From my favorite movies..

Absolutely the worst movie.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

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.

This movie was a lot better than I expected.While it was another short movie with extended periods of nothing and the plot wasn't the greatest, the acting is above average and the movie isn't boring.They do a good job of covering the bases and making sure there are no plot holes but the plot is so average that it doesn't help that much.A scientist is accused of killing his wife and another man and putting them in a rocket and sending it into space.Instead of telling them to look for the those people, he just jumps in a rocket to go get the other rocket and prove they aren't in it.The best thing about the movie is that their space program is realistic, it doesn't work.Four stars, give it a shot.

I love old sci-fi films from the 1950s and because of that perhaps I am a bit more forgiving than many of the others who have seen this film. Of course the special effects are not so hot--that was pretty much true of all the films of this era and that might be why people don't particularly like this film. I noticed how the painting that was supposed to be the rocket and the actual rocket footage was VERY different, as the V-2 rockets they showed taking off looked nothing like the winged rocket. But the story itself, that I thought was exceptional and more than made up for the 50s space ambiance.The film was shot in the UK by Hammer Films (who would later go on to be famous for its monster films) and their most famous monster director, Terrence Fisher. The lead was Howard Duff--an American actor whose face you may just recognize, though his name is far from a household name. The rest of the cast are Brits and it is about a supposed British space program that soon anticipates manned space flight.It begins with Duff's obnoxious wife acting bored and petty at a party on the base where the project is being conducted. She leaves early and he soon follows--only to find her with her lover! What happens next to her and this lover is uncertain--you just know that they disappeared and MAY have been killed by Duff and stuffed into a rocket that was just shot into space. Well, this is the theory that a government investigator envisions when the two cannot be found AND the rocket goes off course AND the woman was known to be a skank. Duff is enraged and wants to do everything he can to prove his innocence--even if that means bringing the other ship back himself! Overall, the film has a deeper and more interesting plot than usual and its Cold War themes are pretty exciting--particularly if you remember that period of time. Interesting and worth seeing.

Weird amalgam of too many genres ends up being an okay time killer but not much beyond that. The plot has an American working in England on the British rocket program getting involved in infidelity, murder and espionage. "Loosely" based on a radio program, which I'm guessing had more than 75 minutes to get its tale across this is a film that simply has too much going on. The thing that everyone seem to remember is that this film speculates that the first people launched into space will be not for scientific discovery, but to determine if two missing people were launched into space as means of disposing of their bodies.Its a clever idea and probably the only thing that sticks with you about the film. The cast, headed by Howard Duff is quite good and they make the most over full script. Worth a look if you run a cross it or are a fan of director Terrence Fisher, but not really worth searching out.

Dedicated, but henpecked American engineer Dr. Stephen Mitchell (a solid performance by Howard Duff) works at a secret rocket base in England. When his faithless bitchy wife Vanessa (a perfectly snarky Cecile Chevreau) and her biologist lover Dr. Philip Crenshaw (Andrew Osborn) both disappearance, the shrewd and determined Dr. Smith (a marvelously smug turn by Alan Wheatley) suspects that Stephen killed them and launched their bodies into space. Stephen plans on going into space to retrieve the satellite in order to prove his innocence. Director Terence Fisher, working from a clever script by Paul Tabor and Richard Landau, offers an adroit and interesting multi-genre mix of murder mystery thriller, foreign espionage, and space exploration. The sound acting from a sturdy cast helps a lot: Duff makes for a sympathetic protagonist, the lovely Eva Bartok impresses as fetching mathematician Lisa Frank, and Wheatley is in peak smarmy form as the arrogant Dr. Smith. Plus there's fine support from Philip Leaver as kindly, jolly project supervisor Professor Koepler and Michael Medwin as eager fuel expert Dr. Toby Andrews. Reginald H. Wyer's crisp black and white cinematography and Ivor Slaney's rousing, spirited score are both up to speed. While a bit slow and talky in spots, this movie still rates as a most enjoyable picture all the same.