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 have a soft spot in my heart for this old science fiction show from my childhood in the Fifties so I'll never give it a bad review. However in watching Menace From Outer Space a little knowledge of the show which only lasted for 39 episodes in the 1954 season certainly helps.

A moon of Jupiter not thought to contain life starts blasting away at the earth with missiles and we've got nothing that reaches that far. That's of concern to the United Worlds which was later the United Federation of Planets when we got to Star Trek in the Sixties. The place is called Fornax and it's ruled by Walter Coy who has an adviser from earth, a renegade scientist played by Nestor Paiva.

Two characters from previous episodes are in this film, one is a man who disgraced the Space Rangers by turning spy, Griff played by Leonard Penn, the other is an agent for the evil Queen of the planet Ophecius Dargento who is played by Frank Pulaski. Patsy Parsons who was Queen Cleolanta of Ophecius was one evil woman who gave this seven year old nightmares. She was a running villain for several episodes on Rocky Jones.

The planet Fornax has a powerful kind of energy derived from crystals that everybody wants. Kind of like oil today. I think you know where this one is going.

This is high camp and quite a hoot today, but you really have to be a fan of the show to appreciate it fully.

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.

"Menace From Space" begins with strange missiles made of crystal being hurled at the Earth. The brainiac professor determines they are from one of Jupiter's moons, so Rocky Jones takes a small crew to this strange world to try to determine why this is occurring. Once there, an evil Earth scientist is already there and he's manipulating the locals to his own wicked and greedy ends. So, it's up to the Earth heroes to save the day.

I love 1950s sci-fi movies--even though the special effects are often pretty silly and the plots a bit campy. I particularly love the films taking humans on their first trips to the Moon or Mars. However, despite my strong predisposition to like such material, this movie made up of three episodes of TV's "Rocky Jones Space Ranger" is pretty bad. Of course, being made for television the special effects were worse than you'd find in a real movie--this I could accept. What I couldn't accept were the awful characters! Rocky is wooden, but he's not the problem. The biggest problems are Winky and the little brat they took along for no reason whatsoever. Winky is the second in command but you wonder why they'd put a complete moron in such an important role! He's clearly the 'comic relief', though since he isn't funny, he's more the 'annoying relief'! And the 'precocious kid'?! Well, apparently although they barely have enough fuel to make it to Fornax and back, they decide to bring this whiny kid along--even though he can't possibly contribute anything to the mission (unless, of course, they want to use him as a shield). The writing of this show and the ensuing movie is pretty poor and clearly is being marketed to kids, not anyone wanting sci-fi that is realistic or well-written. As a result, it's only good for a laugh and not much more.

While watching Menace From Outer Space, one must keep it firmly in mind that this was an early-television program that was specifically geared to entertain youngsters in the under-12-years-old age range.

Yes. Its storyline was simple-minded. Yes. Its low-budget effects were, often enough. a laughable joke. Yes. Its characters were all one-dimensional stereotypes who were probably playing it very tongue-in-cheek....

But, on the whole, this kiddies' TV show was good-natured enough to be considered marginally entertaining and its husky hero, Rocky Jones, was good-looking enough for anyone to forgive its many downfalls and flaws and at least enjoy it in all of its cheesy, b-grade splendour.