Thursday, October 23, 2014

31 Says of Halloween - Day 23 - Movie 1



A test pilot disobeys orders and flies his ship 250 miles from the earth's surface. His ship passes through a strange cloud of particles which turn the pilot into a hideous monster in need of blood to survive.


First Man Into Space (1959) was obviously influenced by The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and would in turn influence The Incredible Melting Man (1977). It's attempt to present serious aeronautic experiments using stock footage, and it's one note characters, add more tedium than excitement. There are some neat things in the movie though. The compositional transformation of both the ship and the pilot is pretty cool, in spite of the pseudo scientific mumbo jumbo presented to explain why it happened. Also, while the transformed astronaut is a deadly monster, all is not as it seems, and the payoff here is a welcome change from how these stories from this period typically played out. It was also nice to see Roger Delgado, the actor who originally played The Master on Doctor Who, appear as a consul from Mexico.





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