Saturday, August 21, 2010

S02E11 - First Spaceship on Venus

Plot

The finding of a strange alien recording device leads to the discovery that alien life exists on the planet Venus. When contact signals sent to Venus are not answered, a crew of astronauts and scientists fly in a rocketship with the intention of landing on Venus to establish contact with these aliens. But on the journey to the inner planet, it is discovered that the recording device's actual message contains a dark secret, and their arrival on the planet itself reveals an even worse discovery.


Movie Review

What is it with these anti-nuclear films on MST3K? Were they just unlucky in their selection of these films, or do they find it interesting to continuously mock films with such hamfisted messages? Or perhaps it's because most films of this type are simply awful, as is the case with First Spaceship on Venus.

Okay, that's not entirely fair. This film, while not a good film, isn't an atrocious one either. It's nowhere near the caliber of, say, Bert I. Gordon's abominations, and it does have its own charm. Like other previous films on this show like Project Moonbase and Moon Zero Two, some effort is put into establishing some realism with spaceflight. While not entirely correct, it's not insulting, either. And the plot isn't a complete waste of time, either. In fact, it's one of the more interesting plots to so far air on this show. Given some better writing and some polish, it could've been a keeper.

But, as with other bad films, small things get in the way and add up to a negative experience. For starters, the interesting plot has several ridiculous moments in it that destroy any believability it might've had. Also, the movie is plagued not only by terrible characters, but an abundance of them. Seriously, there are far too many characters in this film, ensuring that most of them don't get enough adequate screen time to be memorable. Oh, some effort to add depth to some characters is attempted here and there, but it almost always comes off as forced and cheesy.

And then there's the dubbing. Yes, the dubbing. Originally a German film entitled The Silent Star, this movie features some wooden dub voices that either overact or underact - there is no in between. The film is also a victim of classic American editing: apparently the English version of the film was shorted drastically from its original German version, cutting out several story moments and removing characterization (and thinning it even more). One can suspect that the film was edited upon watching it, as several noticeable splices in the film are noticeable throughout, causing some erratic jumping in scenery. Not the original movie's fault, admittedly, but also not something in its favor.

If there's one positive that the movie can crow about, it's its visuals. Especially for a movie made in 1960, First Spaceship on Venus has a fairly good set design throughout, one that doesn't look like cheap sets a la Women of the Prehistoric Planet. Unfortunately, a lot of the goodwill is destroyed thanks to one particular set piece: a talking robot built by one of the many unmemorable characters. Portrayed as a smart machine and companion, his voice is so grating that one prays for him to leave a scene for fear of hearing him talk. The ridiculous plot thread about giving him a heart doesn't exactly help endear him, either.

Being an anti-nuclear screed, the movie does try to demonstrate the dangers of nuclear war, similar to previous movies on MST3K. The means of getting that message across is similar to that of Rocketship X-M's, though with a bit more complexity. Even so, its good intentions are crushed by the atrocious writing near the end, while also using three unmemorable characters who died at the film's climax essentially as sentimentality props. Better writing could've made it more effective, but as mentioned, this film does not have good writing.

While not a contender for worst movie of all time, First Spaceship on Venus is still a terrible film that sadly missed out on its potential.


MST3K Review

This isn't my favorite episode of season two. There are some very good riffs to be found here, especially at the end where the plot details and becomes ridiculous, but the quality of the jokes to be found don't reach the pinnacle of some of the more enjoyable episodes found in this season. Definitely not as bad as The Hellcats, but not as good as King Dinosaur, either.


Stinger Review


This stinger puzzles me, and not for the usual reasons. The stinger takes a moment in the film when a large group of rocketship grounds crew wave goodbye collectively to the ship's pilots. The only odd thing about this scene is that all of the crew members are wearing letters on their clothing, which was never fully explained in the film (though is likely some kind of task designation system). While weird, the sight of dozens of people waving goodbye while wearing giant letters on their clothing doesn't seem that big of a stinger candidate to me. It seems like this one needs to be taken out of context to really be bizarre, which seems to defeat the purpose of the stinger in the first place.

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