Lee Eisenberg Unlike most of the movies riffed on "Mystery Science Theater 3000", Kurt Neumann's "Rocketship X-M" is not completely idiotic. While clumsily made, it does contain a warning about the potential for nuclear war (which seems more possible than ever nowadays). When a manned mission flies to the moon, it gets diverted and ends up on Mars, which turns out to have its own story.All these old movies about space travel come across as silly in an era when there's already been a moon landing and there's an International Space Station, but they're still fun to watch. As for the MST3K riff of this movie, that episode was the first to feature TV's Frank. Joel, Servo (voiced by Kevin Murphy for the first time) and Crow have fun heckling the movie. Good times.Anyway, not any sort of masterpiece, but still enjoyable.PS: Kurt Neumann also directed the original version of "The Fly".

writers_reign I've been reading some of the reviews here and am bemused by the number of times Destination Moon is mentioned as a rival product. In England the two films were shown as a double bill so by definition there was no rivalry as audiences were not asked to see one at the expense of the other. As to the film itself, seen today it's ludicrous and lacks credibility. The crew of the spaceship wear their ordinary clothes and are firmly anchored to the floor and free to move as they will without 'floating' i.e. no account is taken of the effects of gravity. Also conveniently ignored is how they eat, drink, and go to the toilet. Rather than a computer or even push buttons the ship is manoeuvred by levers that resemble the landing-gear controls of an airplane. Okay, maybe in 1950 audiences were happy to swallow all this but then is then and now is now.

dougdoepke This film beat the more highly publicized Destination Moon into the theatres in 1950 and thus kicked off the tidal wave of science-fiction movies that followed. It may not have been as realistic as the latter, but it was sure as heck a lot more fun. Despite some really hokey dialog and wildly improbable developments (aim for the moon, but hit Mars!), Rocketship does what every good movie should-- it holds interest throughout. The opening scene is especially impressive with its well-stocked news conference and especially the booming countdown to blast-off. Already there's an air of thrills to come. Sure, the characters are a collection of movie stereotypes-- the jet jockey (Bridges), the likable yokel (Beery Jr.), the sexy scientist (Massen), the stern chief (Emery), and the rather unsteady engineer (O' Brien). Nonetheless, each is played with conviction, and in a real casting coup, there's the lordly Morris Ankrum back at command central.Lippert Pictures was a budget-minded company to put it kindly. Thus it's to producer-writer-director Kurt Neumann's credit that he gets so much out of the material. Note the early scene where the crew climbs up to the control compartment. The opening shot of the rocketship interior could have simply placed the crew already in that central compartment and saved some money. But it doesn't. Instead Neumann has the crew climb through the rather impressive guts of the ship, thereby creating a more believable and eye-catching transport. It's touches like this that help compensate for the occasional triteness.Speaking of touches, how well I remember audience reaction to the Martian girl when she opened her eyes to reveal two blanks. The audience let out a collective shriek. Of course, that was 1950, still a long time before today's super-sophisticated special effects. But I doubt if any of today's effects produced a stronger reaction than those two all-white lenses. (Question-- is that lipstick I see on the girl in this 1976 enhanced version?)There's also a subtle subtext in the movie's latter half. 1949 was the year the Soviets first tested an atomic bomb, thus establishing the possibility of the Cold War going nuclear. Note the pointed comments crew members make about the destructive potential of radioactivity once they discover its effects on the Martian civilization. That would appear to be writer Neumann making some timely observations on a menace then beginning to emerge. On a similar note, Ankrum's closing insistence that space exploration must proceed despite an ill-fated first effort is years ahead of its time, and likely the first such declaration in the movies or any other popular medium. Then too, it was rather gutsy to crash the survivors on their way back to Earth. That unhappy ending warned audiences of the human cost that exploration would inevitably take.Setting aside its strictly commercial aspects, the movie does a lot better than would normally be expected of a Lippert production, becoming rather prophetic in its own modest way. I think that's one reason for both the movie's cult status and general durability long after most contemporaries of the 1950's have faded away. Rocketship X-M remains a minor classic to this day.

verbusen I'm seeing a pattern here. If you see a movie on Mystery Science Theater 3000, chances are if you go to IMDb.com there will be hordes of lovers of the film, yet it was picked to be on that TV show because it was sooo bad. I'm sorry but I read a lot about Rocketship X-M as being some landmark sci fi film that stressed realism. Well if that is the case I could write for several paragraphs about how even with 1950's knowledge this movie is utterly flawed. Gravity might be the first obvious observation, or as MST3K did as a skit "selective gravity", also what about when they are plunging to their death and they are just standing there looking out of the window, um would'nt the ship being upside down effect that scene? I would like to think that they started with good intentions and that it ran over budget or something but I think this movie was just plain cheese as in the from under type. Just compare this to "When Worlds Collide" which was released in 1951 to see the true place where this movie ranks, there's no comparison. The movie gets a 2 or maybe 3 on its own, its not even funny to watch on its own. It gets about a 5 or 6 as a MST3K episode as there is no action or much to make fun of, just bad, bad, bad, oh did I mention, it's bad.