Richard Chatten Watching 'Space Probe - Taurus' is a salutary reminder of how lucky American International Pictures were to have been associated with the gifted Roger Corman. Without Corman, what we get is perfectly competent but thoroughly routine and uninspired, without the budget to create convincing spaceships or even to plunder a Soviet sci-fi picture for its effects. And it's not even in colour. The crew is the usual combination of three middle-aged looking men to one hot chick; the hot chick in this case being the late Francine York as Dr. Lisa Wayne, who wears the same unisex coverall as the men, but unlike them accessorises it with silver go-go boots instead of the lace-up army boots the others wear (presumably the quartermasters back on Earth didn't have them in her size). The name of the ship is apt, as she resembles a piece of porcelain in this bullpen. Dr. Wayne is initially charmlessly cold-shouldered by skipper Hank Stevens (James Brown) because he hadn't wanted a woman on board, before he eventually mellows and charmlessly falls in love with her instead. (Ho Hum...) The early scenes resemble Season One of 'Lost in Space' when it was in black & white. It then becomes 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' when - forced to make an emergency landing on an alien planet - they end up on the bottom of one of its oceans, to be attacked by crab monsters and a cousin of the gill-man from 'The Creature from the Black Lagoon'.Considering how excited scientists get at the slightest suggestion of moisture in outer space, they take the presence of oceans on this new planet in their stride. Dr. Wayne's supposed to be a scientist, but when they encounter what are obviously enormous crabs her first question is to ask "What are they?" We're told early on that the equipment the ship can carry is severely circumscribed by weight, yet it fortunately turns out to include scuba gear. Naturally the new planet has a breathable atmosphere, but I wouldn't relish sharing my new home with crabs the size of elephants; presumably any other gill-men would be dealt with the way the settlers saw off the American Indians.Bearing in mind that this was made the year that Malcolm X was assassinated, the most striking observation made by anyone in the film is by Dr.Andros after they've just killed a hostile alien whose ship they'd been trespassing on. He makes a number of comments about the unlikelihood of different species being able to peacefully co-exist that are remarkably near the knuckle ("We've got enough troubles on Earth now. I mean we're barely keeping from killing each other off...pretty soon someone on Earth decides that we don't like the way they look...after all, one of us is going to be a minority group. And the next thing you know, Whammo, we're trying to blast each other out of existence."), and remain as scarily pertinent as ever over half a century later.

Hitchcoc A foursome of astronauts head for the far reaches of space, looking for planets to colonize. There's a macho guy, a tiresome womanizer, an egghead doctor, and a beautiful young woman scientist. After numerous sexist remarks and inappropriate stuff, even for 1965, they find themselves at the bottom of an alien sea, where giant crabs hold forth. One of them is force to put on SCUBA gear (of course, they have SCUBA gear; they're in outer space) and try to test the waters. Meanwhile, macho man gets the hots for the woman he has criticized all along, and they make plans for when they return. Will they return? This is just a throwaway. Even the crabs appear to be filmed in an aquarium with a model of the space ship in the background. This is really awful.

kevin olzak 1964's "Space Monster" was very much the last gasp for black and white outer space epics, bypassing theatrical release as part of American International Pictures' television package, shown continuously throughout the late 60s-early 70s (the very last, prior to "2001," would have been 1967's "Mission Mars"). Undoubtedly shot around the same time as David L. Hewitt's "The Wizard of Mars" (even using the same alien mask, plus a gill-man costume pilfered from Jacques Tourneur's "War-Gods of the Deep"), so little intrigue actually happens in either film that one does tend to feel for the actors involved, with writer-producer-director Leonard Katzman confining all future efforts to the small screen (he died in 1996). Francine York, James Brown, Baynes Barron, and Russ Bender play the quartet of devoted scientists, no strangers to low budget filmmaking: the still lovely Francine York graced such popular cult films as "Mutiny in Outer Space," "Curse of the Swamp Creature" and "The Doll Squad," Russ Bender remained a favorite with AIP ("It Conquered the World," "Invasion of the Saucer Men," "The Amazing Colossal Man"), Baynes Barron had some minor genre credits ("From Hell It Came," "The Strangler"), and James B. Brown will always be remembered for playing the sniper's father in Boris Karloff's "Targets" (already a veteran going back nearly 25 years, he had no other genre credits). Apart from two alien encounters, one aboard another ship, the other underwater, we never leave the claustrophobic confines of the tiny sets. It's truly mind-numbing when the cast has to gaze at a bevy of ordinary crabs outside, and not recognize what they're looking at! Totally small scale in ambition and execution, the execrable "Space Monster" appeared only twice on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater, Oct 12 1968 (following 1965's "Frankenstein Conquers the World") and July 24 1971 (following Jerry Warren's "Invasion of the Animal People").

beable This movie is a classic. It has a sexist spaceship captain, who is very angry that a WOMAN has been assigned to his ship. The woman quickly puts him in his place. The special effects in this movie are totally unbelievable! You must see them! I am sure that other movies such as "2001" stole a lot of ideas from this classic. Also "Star Trek" is obviously playing homage to "First Woman In Space" with everything they do. WATCH THIS MOVIE TODAY! YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED! Although you might be terrified by the horrific space monsters.