Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This early Italian sci-fi outing for director Antonio Margheriti proved popular enough for the famous cult director to make many more such science fiction films in the genre, almost half a dozen in fact. Yet by watching SPACE MEN, you wouldn't understand why. Like most Italian sci-fi films that I've seen, it's a slow-paced and disconnected affair which mixes scenes of boredom with unintentional hilarity resulting from the ultra-cheesy special effects on view. Here, Margheriti practised with his much-loved miniatures for the first time and the result is a laugh riot, especially when the action shifts into space and we witness lots of cheesy spaceships flying around on wires and action men jumping around, jerked by strings, in a supposed space.SPACE MEN is a stilted, unconvincing, melodramatic account of the adventures of Ray Petersen, a journalist sent into space for the first time to partake in some extra-terrestrial activities. When flying through space for the first time he says "Al, I feel a chilling sense of vacuum". The script is like that, making for much amusement. The rest of Petersen's crew-mates include a female navigation officer (lots of dated sexism here then) and some less-than-impressed superiors, who feel like journalists even less than the earthbound guys in charge do. Aside from the ultra-cheap special effects work, the film is technically superior (aside for a moment where Margheriti's camera slips out of focus momentarily), and the various interiors are pleasing on the eye and authentic-looking.The unlikely-monikored Rik Van Nutter takes the journalist role and plays it woodenly, whilst the same goes for the rest of the cast. The only member of note is Archie Savage, who excels as the friendly, white-haired "Uncle Al". The first third of the film takes in some fairly ordinary 'space dangers' - by that I mean the crew have to contend with meteorites (in space?!?), asteroids, "hot zones", stray Martian planets, and earthquakes (or should that be spacequakes...). Later on, things become more serious when it transpires that for some reason there's a huge, abandoned spaceship in space which is going to crash into Earth and turn the planet into a boiling ball of fire.Thus we get some race-against-the-clock antics as our unlikely heroes attempt to blow up the spaceship and save the world, whilst Nutter engages in an end-of-the-world relationship with the attractive, old-fashioned female crew member and some sentimental moralising slows things down. Plenty of cheap, overdone music, bad effects, and cross-cutting between scenes repeatedly highlight the film's finale. Amusing sequences to watch out for include a near crash-landing, in which a dummy is thrown into a molten geyser, and hilarious overacting from most of the cast in times of peril.

This movie is not as bad as some of the reviews suggest.It's made on a shoestring budget but still pretty neat.The special effects are better than you'd expect considering and it keeps your attention.The plot.In the 21st century.Ray Peterson, reporter for the Interplanetary News, is assigned to write a story aboard a space station. Tension mounts between Peterson and the station commander, who believes he is in the way, but has orders to leave him alone. Errant spaceship Alpha Two enters the solar system and its photon generators are radiating enough heat to destroy Earth as it approaches. It falls to Peterson to try to figure out a way to enter the spaceship, disarm the generators, and escape before suffocating.

This movie isn't half bad. At first glance, you think it's just another cheesy, sci-fi B-movie. Outside of some technical blunders (things done outside the parameters of reality) it's pretty good. Al is a very interesting character. I think a remake of this movie wouldn't be a bad idea. Steven Spielberg once said, "An audience will believe even the most far fetched fantasy if it's done seriously and with a lot of credibility". So given the right cast, and a good rewrite of the original screenplay this could make a good, modern day sci-fi. I'd even go as far as purchasing a remastered version if such care were given to preserve it.

OK, bad FX but given it was 1960 don't be too harsh in that judgment. Not having seen all SF films from that era it's hard to say whether it was below standard or not. Star Trek didn't get so much better by 1967, substituting flashing lights for analog gauges and completely rewriting/ignoring physics. I liked some of the techno babble here - the multi-stage rocket, the sleep chamber, the arched trusses inside the space station, weightlessness, hydrazine, the paramilitary dialogue. Tossing objects out to detect the beams and stay in the middle seems reasonable and inventive for a mere reporter. "Pecking the lobe" is an electronic way to do the same thing against enemy radar in modern warfare. There was a story here but things got compromised, as usual in movies time and space (ie distances), are ignored in order to cut to the chase (see Armageddon, 1997). The guy waxing philosophical during his space walk has been done in almost every space movie since, and even Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, et al spoke that way once on earth. Anyhow, good for a laugh.