One of my all time favorites.

Absolutely the worst movie.

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Ah, just what I love, a '50s B-movie. This low budget, shuddery sci-fi shocker uses much the same premise as THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN would twenty years later, but obviously without the gore. The plot is pretty minimal, and with most '50s films, the main thrust concentrates on pseudo scientific babble about why what has happened has happened. Although the film is obviously dated because of this, it's kind of fun too, as we listen to the gobbledegook about 'cosmic dust' and stuff like that. Very funny indeed.The cast is nothing to write home about, but the dialogue can be hilarious and frequently is, because it has dated so badly. The man of the title is an excitable chap who speaks like one of the teens from I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF all grown up, talking about "dope" and other silly things. The rest of the cast are all pretty stiff and stilted in their delivery of their clichéd lines, but there's no need to worry about that, it's just typical for a film like this.The special effects aren't bad. The space travel looks quite poor in these post-STAR WARS days, but at least it has some imagination put into it and has that odd quality of looking fake and unrealistic yet looking interesting, magical even, in a way that CGI animation can't create. I can't explain it very well. The makeup for the monster is surprisingly simple and effective, he just looks like he's been covered in some molten rock or something which has then settled. I like the way you can see one of his eyes too.While FIRST MAN INTO SPACE may not be original, or scary, it remains a solid piece of entertainment from a much different time. The scenes of the rampaging monster and weird space travel deserve classic status, these types of things WERE cinema in the '50s. Not brilliant, but okay anyway.

I also saw this movie in 1959 as an 8-year-old. I went to the theater with my "older" friends, they were like 11-12. The movie scared the wits out of me; I hid my view behind the person sitting in front of me, my friends never let up on making fun of me. This was the first time I had gone to the movies with non-adults...big mistake! The monster was scary and creepy. It haunted me for years. In fact, I probably had some persistent subliminal turmoil over the movie. Fast forward to 2008 and I found the DVD to rent. I watched again, and guess what? The movie is still scary! It's pretty high-camp and was made on a limited budget, but the creepiness is still there. I suppose the fact that the back line story is believable makes it even more scary. Watching it with my wife probably exorcised some demons. Funny how movies can move us, positively or negatively. All my 60 years I can still rehash this event when I was eight. Still the scariest movie I ever saw. I dig it.

What if Ed Wood had an actual budget of some type? And he really, really, really applied himself in his directing chores? And maybe had some other person do a polish on the script for him, to smooth out some of his legendary surreal dialog? And then he hired some people as actors that were much less embarrassing than anyone in his usual stock player company?The result would have been something close to First Man Into Space.It has a low budget, and some really obvious science fiction tropes. Everyone plays the whole scenario deadly seriously, but not SO seriously that they enter bizarro world, say, in the manner of Criswell in Plan Nine From Outer Space. If you want to be generous, you could say the acting is reserved and tasteful. If you want to be less generous, you could say the performances are stiff and mind-numbingly boring.There have been many other bad, low budget science fiction movies with similar premises (astronaut goes into space, comes back to Earth as inhuman monster), such as The Crawling Hand, The Incredible Melting Man, and that abomination to end all abominations, Monster-A-Go-Go. I'm sure there were some that pre-date this film as well.Nobody's shaming themselves here, but still, this is not worth seeking out as some sort of lost classic or anything. There are many science fiction classics of yore you should check out before this one. If you want a bonafide well-done, outstanding film, it isn't this. By the same token, if you want a hilarious, goofy, over-the-top slab of goofball incompetence to mock and deconstruct, this is not that type of movie either. Put this one on the back burner, there's plenty of other flicks to get to before you spend 75 minutes with this puppy.

Rivalry between brothers leads to main story line. Navy Commander Chuck Prescott(Marshall Thompson)has developed the Y12 aircraft to test how far man can go up in the atmosphere. His brother, Lt. Dan Prescott(Bill Edwards), seems to be the best test pilot around and is chosen to go up in the Y12. Dan of course has a problem with taking orders and is also an over confident dare devil. On Dan's second flight, he hits over the 300 miles up comfort zone and his craft passes through a meteor dust storm. Returning to earth, Dan becomes a monster that resembles 200 pounds of bad asphalt. He also has a demanding craving for blood, whether it be from farm animals or fellow human beings.Short runtime of an hour and seventeen minutes; black & white with near stoic acting...typical of low budget sci-fi.Rounding out the cast is Marla Landi, Robert Ayers and Carl Jaffe. Noteworthy trivia: about two months after this film was released; the Russians put the real first man in space.