Simply A Masterpiece

hyped garbage

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

'Riders To The Stars" was directed by one of the actors Richard Carlson and an uncredited Herbert L. Strock and mainly concerns a space mission to catch a meteorite before it burns up in the atmosphere. Most of the film though is about the recruiting and training of astronauts to go on that rather far fetched space mission and though it is not boring it isn't exciting either. They don't go into space until nearly an hour into the film, cue some stock footage.The main cast of William Lundigan, Richard Carlson and Martha Hyer are adequate but they are fortunately supported by the veteran actor with the unique voice Herbert Marshall who gives a solid performance as usual. King Donovan has a small role which is a shame as he is always watchable and Dawn Addams has an even smaller role.It is filmed in colour but it doesn't add much to the movie and Harry Sukman's music is not one of his best. In fact it was his first score in a long career. The line of dialogue "the nature of my doctorate will have to remain a secret for a few days" has always charmed me for some reason. Perhaps because it has the ring of poetry about it.

With sincerity and good intentions there was a smattering of Non-Alien-Flying Saucer-Soul Snatching Movies in the Fifties. This one is "Scientific" to a fault but somewhat succeeds at being an Adult friendly story, that Kids flocked to, about the yet to be, but soon to be, Adventure of Manned Space Travel.It was all so new but we were approaching the time that all Sci-Fi Nerds just knew would happen and after we split the Atom, everything now seemed not only possible but probable. Hence we have this Movie and a very few others that tried its low-budget best to put up on the screen as Entertainment, this highly anticipated new era in Human endeavors and exploration.The problem is that all this Science stuff is pretty boring when viewed as entertainment. Documentaries are informative and interesting but most are hardly effectively entertaining. They are what they are and this is what it is. A Movie marketed as entertainment that in the end is only slightly so. It is more interesting than entertaining and was more informative in 1954 than it was exciting.It does manage, against all odds, to be engaging enough in a time-capsule kind of way and most likely created a buzz among Movie goers. It also, may have attracted the readers of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics Magazines. But the irony is that there are probably more accurate prognostications in this Movie than in those highly sophisticated, pretentious periodicals. They were almost always wrong.

I was only nine or ten years old when my Mother, a science fiction fan, took me to see "Riders To The Stars", although I may well have begged to see this "space movie", probably expecting something like "Space Patrol" of "Flash Gordon". I may have seen it once since but I remember it vividly: the front of the V-2-style rocket ships opening to capture a meteor, the tension of the dangerous mission, and being haunted for many years by the ******************SPOILER WARNING************************************* gruesome end of Richard Carlson's character. By today's standards this is surely a cheap, schlocky rocket ship "procedural"; to a young boy in 1955 it was magical, a window into the exciting future just around the corner. My Mother expected to be on a space ship to the moon by 1966; somehow things did not work out quite a readers of Popular Mechanics and other futurist publications told us. In many ways "Riders To The Stars" is unusual: a fictionalized exploration of meteor catching. As far as I know, up until this movie the only role played by meteors was as storms threatening space ships or crashing into planets, not as celestial objects to be captured and returned to earth for study. I wonder how many youngsters were attracted to an interest in science by this motion picture?Addendum: Thanks to Turner Classic Movies I have recently seen "Riders to the Stars" again. The grisly death was not of Carlson's character after all; how odd one's memory is! However, it remains a grim picture both in the mind and on the screen. Noticeable now is the use of gliding to return to earth - just as the Space Shuttle today if with unlikely tiny wings. The distinctive voice of Herbert Marshall, radio's "The Man Called X", and his playing Lundigan's father, makes for an odd balance. Nartha Hyer is certainly attractive in her coveralls! Apart from the real cyclotron, the special effects are only a little better than "Flash Gordon" two decades before. All the seemingly negative comments notwithstanding, this is a fine "nuts-and-bolts sci-fi" motion picture and the hero did bring her back a star.

As a long time classic sci fi fanatic, I must admit I'd never even heard of this film before. This comes as no surprise as it seems to have had essentially no significant release to VHS or DVD yet. For the fan of classic black and white '50s sci fi, this is essential viewing. Though the model effects are primitive and the "science" is rather dubious, the cast is first rate. Reasonably effective use of stock footage of U.S. military V-2 rocket tests helps overcome some of the budgetary limitations.