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Destination Moon
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Destination Moon is a 1950 science fiction film directed by Irving Pichel. Filmed in Technicolor. Destination Moon was the first major science fiction film produced in the United States & won the Academy Award for Best Special Effects. The script is based on the novel Rocket Ship Galileo by Robert A Heinlein. The films producer, George Pál, later produced When Worlds Collide, War of the Worlds & The Time Machine. Four American astronauts blast off from the Mojave Desert & fly to the Moon. They establish a base, but are not certain they have enough fuel to return to Earth. Posters Of Destination MoonDestination Moon is a gloriously Technicolor movie about the first journey to the moon. A group of scientists decide to convince private US companies to assist to finance the building of a rocket to the moon before the Russians get there first. To show the rocket physics in simple terms a Woody Woodpecker cartoon is used. We follow the journey to the moon with its associated problems & drama.
This sounds very plain & simple today but one has to remember that when this film was made this was total theoretical science fiction. This film was made 19 years before the first Apollo moon landing. When viewed in this context Destination Moon is outstanding in its accuracy. The concepts of G forces, weightlessness, airlocks, 1/6th gravity on the moon & the physics of space travel would have been totally alien to most of the 1950s audience. The moonscape created in this film is uncannily true to life, despite some forgivable minor errors in the cracked appearance of the moons surface & the over brightness of the stars in the sky. The first words of the astronaughts on the moons surface in the film nearly mirror those of Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrian in 1969.
Destination Moon is an interesting & enjoyable little film. The special effects are decent enough especially the weightless characters & the take-off of the rocketship. The pacing & acting are more than satisfactory to provide some entertainment for an afternoon. The characterisation is somewhat lacking, & the four astronaughts in the main journey of the movie are almost interchangeable, but thats true of a lot of science fiction from the period. The DVD print is more than adequate, & the vivid Technicolor is bright & clear. It is not going to be the sort of film you watch over & over but its well worth adding to anyones sci fi collection. Destination Moon is an interesting film, if only to see how ahead of its time it was. Dated yes, but remember that this was made 54 years ago, two whole decades before the first moon landing. Viewed in context it is very impressive indeed.
John Richard Archer was a British race & political activist. In November 1906, he & Sylvester Williams became the first people of African descent to be elected to public office in Britain, with Archer becoming a councillor & later Mayor in Battersea. Archer was born to Richard Archer, from Barbados & Mary Teresa Burns, from Ireland, in Liverpool. He travelled the world as a seaman, living in the USA & Canada, then settled in Battersea with his wife, Bertha, a black Canadian. He ran a small photographic studio at a time when photography was in its infancy. Archer became involved in local politics & friendly with London radicals. In 1906 he was elected as a Liberal to Battersea Borough Council for Latchmere ward; at the same time, Williams won in Marylebone. He successfully campaigned for a minimum wage of 32 shillings a week for council workers & was re-elected in 1912. In 1913, he was nominated for the position of Mayor. There were negative, even racist, aspects to the campaign, with allegations that he did not have British nationality.
Posters Of Destination MoonEditors Choice: Destination Moon, High Lonesome, View DVDology