Menace from Outer Space

The professor spots a rocket that attacked earth on both his telescope and video graph. A rocket is dispatched to a moon of Jupiter to see what is up. The crew: Richard Crane as Rocky Jones, wearing the obligatory space t-shirt Scotty Beckett as Winky, wearing the issued baseball cap Sally Mansfield as Vena Ray, a cape with legs Robert Lyden as Bobby, casual space garb Maurice Cass as Professor Newton, 18 Th century bow tie and tails

What kind of civilization will they find and will they be perceived as friend or foe?

Maybe the real threat is from space rogues from earlier episodes?

Talk about technology such as the video graph. Even mobile versions in cars. Lots of oscilloscopes, an analog fuel gauge, and lots of stilted dialogs. A mechanical canary.

This animal may even have looked hokey to adults of the time. However, I can tell you as an underling of the time this is really an intriguing program.

I usually love not very good Sci-Fi films from the 1950s but this effort was an exception to that. I could only bear to watch about ten minutes at a time but I was determined to get to the end, which I did eventually.

Poor in every way which can sometimes be entertaining but not with this film. The baddie looked like a kindly grandpa and was not in the least threatening. Bad acting all round and even in 1956 this was probably not seen as being a good film, even if it was cobbled together from a TV series of the time.

It's worth watching to see how bad a 1950's Sci-Fi effort can be but it's a struggle to get to the end as it's so bad.

I had one helping of this group in the "Crash of the Moons." This one continues when a couple of missiles strike earth and Rocky and the gang go to find out where they are coming from. They end up on a moon of Jupiter which is perfect for their survival. They are lucky to land because they have run out of gas. At least their gas gauge says so. This time they start with uniforms of more the rebel variety of the Civil War. But later don baseball caps. It's a long, convoluted effort to try to recreate a fuel source (there's no Texaco anywhere near). Like those dilithium crystals, there is a fuel source available to them. Unfortunately, holed up on the planet is a murderous turncoat who has the ear of the leader of the planet. He enlists some other rebellious types that appear in the early part of the movie (which is actually a series of TV shows). Rocky Jones never seems to have much trouble staving off the bad guys. He gets an assist from a little space girl who helps his little space guy. The young woman, who never seems to do anything, gets involved in the fashion on the Jupiter moon. Eventually, everything works out. Rocky and Winky (who screws up a lot, but sure is a swell fella), manage to keep things safe for the space alliance or whatever. If anything can show you how far we've come when it comes to film and television, get a load of this.

The good news is the professor played by Maurice Cass and Vena played by Sally Mansfield still seem to "believe in the dream" of acting despite the script. I get that it's a serial TV show, but they upped the ham and turned down the interesting plot for this set. Spacey cliche' and catch-phrases abound trying to cover up that this is actually some kind of old cowboy drama. The "science" part is severely lacking in this science fiction. There was some ship battles, a fist fight, but also a dragging tale and nonsensical decisions. As much as I liked the start of this potentially rocketing series, best to send this mess to the dark side of the moon.

This is a mildly entertaining bit of fluff cobbled together from three episodes of an early 1950's US television show. It concerns the adventures of Rocky Jones, his somewhat goofy sidekick Winky, the lovely Vena Ray, a precocious kid named Bobby and Professor Newton. They're all under the authority of the Secretary of Space. Secretary of Space, now there's a job title; I'd like to be Chairman of Gravity myself.

As far as the film goes, it's pretty tame as regards the special effects and the action; however, it shares that charm that many of the science fiction films of that specific decade display and, consequently, manages to engage the viewer. It's particularly interesting, if only in a historical sense, to see a sci-fi show from television's early years.

If you get a copy of this film in one of those public domain collections - I received mine in the Mill Creek 100 Sci-Fi Classics set - then I'd certainly recommend watching it but, otherwise, I wouldn't expend any energy trying to track it down.