1950: DESTINATION MOON

What’s it about?

When a military rocket launch designed to put a satellite in orbit around the Earth ends in failure and budget cuts, the general in charge turns to good old fashioned American industry (with its fabled know-how and stick-to-it-iveness) to get the job done. But rather than simply complete the original mission, they instead decide to send a manned rocket to the moon -- for the purpose of either allowing the U.S. to install missiles on the lunar surface or to stop unnamed hostile foreign powers from doing so (details are murky on this point).

A propaganda film starring Woody Woodpecker convinces the plutocrats of America to fund the moon shot, but a series of snags threaten to doom the mission. Meddling government bureaucrats and pesky public opinion force the rushed launch of a completely untested rocket with a last-minute astronaut replacement who hasn’t even been briefed on elementary facts like weightlessness. Later, inattention to basic safety precautions causes a spacewalk to end in a predictably bad way. A botched landing on the moon also uses up so much fuel that the crew is faced with (almost literally) the oldest dilemma in movie space travel -- one of them must stay behind to allow the others to leave.

Is it any good?

The main selling point of DESTINATION MOON is that it’s supposed to be a scientifically accurate picture of what it would actually take to get to the moon. To that end, they show off things like plausible spacesuits, airlocks, and no-spill drink containers. They also manfully admit to several science facts that even modern sci-fi movies often ignore -- like how there is no sound in a vacuum or how a rocket speeding through space looks practically stationary. They also don’t dodge the weightlessness -- there’s eventually some cheating with magnetic boots, but no pseudo-scientific gravity generators or other such nonsense.

The biggest downfall of the movie is that it’s pretty dry throughout, and especially so at the beginning. More running time is given to getting the funding for the mission than to the construction of the rocket or the solving of any engineering challenges, which is pretty disappointing. There are also no scenes of the crew training, and the way the rocket finally takes off with only 17 hours notice is patently ridiculous. (Even in 1950 they ought to have known that.) In fact, the whole political crisis that forces the early launch feels contrived and unnecessary. But I suppose if I wanted to see engineers solving the problems of space travel, I should watch a historical account of how the real Apollo missions went.

As far as the characters go, they barely have any existence outside of their roles as astronauts. For the most part, that’s fine since the movie is really primarily concerned with the spectacle of the moon mission. But it does make the final dilemma feel hollow and academic since there’s not really any reason why the audience should care which one of the astronauts stays behind. The moon parts of the movie are easily the best, however, and it’s pretty obvious that most of the set construction budget went into making the lunar surface look cool. I also thought the spacewalk sequence was pretty gripping -- but I feel that way about almost any spacewalk sequence. (This is no doubt the result of a deep-seated fear of floating away in space that I’ve harbored ever since my very young self watched General Zod toss a cosmonaut off the moon in SUPERMAN II.) But even the best and most exciting parts of DESTINATION MOON have been done and re-done dozens of times since 1950. That’s not really the fault of this movie, but it still makes it is seem predictable and creaky to modern eyes.

What else happened this year?

-- The only other sci-fi flick from 1950 that I could find information about is a picture called ROCKETSHIP X-M starring a young Lloyd Bridges. I didn’t bother watching that one, so I’m not sure if it’s any good.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1950...

Since DESTINATION MOON is the only movie I’ve seen from this year, I guess it’s also the only one I can recommend. But you might as well skip the year unless you're really interested in 1950s sci-fi.