ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Ah yes, those imaginative science fiction filmmakers and their wacky ideas.

~ A mission to the Moon in spacecraft with folding lawn chairs for crash couches!

~ A movie allegedly about an "underwater city" is barely an underwater household.

~ A "smart television" from the future is portrayed by a marionette TV with dangling legs.

The ]i]Golden Age of Science Fiction[/i] has its fair share of "fools gold" as well.
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12 to the Moon (1960)

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Although it doesn't compare well to "Destination Moon", several good ideas elevate this story above a simple Moon trip.

A multi-national crew lands on the Moon, and while exploring the lunar surface two of the astronauts (a man and a women) enter a cave and are never seen again. The other astronauts receive a strange written message on the ship's computer, ordering them to leave the Moon and never return. The unseen lunar inhabitants have determined that mankind is selfish and dangerous.

The astronauts blast off for Earth, but during the trip back the aliens use a freeze ray which encases the ship in ice and begins to freeze Earth's atmosphere.

Despite the low budget, FX depicting these marvels are actually quite good.





Up to this point in the story the multi-national crewmen have done a poor job of working as a team, but the threat to their home planet breaks down their petty resistance to international cooperation, and a genuine camaraderie develops. The crew attempts to save Earth by finding some way to neutralize the freezing process.

The plot has a nice twist ending.

The sets aren't bad, including a nice studio set of the lunar surface (no Arizona desert locales).



The dialogue and general acting are fair at best, but the story makes its point well enough, promoting international cooperation. Veteran actor Francis X. Bushman makes a brief appearance at the film's beginning. Directed by David Bradley. The cast includes Tom Conway, Tony Dexter, and Robert Montgomery, Jr.

Here's the trailer — and it really makes a good pitch! Plus, I've rarely seen a trailer that was in perfect condition like this one. Crystal clear, and not a scratch on it.

____________________ 12 to the Moon - tailer


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And if that tweaks your interest, YouTube also offers the complete movie, even though its in 4:3 rather th an 16:9.

____________________ 12 to the Moon 1960


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The Twonky (1953)



Comedy sci-fi about an unusual TV which is delivered to the home of a philosophy professor (Hans Conried).

Conried learns that the apparently-normal TV can actually walk, talk, and manipulate objects with energy beams. The film's funniest lines go to Conried's friend (Billy Lynn), a dottering old football coach who theorizes that the television is actually a diabolical robot which "accidentally" came from the future. He suggests that the robot is just masquerading as an innocuous TV while it dutifully indoctrinates people into the dictatorial superstate which designed it.

At first the walking TV performs a variety of domestic chores such as washing dishes and lighting Conried's cigarettes.



But then it begins to take control of Conried's life, tampering directly with his brain, preventing him from delivering a lecture on human freedom to his college class. It even censors the books he reads.

Writer-director Arch Oboler genuinely hated television, but the film's anti-TV message is somewhat defeated by the unskilled comedy it attempts. United Artist waited a year and five months after the film's completion before releasing it.

The original story was first published in the September 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction by husband-and-wife team Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore (under the pseudonym Lewis Padgett) is markedly different from the film.

In the story, a factory worker from the future is accidentally projected back in time. The single-minded and highly trained individual finds himself in a factory which makes radios. Out of pure habit he builds a super-complex mechanism that appears to be a normal radio. After the worker is snatched back to the future, the innocent-looking radio is sold to an unsuspecting consumer whose life is changed by the mechanism.

Here's the original Astounding illustration by Orban.
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The Underwater City (1962)



Proof positive that ambitious concepts can be killed by lazy film making. The concept here is the building of an experimental underwater metropolis. But the producers didn't sink enough money into the project. (A pun: I apologize). There are too few special effects, too much talk, and only one point of interest: Julie Adams (the beauty from "The Creature from the Black Lagoon").

One good indication that the filmmakers had no faith in their own movie is the fact that it was shot in color but released in black-and-white! Directed by Frank McDonald.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)