Richard Chatten Despite the title, for most of it's running time 'Riders to the Stars' is less science fiction than a sober Cold War air force drama in colour detailing the recruitment and training of a team of white American males chosen by computer for the virtual suicide mission of going into space in order to capture a meteorite.There's an absurd romantic title song and a perfunctory romance between Martha Hyer and William Lundigan to sugar the pill, and as Dr. Jane Flynn Hyer delivers a token speech about the wonder of space travel. But the film makes no bones about the military rather than scientific imperative behind all this trouble and expense; and that Uncle Sam has to establish a foothold in space before the usual unspecified Unfriendly Foreign Power gets there first ("a space platform operated by a dictatorship would make slaves of all free people").First-time director Richard Carlson was left free to concentrate on the talk by placing the visual side of the film in the more than capable hands of veteran Hollywood cameraman Stanley Cortez, who heightens the already baleful mood with plenty of Gothic lighting. When the film finally takes off into space, colour is extremely effectively used in the rather improbably spacious cabins of the three ships that go up; which goes some way towards compensating for the unimpressive model rockets which in no way resemble the V-2s seen in the previous stock footage.

Michael O'Keefe An experimental rocket falls back to Earth; but upon examination months of bombardment by cosmic rays, scientists are not satisfied with the lack of info they were wanting. Dr. Don Stanton (Herbert Marshall), Dr. Lockwood (Richard Carlson) and Dr. Richard Stanton (William Lundigan) are seriously wanting to know more about the molecular structure of meteorites and what protects them while entering the Earth's atmosphere. With the encouragement of Dr. Jane Flynn (Martha Hyer), there is a plan to send up special made manned rockets built for short-duration flight to capture some meteors from the upper atmosphere.Whimsical, but serious minded sci-fi directed by Curt Siodmak filmed at Culver City's Hal Roach Studios for Ivan Tor's Productions. This often over looked film might have been reaching for "harder" science fiction than what what was found in the current bombardment of the atomic bomb generated monster movie genre.Rounding out the cast: George Eldredge, King Donovan, Dawn Addams, Robert Karnes, Michael Fox and James Best.

henri sauvage Second in Ivan Tors Productions' "Office of Scientific Investigation" (O.S.I.) trilogy, "Riders to the Stars" belongs to that sf sub-genre of straightforward space exploration epic -- no ray guns and bug-eyed monsters allowed. Which is no doubt why I found it so boring, when I caught it on the afternoon Big Show back in the 1960s.Thanks to TCM, I've had a chance to see it again, and while it's undeniably leisurely-paced in parts and suffers from a tragically inadequate effects budget, it's still a far better film than I remembered. However, much of my appreciation comes from the fact that it tickles my nostalgia nerve and has some nifty stock footage from the early days of America's space program, which at the time mostly consisted of shooting off captured V-2s out at White Sands. So viewers who don't have the fond memories of and/or historical interest in this era of the Space Age will probably find this pretty dull stuff.The writer -- Curt Siodmak -- deserves high marks for doing his research on the subject, thereby making the section of the film depicting the painstaking selection process and rigorous training of our trio of astronauts remarkably prescient at times. The science behind their dangerous mission isn't so well-thought-out, but it provides for some minor thrills as the astronauts attempt to chase down and retrieve a meteor from low Earth orbit.Worth watching, especially if you consider it as a companion film and precursor to "Gog", the third and final entry in the O.S.I. series.

Robert J. Maxwell It's rather an interesting story about sending up three manned rocket ships to capture meteors for scientific purposes. The first half I found a little turgid. Out of a dozen men, three are found qualified to pilot the ships and, as in "The Right Stuff", are put through some grueling tests. The astronauts are Robert Karnes, William Lundigan, and Richard Carlson. The ground crew aristos include Herbert Marshall and Martha Hyer.The plot isn't entirely unpredictable. We hardly get to know anything about Robert Karnes. (Someone calls him a human robot.) So we know pretty much right away that he's going to be dead meat in this enterprise. Then there is Richard Carlson. There's more doubt about him. He was a leading man in many of these science fiction films and was never killed off. On the other hand, during training he receives a "dear John" letter from his flighty girl friend, Dawn Addams, a stunning commercial model. Often, such a letter portends a dramatic end, a one-way ticket to Elysian Fields. William Lundigan, though, we know will pull through. He's not only the son of Director Herbert Marshall but he falls for Martha Hyer and vice versa. He's also cheerful, kind, brave, thrifty, and obedient and probably helps old ladies across the street.That's all in the first half of the movie. The pace picks up in the last half, when the three men finally find themselves way, way upstairs in pursuit of suitable meteors. The model work is rudimentary, reminiscent of the Buck Rogers serials of the 1930s, so it's avoided as much as possible. The tension of the flights doesn't last very long but it's effectively conveyed.None of the performances are remarkable in any way. Most of the actors, those whom we recognize, are their usual reliable selves. That includes Martha Hyer. It wouldn't matter that she looked like the Texas Beauty Queen that she was -- her features arranged in a conventionally beautiful and thoroughly uninteresting manner. It's that she can't act either.Not that the dialog helps her, or anyone else for that matter. People stand a few feet from one another and speak in what linguists call a telegraphic register or style. Hyer turns to a radio man and says crisply, "Increase gravity to ten G's," or, "Shut rockets down," or, "Slow descent!" Pronouns and articles and modifiers and imprecations are dropped for no particular reason, as if the messages were being billed by the word.Up to a point, it all works okay. It's never boring, and it's never challenging. It even has a 1950s theme song with lyrics. And what lyrics! "Riders to the stars. That's what we are, every time we kiss." A routine entry in the genre.