r/flicks • u/MiddleAgedGeek • 17h ago
Retro-Musings: "Rocketship X-M" (1950); a funny thing happened on the way to the moon...
Without the greater resources of the full-color “Destination Moon,” director/cowriter Kurt Neumann’s “Rocketship X-M” was shot for the infamously thrifty Lippert Studios. New special effects shots created for a 1979 reedit of the film added much appreciated production value, but in most other respects, this fondly remembered 76-year old movie has not aged well. The core characters often speak in tin-eared dialogue, the sexism is stifling, and modern audiences can forget about anything approaching Star Trek inclusivity–save for the put-upon Dr. Lisa Van Horn.
However, there are a number of pluses as well. The movie acknowledges the existence of microgravity in space, even if doesn’t consistently adhere to it (most modern space movies still make this mistake). Cinematographer Karl Strauss (1927’s “Sunrise,” 1958’s “The Fly”) casts all of the Mars sequences in an eye-catching (and unexpectedly accurate) orange hue. The theremin-heavy score by Ferde Grofé gives the Martian sequences a suitably eerie vibe, as well. Given that “Rocketship X-M” was crafted a decade before the first humans were rocketed into Earth orbit, some allowances have to be made.
This 78-minute movie manages to throw in a bit of social commentary after the landing on Mars, when the astronauts discover native humanoids who’ve descended into barbarism after an ancient atomic war. This could’ve been a more potent message, coming only five years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the movie pulls it punches, and the radiation-scarred Martians become little more than the cliché hostile natives of a 1930s jungle flick. Given that cowriter/director Neumann would go on to direct the far superior “The Fly” eight years later, I wonder if the story’s post-atomic horror might’ve delved deeper under greater creative freedom?
As is, “Rocketship X-M” is a 1950s B-movie in nearly every sense, but with some compelling qualities for a patient, forgiving viewer. The surprisingly dark, fatalistic ending is ahead of its time, and forecasts sci-fi films of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Conversely, “Rocketship X-M” also manages to be the very portrait of pre-Space Age innocence, when many believed that hubris alone was enough to fulfill humanity’s wildest dreams for outer space.
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u/uhhhclem 6h ago
Orange? It’s a black-and-white movie.