Just perfect...

Excellent adaptation.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

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.

In the mid-50s most episodes of the early TV sci-fi show Rocky Jones: Space Ranger" were assembled into a number of TV movies for re-broadcast. Unlike some of these recycled TV movies, Menace from Outer Space has less of a serial feel to it, and flows as if it were intended to be a feature-length film from the beginning.To summarize the Rocky Jones show - Jones (Richard Crane) is a space-ship captain who flies around the solar system with an improbably named sidekick "Winky" (played by ill-fated child prodigy Scotty Beckett) representing the United Worlds - an interplanetary political entity which has a very strong resemblance to Star Trek's federation. Also like Star Trek - the Rocky Jones series also consistently cast women in positions of considerable power and responsibility - a bold move for 1950s TV. Like later series from the Star Trek franchise, the show also employs pseudo-scientific black-box technologies and technobabble quite liberally in order to avoid plot holes and speed bumps on the highway of logic.In this story arc, Rocky and his extended family (a little kid named Bobby, prodigy scientist Veena, an elderly professor and, of course, the stalwart Winky) are drawn into high-stakes interplanetary political intrigue . One of Jupiter's moons, formerly believed to be uninhabitable, has launched a missile at the earth and forensic evidence concerning the missile suggests that the moon has a tremendous wealth of mineral resources never before suspected. Of course, Rocky is immediately dispatched to attempt to establish peaceful trade relations.The special effects are not bad for their time, but the average viewer today will probably find them laughable. The cinematography and directing are quite good for early TV, and the editing creates a fine pace for this family sci-fi space adventure.The script is predictably silly, but the characters are very consistently developed from show to show, and they are all quite likable. The acting is serviceable for its intent - family TV viewing.Recommended for those interested in Sci-Fi TV history and pulp sci-fi film addicts. Keep what this is intended to be in mind and keep your expectations low, and you just might have a good time with it!

Similar to the earlier patch job known as "Crash of Moons", Space Ranger Rocky Jones (Richard Crane) assembles his gang here once again to avert a threat to Earth, though not as ominous as the one in the earlier film. Most of the action as it were, takes place on Fornax, a moon of Jupiter. The mystery of the film seems to be how Professor Newton (Maurice Cass) believes that the environment on Fornax might be hostile to humans, when eight years earlier an Earth rogue named Cardos exiled himself to the moon to escape his criminal past. There he's been ingratiating himself with Zoravac (Walter Coy), the ruler of Fornax.What gives the film some of it's dubious fun is the extensive use of pseudo scientific jargon. Making a return appearance are the viseograph and the astrophone, but perhaps most impressive was the mechanical canary used to test the atmosphere on Fornax; too bad they didn't come up with a more colorful handle for it.This time around, Rocky's young ward Bobby (Robert Lyden) is given a playmate, the daughter of Zoravac named Volaca. As expected, the pair wind up in places they don't belong, but manage to help Rocky and Winky (Scotty Beckett) save the day and the millennium. Once again, Winky has the film's most memorable line - "Well rattle my rocket reflexes".Though uncredited in the film, bad guy Cardos is portrayed by Nestor Paiva. You might recognize him as the Amazon boat captain Lucas from a couple of the "Creature of the Black Lagoon" movies.Like it's predecessor "Crash of Moons", this film is a fun diversion, even if just to get a view of how far we've come in both space technology and film making. I got a bit of a chuckle out of the mention of an interplanetary agency called the 'Office of Space Affairs'. Had it still been around for the launch of the Star Ship Enterprise, they might have been kept real busy investigating Captain Kirk.