Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I saw this film as an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and though it was featured on the show, I thought it had its moments. In fact, I would say it is a rather fun film featuring a city on the moon and a heist in space. Hammer generally makes an entertaining film, though usually they are known for horror films. Donald Pleasence was in a couple of their films, and I could so see him as the bad guy in this one mainly because the main villain here wears some rather strange outfits and if you have seen Donald in a film, you know if he is a good guy he dresses in a distinguished way, but if he is the bad guy, prepare to seem him in leather and other completely insane outfits. The effects are dated, but look good for the time and my guess is the budget as well. Sure, you see a lot of lines holding the actors and actresses when in space, but you saw those in the Disney film, "The Black Hole" which was made later and featured a bigger budget and they were more obvious in that one as you could see the clothes being pulled by the wires in that one! So, while not a great film or perfect it is a rather fun film to watch.The story has a pilot of a spaceship who salvages things in space like satellites who comes across a woman who has come to the city on the moon in search of her brother. The pilot is also approached by another man who is rather wealthy who has a business proposition for the pilot as he proposes crashing an asteroid onto the moon. Why you ask? It is basically a huge chunk of sapphire. They have all the details worked out and they complete the first portion of the mission fine, but while waiting for the second phase back on the moon the pilot is once again approached by the woman who has not seen her brother. They go to try and find him and find out there is something sinister behind his disappearance.This movie made for a rather good episode of MST3K, but not because they riffed particularly well, but because they didn't. The movie was good enough that I watch this episode mainly to see the film and maybe chuckle here and there at a riff rather than watching it exclusively for the riffing. It is a first season episode which is why the riffing just is not quite up to the later years on the show, so it is nice that the movie itself helps carry the episode. I did like the bump where Joel recreated the anti gravity fight, like I said, they just were not quite as sharp during the first season, but the film itself made this a good one to watch. They also would riff an Oscar winning movie about space, but if I had to watch either this one or that one, give me this film. It is more fun while I found that one had some okay moments, but was a bore in other.This was not a bad film to me. I like a Hammer made film, and this one had some crazy stuff going on. I would actually like to see the film without MST3K as the film had to have at least twenty minutes cut from it and I am curious as to what is missing. They definitely left enough in so that you are not lost. I like the actors for the most part, but I think someone else in the villain role would have been preferred. I do not know, I just like the way the portrayed the city on the moon and the bar in particular, with the really crummy alcoholic beverages. So, sure it is lame and the effects are dated, but the fun still remains.

I have nothing bad to say about this movie. Other than the fact it is (as of July 2013) an on demand DVD, meaning it has NO special features (even though the two principals, James Olson and Catherine Schell are still alive to provide an interview and commentary track, and any number of film historians would take about $50 and a shot of scotch to review it). Set in 2021, the plot concerns Olson's Capt. William H. Kemp, an aging astronaut-hero who runs a space salvage operation on the moon where he scratches out every buck for survival. He gets involved with (the stunningly lovely) Schell's Clementine Taplin, who is trying to find a lost miner brother on the far side of the moon. Throw in a no nonsense, do anything for a Lunar Dollar businessman and an asteroid made of sapphire and there is the standard action conflict. This movie has been described as a Space Western, and I see the tropes and along with what would be called homage today - six shooter, bad guy vs. good guy, aging hero, and show downs. But the same plot devices are used in Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, Ben Hur, Hornblower etc., and were long before Akira Kurosawa provided a shorthand for lazy film critics. This film is closer to "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" than "Seven Samurai." And it gets the science and technology of the moon down right, and explains it in a way that even Kubrick could have learned from on 2001 - make it simple and don't drag it out. The science is pretty bang on. That is the problem with a lot of 60s productions about space, they were slightly a notch above the bug eyed monster craze of the 50s in terms of believable science. But audiences were savy by 1969/1970 having been exposed to coverage of the real NASA lunar program and other space exploration efforts. I would say this movie owes a little to Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's "Journey to the Far Side of the Sun" and the then in production television show "UFO," in terms of realism and look. Stylistic look, with props that make sense, and good looking 60s women in future clothes. It all makes one long for the future we were promised but never realized in the late 60s. Now, where is my food in a pill and hover car?

Interesting effort here by the usually predictable Hammer Studios, best known for all those low budget Dracula movies with Christopher Lee and Frankenstein movies with Peter Cushing. Hammer actually worked in a number of genres during their heyday, with spy films and crime thrillers, wartime potboilers, pirate escapades. They had already crossed their usual horror motifs with a heavy dose of science fiction with their "Quatermass" series, but for whatever reason Hammer never made a traditional looking western, even though some of their principal talent had contributed to a couple. Too bad, I am sure they would have had an intriguing go at it.This was their compromise, a clearly 2001 inspired concoction mixing some of the more obvious elements of a western -- six guns, saloons, claim jumping gunslingers, a fetching damsel in distress, a cynical hero -- with the then familiar trappings of science fiction space epics. Space suits instead of cowboy attire, moon buggies instead of stagecoaches, and a lady moon sheriff who packs twin pistols in holsters attached to her thigh-high Go Go boots. Whatever. The idea was viable enough for Peter Hyams to revisit in a more sober manner with 1981's "Outland", a subtle remake of "High Noon" set at a mining complex on one of Jupiter's moons.The blend of genres will either go over well or create profound disbelief, as is evidenced by the film having been enshrined in Mystery Science Theater 3000's hall of fame of parody screenings with all those annoying, smug comments from the dorks in the front row superimposed on the screen. The film is silly enough in itself without their schtick (I'm not a big MST3K fan, sorry), and just as with Elvira, just because they choose to send up a given movie that doesn't mean it may not have some redeeming parts.This one does, mostly in an endearing willingness to try anything, and for Hammer what was actually a pretty significant budget that let them pull off some ingenious little effects sequences. My favorite touch are the little Moon Fargo buggies, which sure are radio controlled models in the long shots, but by golly they have a sort of charm about them that belies their phoniness. We forgive because in the context of the kind of entertainment we are looking at, namely 1960s European made science fiction, they work just fine.The story isn't much, but then again the whole show is in the production design, which as others point out apes Apollo era technologies as much as it does a 2001 inspired antiseptic, shiny rubberized look. Some may poke fun at the silly hairstyles and clumsy looking costumes, I say they fit in perfectly with the movie's aesthetic. There is even a healthy dose of realistic science thrown in alongside such recurring SF themes as artificial gravity, miniature space colonies, and foxy babes who casually strip down to their space age underwear once the air conditioning gives out.Newly re-released by Warner's on a double movie DVD along with the equally long overdue "When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth". Couldn't recommend them more, beats the crap out of anything currently projecting onto screens in empty theaters at the cineplexes in any event, and just stupid enough to warrant repeat casual guilty pleasure viewing.6/10

First saw it when I was 12 and it has a place in my heart still after all these years; unlike a lot of other movies I enjoyed as a kid but can't stand today like "Battle of the Bulge" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark".Anyway, back to the movie. Today, it's the kitsch value that I really like, I mean, there's something incredibly cute and sexy about 60's women in futuristic garb. There is a conflict in the movie about the tone; is it a sci-fi thriller with action and danger, or a tongue in cheek effort (with Moonopoly even)? The effects are good in some areas and really poor in others; but apart from 2001 you can say that about most sci fi films of that era. It shares something else with 2001 that other more famous sci-fi movies don't and that's no sound in a vacuum. Full credit to the film makers that they paid attention to their science. In fact, the movie script has some basis in real science about conditions on the moon and in space (groovy sequence of a spacesuit puncture causing the crushing of a hired goon). So we have no noise in a vacuum, but do they give us just silence? No, they fill the soundtrack with what can be only described as the kind of music known as Porno-Jazz. No matter, I actually like that kind of stuff. C'mon everyone "Moooooooonnnnnn Zero Twooooo, let's all go to the Moon nowwwwwwwwwwwww, Mooooooooonnnnnnnn Zero Twoooooooooo".