"Destination Moon" - 1950.

Tagline: "Two years in the making!" I see this a fair amount in my B-movies. For example, "Forbidden Planet" was "2 and 1/2 years in the making!" I guess that was a long time compared to how fast they banged out the typical movie in the 40s and 50s.

Plot: First, let me say DM is not my typical crappy B-movie. Quite the contrary; it is a thinking person's space travel movie. You won't see weird aliens

or scantily clad women (or fully clothed women, for that matter)

and the science is actual real science. Not pseudo-science that helps further the plot. This was "Apollo 13"

fifty years before that movie was made. But here's the problem: Good B-movies are harder to poke fun at than bad B-movies. My forte is mocking crappy costumes

and scientific inconsistencies. There are very few mistakes in this movie, so it's a bit like a rock climber trying to ascend The Washington Monument....just nothing to grab on to. Anyway...

Plot: Two dudes, General Thayer (on the right)

and rocket scientist Cargraves (left) fail while testing their newest rocket.

(I am NOT cleaning that up!) They're out of money and backers now, so it takes a while before they go to Jim Barnes,

a leader in the aerospace engineering business. General Thayer entices Barnes with a challenge: be the first to send a manned rocket to the moon. Barnes balks at first, but Thayer makes a point that hits home with Barnes: the first country to travel in space will be the first country to protect their country from space. Barnes is rich, but not that rich. He calls in the giants of industry

from around the country and shows them a cartoon.....no, really. A Woody Woodpecker cartoon

that explains space travel and lays out the basics of getting a man on the moon. It isn't long before all the filthy rich suits are on board. Cue montage of men working feverishly.

It isn't long (in the movie anyway) before we see the rocket ship taking shape.

Now, some of this is models and some of this is full scale,

which is pretty cool. I wonder if any of this full scale rocket still exists? Anyway, many things are against them. Time, money, government permits and then one of the crew gets appendicitis.

That means Joe,

who was the helper, is now taking his place. All these delays push Barnes to make a decision: do it now. As in, right now. Less than 24 hours to launch. They can't dream up new rules to delay them if they're already in space. But the local sheriff

still tries to deliver one more court order forbidding lift off. Luckily, the boys at the gate stop him and get word to the crew.

They decide to go now. So, up into the space ship they go,

waving merrily to the sheriff below while pretending they can't hear what he's shouting. The sheriff can't stay in the lift off area and he can't serve papers to astronauts that are already in the ship, so he skeedaddles! The boys have just enough time to buckle into their comfy little space couches.

The supports are moved and then blast off! Now we get to see all the neat-o effects nobody bothered with in all those other space travel movies. We have the effects of G-forces,

weightlessness in space (and the upset stomachs that go with it),

a view of the Earth from above that actually involves cloud cover,

and neat-o space gadgets that let the astronauts move around, like magnetic boots.

We also get to see that they are human and make mistakes. Joe greases the Doo-hickey (even though it clearly states in the manual not to) and they are forced to go to the outside of the ship to initiate repairs. Which means they all get to don their gay apparel.

I mean that in the new sense, not the old sense. Blame General Thayer, the colours were his idea.

I don't mind the brightly coloured space suits but two things pop into my mind when I see the

astronauts standing together. This:

and this:

anyway, while they're outside the ship Cargraves wanders off and lets go of his tether.

That would be okay, but he also kneels down, which releases the magnets on his boots, sending him adrift.

What a dork! Y'know, for a rocket scientist he's pretty dumb. Luckily, we have a hero aboard in the shape of Jim Barnes. Barnes grabs an oxygen tank and uses it as propellant

to take him out to where Cargraves is, grab him and bring him back. They fix the Whatsit (or was it a Doo-hickey?) and get back inside just in time to bring the ship in for a landing on the moon.

This time it's Barnes who makes the boo-boo and has to burn precious fuel to correct his landing. But he sets it down without any horrendous space kablooie and soon it's time to explore the surface.

One of the few complaints I have is shown here. The surface is shown to be cracked,

like a dried up river bed. But that's fairly minor. The producers are still allowed to stay for tea and cookies. Also, a bit too mountainous

of an area to be setting down in, don't you think? But still, pass the Pirate cookies. Mmmmm...Pirate cookies....where was I? Oh yes, the exploring gets cookin'. Soon they are taking samples, taking pictures with their Mondo Camera

(not what it's actually called) and goofing around in the gravity-reduced atmosphere.

It's all good fun until word comes back from the egg-heads on Earth.

They've crunched the numbers and too much fuel was lost with the botched landing. They are far too heavy.

Uhm...no, not what I meant. When I say "they" I mean the astronauts are too...y'know what? Never mind, never mind. Let's just keep going. So, the astronauts start hucking out whatever isn't necessary for the return trip.

Anything that isn't nailed down gets the ol' heave-ho. But after weighing and calculating another call from home tells them they are still overweight....I mean the ASTRONAUTS are still overweight

....Oh, for God's sake...anyway, they start cutting away anything and everything.

Then word comes again: still too heavy by approximately 110 pounds. Desperation sets in. They can't take off heavy. If they do they'll only run out of fuel before breaking free of the moon's gravitational pull and crash back to the surface. But there isn't anything else to leave behind. Except....

one of them. Yes, it's decided someone has to stay. But how do you decide such a thing? While the three original astronauts argue over who is the most noble, Joe, the pinch hitter, quietly slips out

with the last space suit and tells them to leave him behind. What are they going to do? Open the window and yell at him?

They plead with Joe to come back in but it's no use. Then Barnes gets an epiphany. (Sounds like a luxury car, but it isn't.) He knows how to take off with everyone and still shed the extra 110 pounds. I would explain it to you, but truthfully, I rewound this part, like, three times and I still didn't get it. It involves Joe filing a small hole in the doorway of the airlock,

passing a rope with an oxygen tank

tied to his spacesuit through that small hole

 

and then pressing the button and booking it upstairs. I dunno...if I was smart I wouldn't be delivering auto parts for a living, now would I? You figure it out and drop me a line. Anyway, it works and they blast off

without crashing back into the moon. Hooray! We don't get to see them land on Earth (I guess the budget was blown by then) but we see the moon in the rear-view mirror,

 

as it were. The end!

 

Things I learned from this movie: 1- Joe was played by Dick Wesson.

Joe was supposed to be from Brooklyn so all da way tru da movie youse guys gotta hear 'im tawk like dis, see? It gets old in a hurry. So, to prepare you, I have this exercise in talking Brooklyn-ese: repeat after me...."Thoity doity boids sittin' on da coib, a-choipin' and a-boipin' and eatin' doity woims"...repeat as needed. See a doctor if your Brooklyn accent lasts longer than four hours. Do not operate heavy machinery while speaking with a Brooklyn accent,

2-  This isn't the same Dick Wesson that was famous for announcing for Walt Disney. Totally different Dick. Please get your Dicks straight,

3- the cartoon used in this movie is interesting on two notes: 1-it marked the first time that Woody's

voice was supplied by Grace Stafford, who would go on to voice Woody Woodpecker (among many other Walter Lantz characters)

for over 20 years, and 2-NASA actually used the full length version to educate the general public about space travel,

4- here's another guy that needs a machine with lights on it to count backwards from ten,

5- the panoramic view the astronauts first see on the moon

was created by painting a 13-foot long mural that was then wheeled in front of a stationary camera. Holes were even punched in the painting and back lit for "stars",

6- the producers of a different space travel movie, "Rocketship X-M"

noticed all the publicity "Destination Moon" was getting and tried to capitalise on it. The producers of "Moon" quickly put the kibosh on that and "X-M" was legally forced to mention in it's promotional material that it had nothing to do with "Destination Moon" in any way,

7- the effects of the G-forces on the astronauts were shown by passing fishing line through the padding of the "space couches", gluing it to the actors faces and pulling down. Ouch,

8- the one and only female character in this whole movie is Mrs. Cargraves,

played by Erin O'Brien-Moore. She was a lovely woman, more impressive because Erin was terribly burned in a restaurant fire ten years before this was filmed and spent years enduring painful operations and procedures to re-emerge once again on the silver screen as a beautiful woman. I love stories like that. Take that, adversity! Up yours!

9- Jim Barnes was played by John Archer

who won his contract in a radio contest! Pretty cool, right? Archer also won his new name to go along with his contract. Archer's real last name? Bowman. Cue irony.

 

Guess that mess! Hereeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee we go!

 

 

If you picked the photo of the actress who once played Punky Brewster, than you have won! Nothing! But hey, it's still a win. Don't get the reference? Google "Punky Brewster" and look at the middle name of the actress who played Punky. Man! I have to do everything!