SATURDAY AFTERNOON B-MOVIE CRAPFEST: “Conquest of Space” (1955)

Back in June I reviewed George Pal’s first Science Fiction film, “Destination Moon” (Here:
http://www.republibot.com/content/classic-sf-movie-review-%E2%80%9Cdesti... ) a movie with some fairly profound pacing problems and spotty acting, but a heart as big as all outdoors. Ridley Scott once said that he wanted to be “The John Ford of Science Fiction Cinema,” though really Pal had already filled that role. Pal’s career went onward and upward from “moon,” cranking out a new eye-popping Science Fiction film every year, each one more successful than the rest. I had hoped to review all of his movies in the order they were released so we could sort of chart his progression as a film maker, but I guess that isn’t gonna’ happen, so let’s just jump right to the bitter end of his surprising run of successful films with “Conquest of Space.”

I absolutely adored this movie as a kid. I can still vividly remember the first time I saw it. I was already familiar with the “Von Braun” plan for space exploration, as depicted in Colliers and then written up in one form or another in a zillion different books, but seeing the movie - actually *seeing* the things Von Braun and Willie Ley were talking about - wow! I adored the movie, I watched it a zillion times on TV. I eventually videotaped it and watched it a zillion more times. I loved, loved, loved this film, and spent most of eight grade painstakingly drawing up schematics for the Mars ship and the space station, and ultimately combining the two in my own plan for a Mars mission.

Yeah, I got beat up a lot as a kid. Probably I deserved it.

Anyway, it was with great eagerness and excitement that I anticipated re-viewing and reviewing this film for our site. Alas…

PLAY BY PLAY

In the not-too-distant future (As seen from the mid-1950s), there’s a big donut-shaped space station in orbit 1000 miles above earth, and a large flying-wing spaceship floating next to it. A supply rocket pulls up next to it while the Space Station commander, Colonel Merritt and his son, Captain Barney Merritt argue about the amount of time they’ve spent in space, and Barney’s desire to be transferred back to earth. He’s been in space for a year now, and was just married four months before he was deployed. The Colonel, meanwhile, has been up here for three years, which, Barney said, has been quite a strain on mother.

Meanwhile, over at the big winged space ship, we see a team of international goons doing construction in amazingly awkward-looking space suits, and cracking wise. There’s a Swede, A Japanese guy, a German, an Italian, and two Americans: a generic Midwestern type named “Roy” and a stereotypical wisecracking Jewish guy from Brooklyn named “Jackie Siegle,” who’ll provide our not-terribly-funny comedy relief for the picture. Roy - the most disposable of the characters - is suddenly paralyzed, so they haul him back to the station by “Space Taxi.”

Once back at the station, Roy is inexplicably fine, so Sgt. Mahoney - a 50-something Irish master sergeant type - hauls him off to the station’s German doctor/psychiatrist. After the checkup, the doctor informs the colonel that Roy is beyond the limits of his psychological endurance, and will continue to have