science-fiction, I am often surprised how impressive so many new efforts are. That’s especially true when authors present universes and multi-verses painted on wide and deep canvases full of ideas that are tantalizing, if not always easily comprehensible. In other words, impressive doesn’t always mean engaging.
One problem reviewing such sagas is trying to squeeze a useful summary into one or two paragraphs. It’s possible to list some of the major plot points, spell out the major conflicts and main players, but does that tell readers much about the spirit and flavor of the books?
In this case, that’s even more tricky as I’m jumping into the “Human Star Pilots” epic four books into the series. Before A Child of the Federation, Stephan gave us Human Star Pilot: Human Star Pilots Book 1, Interstellar Star Pilot: Human Star Pilots Book 2, and Space Station Acheron: Human Star Pilots Book 3. And I’ve read none of them.
Over the four tomes so far, the universe Stephan created is so vast, ageless, and sprawling, odds are few readers will quickly wrap their minds around what is involved, no matter in which book they first jump into the saga. It’s a story with many plots and sub-plots. The main rudder for the fourth novel is the main character of the forty year old star pilot, Isara. As a “child of the Federation,” she knows next to nothing about who she is until a surprising journey of self-discovery takes her back to the planet of her origins, Filb, the planet which witnessed a horrible ecological catastrophe. She is more special than she knows, even moreso than being one of only six pilots capable of surviving the training of managing hyperspace jumps learned from a borrowed Alien technology. That means she has to live with nanobots in her body that keep her alive during warp jumps.
To describe a few things about the Federation, it’s worth noting this isn’t a Federation Gene Roddenberry would recognize: it’s mainly an economic confederacy of which earth is a relative newcomer. Also facing ecological disaster, earth needs the technology of ancient aliens who apparently no longer exist. The interplay between members of the Federation and the levels of political maneuvering are, well, confusing. While Stephan is masterful at world-building, the further away the story moves away from Isara’s personal evolution, the more lost in the trees I got.
So my final reaction to the book is that it’s a challenge worth exploring if you really like complex universe building, multiple story-lines, very dense back-stories, and occasional memorable scenes in between all the description of a universe easy to get lost in. And, no doubt, more to come.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on May 10, 2021:
https://waa.ai/mC9j
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“The Blind Alien is a story with a highly original concept, fascinating characters, and not-too-subtle but truthful allegories. Don’t let the ...more
“The Blind Alien is a story with a highly original concept, fascinating characters, and not-too-subtle but truthful allegories. Don’t let the ...more
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