It could be my love of vintage SF in general, but still, there's something about these creeky old Italian space movies that keeps me coming back to them. Despite their often formulaic natures they somehow end up being oddly memorable, even if perhaps for the wrong reasons.
The movie here is notable because it's Antonio Margheredi's first feature. He would go on to do the mostly-charming Gamma 1 movies, along with lots of entertaining gothics, gialli, action and horror films. This is a clunky hard SF picture (or at least, it's trying to be hard SF) without the weirdness of the Gamma cycle and thus ends up being really dry and a bit unexciting.
nevertheless, the film prefigures 2001 by showing spaceship crews placed in cryogenic suspension for long space journeys. It's clear that someone involved in writing the script did some background reading and that is pretty cool. Unfortunately they get a lot of things totally wrong. The film shares in common with many others of its type, along with vintage TV shows, some real howler scientific errors. First off, nobody really seems to know what a galaxy actually is. This is just something you have to ignore, and when someone urgently shouts a line like "it's in the next galaxy, Commander!" with a worried look and a frisson of sweat, you just have to pretend they're actually saying something else.
The ships all have annoying and totally unmemorable names like ZX226 and LD410. This is another characteristic of the Italian space opera. Why can't they call 'em Gladio, Roma or something? Italians surely would give colourful names to their spacefleet. But wait, I forgot, this is dubbed in English of course with pompous American voice actors shouting the dialogue at one another! Actually I believe there are some real-life Americans in the cast, too, this time.
It's cool that a black guy has a position of respect on board ship and nobody even mentions it, but that's slightly undercut by the reporter's utterly flummoxed reaction to there being a woman in the crew. This leads to a totally bad non-sequitur romance, of course. In the end the black fellow, a friendly guy named Al, who is a really fun character, has to sacrifice himself. He was the best character in the movie.
There's some really poor model-work and an infamous explosion shot that is supposed to be in space but is actually clipped straight out of a movie about cars. Probably looked ok on the tiny low-resolution screens of the day. But what's really hilarious about this movie to me is the absolute gravity and seriousness with which everything is done. You just don't see this anymore. Normally, I actually appreciate this quality of old SF films, but this one's attempt to be hard science fiction and its simultaneous utter failure in that department renders the stiff acting and dialogue a real scream. nevertheless, I appreciate how hard they were trying with this -- I really do.
The movie here is notable because it's Antonio Margheredi's first feature. He would go on to do the mostly-charming Gamma 1 movies, along with lots of entertaining gothics, gialli, action and horror films. This is a clunky hard SF picture (or at least, it's trying to be hard SF) without the weirdness of the Gamma cycle and thus ends up being really dry and a bit unexciting.
nevertheless, the film prefigures 2001 by showing spaceship crews placed in cryogenic suspension for long space journeys. It's clear that someone involved in writing the script did some background reading and that is pretty cool. Unfortunately they get a lot of things totally wrong. The film shares in common with many others of its type, along with vintage TV shows, some real howler scientific errors. First off, nobody really seems to know what a galaxy actually is. This is just something you have to ignore, and when someone urgently shouts a line like "it's in the next galaxy, Commander!" with a worried look and a frisson of sweat, you just have to pretend they're actually saying something else.
The ships all have annoying and totally unmemorable names like ZX226 and LD410. This is another characteristic of the Italian space opera. Why can't they call 'em Gladio, Roma or something? Italians surely would give colourful names to their spacefleet. But wait, I forgot, this is dubbed in English of course with pompous American voice actors shouting the dialogue at one another! Actually I believe there are some real-life Americans in the cast, too, this time.
It's cool that a black guy has a position of respect on board ship and nobody even mentions it, but that's slightly undercut by the reporter's utterly flummoxed reaction to there being a woman in the crew. This leads to a totally bad non-sequitur romance, of course. In the end the black fellow, a friendly guy named Al, who is a really fun character, has to sacrifice himself. He was the best character in the movie.
There's some really poor model-work and an infamous explosion shot that is supposed to be in space but is actually clipped straight out of a movie about cars. Probably looked ok on the tiny low-resolution screens of the day. But what's really hilarious about this movie to me is the absolute gravity and seriousness with which everything is done. You just don't see this anymore. Normally, I actually appreciate this quality of old SF films, but this one's attempt to be hard science fiction and its simultaneous utter failure in that department renders the stiff acting and dialogue a real scream. nevertheless, I appreciate how hard they were trying with this -- I really do.