Really Surprised!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

The acting in this movie is really good.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

When this film started out, I was expecting one of those films that is trying to depict space travel in a sort of realistic way. Or as realistic as a film of this type can be. However, this film was just completely more strange than I envisioned it to be as I watched it via the cult television show, Mystery Science Theater 3000. This film just did so many things differently and into totally unexpected directions, which is why I gave the film a two rather than one. Because, in the end, it was still rather bad and not every unexpected turn is a good one. The budget for this one seems rather high too, for a film from 1960 at 150,000 dollars, and so when you are using lawn chairs as seats on your super high tech rocket, I cannot give you a pass. Just another in a long run of space films that MST3K has riffed and I do have to say it was one of the funnier space movies they did. Watching it though, this film along with nearly every space travel movie they have done has one thing in common, but I shall get to that later.The story has a group of twelve people setting out on an expedition to the moon. It is a joint expedition with many countries involved, though the captain is an American, heck ya! Their goal, to land a space craft on the moon and to study it. And what a spacecraft it is! It is nicer and larger than the one in First Spaceship on Venus! Multiple floors and they even get to bring along a doggy, a couple of kitties, some birds and monkeys! This trip will be a riot! That is, until the deadly meteorites come close to striking the ship, and this is what nearly all the space travel films that MST3K have in common. A scene where meteorites come close to hitting or in some case do hit the ship and place it in peril! Then they finally get to the moon where things seem banal to start, but then you have two crew members going off from the others to make out, you have one of the twelve getting sucked to his doom in kitty litter and yet another burning his hands because he just had to touch the strange running liquid! Turns out there are moon people on this planet and they say leave the cats and get off! Of course, the two lovebirds are still on the planet and literally now prisoners so what does our crew do? They promptly run the cats out and haul butt out of there. How heroic is that? More meteorites and then the earth is freezing and self sacrifices are made as well as traitors revealed and in the end they spend probably less than 25 percent of the film actually on the moon.This film made for a very funny episode of MST3K as it was much funnier than a couple of the other space films they have done. I was just not expecting the whole moon people thing in the film as that made this film totally crazy. I also do not recall heroes that fail this badly except maybe Adam Chance from the film, Agent from H.A.R.M! I think that it does benefit from this being a Mike hosted show, for me anyways as I always thought he was a better host. Joel seemed very hit and miss to me, while Mike always seemed more on point; however, this is jut an opinion and a personal preference. I always laugh out loud more often in Mike episodes and I laughed out loud during this one a lot! So, the film did some things that were sort of interesting, but they also did some pretty lame stuff. The budget seems way too big for them to say they have invisible shields over their face rather than just have them wear helmets with glass in them. Yes, they actual say that they have an invisible shield over their face instead of just having a glass plate. It did go where I was not expecting, but they just did not stay on the moon long enough...if you're going to mention moon people and insinuate that they are there, show them. The whole last part of the film was rather idiotic as the earth starts freezing and I kept expecting them to go back to the moon, but no, the moon really was not in this film all that much considering it was in the title.

This movie has been misunderstood and slammed by some of the reviewers. At the time of the production in 1959, we still didn't even know exactly what the Earth looked like from space! All we had were a pitiful few almost useless "trophy" satellites careening around the Earth... Martians and intelligent life on Venus were still open topics for scientific discussion! It was a great time for speculation and open-minded thought. And on the other hand, the Cold War era movies always had to have a political morality issue thrown in... they actually still tried to put values into their work. Todays audiences should be proud to stand on the shoulders of the people who built the world they have the luxury of spitting on. It's actually pretty cool to watch the maker's conception of future space exploration. It's a shame we are too prejudiced to share their dream for an hour or so. The rocket may resemble a butane lighter and the meteors may not be real, but hey... it's an old movie!!! Get a grip on yourself and a bowl of popcorn and enjoy this piece of pre-spaceflight speculation for what it is.

I had wanted to see "12 To The Moon" for a long time ever since I came across a review of it in the Leonard Maltin movie guide. The review gave the book's lowest rating (BOMB), but it also said it was "an ambitious failure." That description intrigued me, so when the movie was recently broadcast on Turner Classic Movies, I watched it.The movie is more progressive-thinking than other sci-fi movies of the time when it comes to casting, casting an international crew including two minorities (and two females.) However, when the script comes to making each crew member an individual, it pretty much fails. There is very little effort made into making each crew member stand out in his or her own way. Also, some of the character actions are pretty laughable. Are we really to believe that the linguist on the crew could read alien script immediately on observing it? The movie also fails in other areas. While the sets constructed that depict various parts of the surface of the moon aren't bad, the rest of the production values are both dated and shabby. The rocket has a COMPASS that is consulted during the flight to and from the moon! The astronauts, walking on the moon, are wearing lace boots and gloves that aren't connected to the rest of the space suit! On the flight to the moon, we see several times stars in the background shining through the near-transparent rocket as it moves from one corner of the screen to the other. (Actually, I think it's the same special effects shot repeated all those times.) To be fair, the first two-thirds of the movie were mildly intriguing, making me wonder what the space crew would find and what would happen to them. But the last third of the movie is tiredly predictable since you have seen this stuff in countless other movies before. This limited intrigue and the few other decent bits of the movie aren't enough to save the movie, as you might have guessed. You can easily skip this movie without thinking you're missing something.

Let me just say first, that it was a very noble idea for the moon to be explored as a global effort. They had representatives of many nations and even a black man and two women! (Actually pretty bold ideas at the time.) And even in the midst of the Red scare, they had a Russian, who, despite being a jerk, stops another European from sabotaging a mission to save the U.S. Yes, the movie seems to have been made with noble intentions towards world peace. That said, this is one big turkey. First, no one involved with the movie had any idea about what the moon and space were really like. (They have steam coming out of craters, and several clusters of meteors just between earth and the moon.) Second, the SFX are pitiful. (The ship at times has visible strings, and at one point a stick. The moon also appears to have Stage lights at one point.) These ingredients makes it a fairly awful movie. My recommendation? Watch the MST3K version and applaud the good intent but laugh at how awful everything else is.