Stowaway to the Moon

I remembered this as a kid like some others. IF this movie was an after school special catering to kids, my perspective would be different, but it was not when released in 1975.

1. Even pre-terrorist days, launch sites were locked down tight. Especially then with a war still in its wake. No kid is going to sneak aboard.

2. There is not as much space as depicted in the capsule. They are tight, just as the capsule the kid is shown in at the beginning of the movie.

3. The guard entrances when the dad cam in would not have been so lax.

I could go on all evening on this flick since it is clueless and lazy with effort. Based on the insanely rushed ending, they somebody must have gotten how bad this was and cut the budget- hence the abrupt and nonsense ending. Even as a kid all those years ago I thought the kid was dreaming, up until the end. Due to the odd demeanor of the adults and the lack of logic, I thought the movie was intended to be the kid dreaming and it then would have made sense. Reason being, the movie literally seems like a dream of an eleven year old.

From a kids perspective, the movie would be a 7/10, since THEN it would make sense.

Stowaway to the Moon is very typical for a 1970's made for television movie. It is both low budget and not very well written. The film may have worked better if it had been all a dream but it wasn't.

Lloyd Bridges and John Carradine are the only big name actors in this TV movie, but the remainder of the cast do fairly well. This is a film about a NASA Moon mission, with a boy who stows away in the trash compartment. While moderately simplistic, it does a good job of showing what an actual mission was all about. Michael Link stars as the title character. Do not expect massive FX, tho there is some good footage from the Apollo missions. Astronaut Charles Conrad provides some nice insight as a news reporter. Shown on Fox Movie Channel on June 5th... it might be repeated. 7.

When this movie was released I was the same age as the stowaway to the moon. Like many pre-teen boys of this period I dreamed of going to the moon. My youthful mind was filled with fantasies nurtured by 2001 ... Forbidden Planet ... Star Trek ... Planet of the apes ... Space 1999 and many other sci-fi films and books. I really enjoyed this TV movie despite its flaws. Yes, the science doesn't work in some parts and it's made on a budget. Still, in the days prior to STAR WARS this fired the imagination of boys who thought of themselves as Tom Swift and dreamed of the adventures awaiting humanity out among the stars.

Sure I can remember seeing this on TV when I was 9, the kid weighed about 87 lbs, and if I remember right, nearly freezes to death while they are circling the moon(?)-there was some suspense and all that. I had never heard what this was called but I remembered parts of it all these years.

Yes this is worth seeing if you can find it; not a bad rainy Saturday afternooner thing for your kids at the least. And hey, it has John Carradine AND Lloyd Bridges. Not bad.

**1/2 outta **** at least.