"Footprints on the Moon: Apollo 11" was a theatrically released 95 minute documentary on the July 20 1969 lunar landing, issued barely two months after its completion. It had curiously languished in obscurity for decades, following its inclusion in Gold Key's Scream Theater television package, mostly consisting of low grade titles from the Crown International Pictures catalog, which is how it received its lone broadcast on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater on Jan 15, 1977. It was actually 20th Century-Fox that issued the film on its initial 1969 run, and only earned a proper DVD release in 2010. A historic document of long anticipation, we hear the voice of the late President John F. Kennedy proclaiming the nation's goal to put a man on the moon before decade's end, then television coverage before takeoff on July 16, millions of people present near Cape Kennedy in Cocoa Beach, once airborne keeping in contact with the Space Center in Houston (I DREAM OF JEANNIE picked the right time to star an astronaut!). There is a steady stream of commentary from the three astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, and an occasional voiceover from 19th century author Jules Verne, who proved most prescient in his own predictions of space travel, right down to the eerily identical size and weight of the spacecraft. The narration by Dr. Wernher Von Braun is thankfully not very intrusive, filling in the gaps where necessary. The pace inevitably drags during the period preceding the actual landing (at 54 minutes) and first walk on the moon, which all these years later has lost none of its power, Buzz Aldrin aptly describing the sight as 'magnificent desolation.' In the end it remains a fascinating look back to one of America's best documented triumphs, and while Gene Roddenberry's STAR TREK was still on NBC as well. Chiller Theater audiences of 1977, so familiar with all the science fiction classics set in outer space, got to share in the real thing on that long ago Saturday night.
