I love this movie so much

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This movie took a couple ideas and drove them so far into the ground that they never should have been seen again.They spend so much time having meaningless science conversations about magnetic inversions and other such nonsense that it's very hard to stay interested.They also have way too many music-less montages.The first half is basically just scientists looking at screens and talking over radios, waiting to launch this rocket.They don't even have any real reason to launch this rocket.They just want to circumnavigate the Earth.The rocket malfunctions and falls to Earth and then weird things start happening.Animals start to migrate and weird light balls are seen in the sky and everyone knows it because of the rocket.They could have cut out all the pointless crap and made this a nice thirty minute short.At eighty minutes, it's an exercise in attention paying.

This dubbed Italian film is based on an interesting premise, but then it is so dull, it makes no difference. It begins with a nuclear powered ship sent up with an American in it. He has to abandon rocket somewhere, leaving the full payload up there. Wouldn't you know it, it gets itself hooked up with a grouping of asteroids that begin to head for the Earth. There is then about 45 minutes of hand wringing as they hope it won't hit them. They are hoping that the moon's gravitational pull will disperse the asteroids which are linked by a magnetic field. Newton is spinning like a lathe. A marriage almost breaks up. A couple of hot and bothered scientists can't keep their hands off each other, and eventually someone has to come up with a plan. Meanwhile the earth starts catching fire and tidal waves start, but no reason is given. There is no science here. Don't waste your time. Even as high camp, it doesn't cut the mustard.

This is significant as Italy's first science-fiction movie – two years after its first horror outing, Riccardo Freda's I VAMPIRI (1956); what connects these two films is the multi-faceted involvement behind the cameras of the late great Mario Bava. In fact, the latter was officially the film's cinematographer (curiously credited as Baja on the English titles!) but, as was his fashion, he helped out without credit in the special effects department and the direction as well – a fact also mentioned in Tim Lucas' Audio Commentary for the subsequently deleted Dark Sky DVD of Bava's KILL, BABY…KILL! (1966) and whose hearing prompted me to acquire this film sooner rather than later! Interestingly, the film's original Italian title LA MORTE VIENE DALLO SPAZIO translates to DEATH COMES FROM OUTER SPACE; this was picked up and slightly altered a few years later by another Spaghetti sci-fi entry i.e. Antonio Margheriti's LA MORTE VIENE DAL PIANETA AYTIN aka THE SNOW DEVILS (1967); besides, the film's English title was probably inspired by another contemporary sci-fi cheapie i.e. Fred F. Sears' THE NIGHT THE WORLD EXPLODED (1957)! The film under review emerges as a reasonably enjoyable and above-average entry but, probably stemming from a very limited budget, is bogged down by a talky script and much stock footage of rocket launchings and people rushing into underground shelters. The cast is also somewhat undernourished but does include Paul (Fritz Lang's Indian EPIC diptych [1958-59]) Hubschmid, Ivo (Bava's BLACK Sunday [1960]) Garrani and Giacomo (KILL, BABY…KILL!) Rossi Stuart essaying stock-types of lock-jawed astronaut, self-sacrificing professor and no-nonsense technician respectively. Equally predictable are the characters of the proud Russian expert, the astronaut's lonesome wife, the brainy female scientist, her lothario colleague and the crazed skeptic who reaches breaking-point as Armageddon looms. Nevertheless, despite – or, perhaps, because of – the lack of any really spectacular sequences (the rain of meteorites ostensibly about to annihilate mankind never pose that much of a threat since they are themselves destroyed just as they are entering the Earth's orbit!), one finds himself being charmed just the same by all these overly-familiar elements. Almost needless to say, hot on the heels of this movie came the Riccardo Freda/Mario Bava melange of sci-fi and monster movie – CALTIKI, THE IMMORTAL MONSTER (1959) – which was an altogether livelier effort...

The movie isn't half bad as long as you don't get distracted by the lips not matching the words, and as long as you accept it as a Spaghetti Sci-Fi movie (like a Spaghetti western, except in outer space). It is par for the time, the late fifties, when sci-fi in black&white wasn't supposed to be Oscar material. I like the Russian character the most. On another aspect, the English dubbing is interesting. The voice of the astronaut, McLaren, is sooooo familiar. Can anyone figure out who it is? I've heard the voice many times, as you probably have. But just can't come up with the name. It will probably come to me in the middle of the night. I just hope I remember to write it down. I wish there was a way to make a contest out of this.