Destination Moon (1950)
Directed by Irving Pichel
Starring John Archer, Warner Anderson, Tom Powers, Dick Wesson, Erin O’Brien-Moore

Flight to Mars (1951)
Directed by Lesley Selander
Starring Cameron Mitchell, Marguerite Chapman, Arthur Franz, Virginia Huston, John Litel, Morris Ankrum, Richard Gaines, Robert Barrat

Sure, these two films aren’t horror by any means. You could make a stretch to say that the space crews in each of these films get put into peril, but I don’t feel the point is to frighten anyone. What I do think the point is, especially at the time these were made, was to give viewers something they’ve never seen before, a very early look at traveling into space. Made over a decade before we would start sending man into space, these two films give us two very different tales of those courageous men and women blasting off the planet into the unknown.

Destination Moon was producer George Pal giving audience something fantastic, which was what he’d been doing since he started in the film industry, producing and directing shorts and features. His projects would make you watch in awe and amazement at what you were getting to see. And with Destination Moon, he took audiences into outer space and to the moon! Pal would later show us what happens when someone from out in space comes to Earth… and aren’t as friendly as we are, in 1953’s War of the Worlds. Pal was always giving audiences to blow their mind, as well as making them think. From films like When Worlds Collide (1951), Conquest of Space (1955), and especially The Time Machine (1960), he always left the audience amazed at what they were seeing.

The first part of the film is the scientists trying to figure out how to build the rocket and get it into outer space… before anyone else does it! That there is key. But besides the space race, the process of what they go through, figuring out fuel, and all that hard stuff, was somewhat close to reality. In fact, to explain all the head-scratching details, they screen a Woody Woodpecker cartoon for everyone… in the actual film! But it does give the laymen (and kids in the audience) a general idea of what they are going to do. I also loved the part during take-off where we can see the effects of the speed they are going as their faces look like they are being pulled back. Pretty cool for that time.

Directed by Irving Pichel, best known to classic horror films as Sandor, the vampire’s familiar in Dracula’s Daughter (1936), but also did his share directing, including The Most Dangerous Game (1932), starring Fay Wray and Leslie Banks, which was his directorial debut. But what Pichel, producer Pal, and the incredibly talented production designer Ernst Fegté (who got a Oscar nomination for his work here), they created a visual masterpiece here. I’ve always joked about Sci-Fi not being a real sub-genre, but this one is pretty close to pure science fiction. It’s showing movie-goers back in 1950 something they had never seen before, in glorious color and wonderful imagination.

This would have been the first motion picture to really capture space travel, which had a huge advertising campaign, spending twice the budget on it, to let the public know it was coming during its production. The problem was that independent producer Robert Lippert became aware of this movie being made, getting all this press, and quickly rushed a picture about space travel into production, getting Rocketship X-M (1950) into production and into theaters almost a month before Destination Moon came out. Even advertising it with “This is not Destination Moon“. Needless to say, this did not set well with George Pal.

Nonetheless, this is a very different picture than what Lippert gave audiences, both in story and in presentation. Destination is not action packed, a thriller, but just a wonderment of the imagination and eyes, and well worth seeking out.

The second film on this release is Flight to Mars, directed by Lesley Selander and produced by Walter Mirisch. As the title states, this is about the first rocket ship to the planet Mars but is a little more in line with other films soon of that era. As two characters state in the beginning of the film, one says “I wonder if they’ll make it?” while the second replies, “And what they’ll find it they do?” That pretty much sets up the plot for us. Cameron Mitchell, over a decade away from appearing in Mario Bava’s seminal Blood and Black Lace (1963), appears as a reporter having the chance to make the first trip to Mars to report back to Earth about it. The crew of scientists, 3 men and 1 woman, plan their way to the red planet, but run into trouble once they arrive. At first they are greeted by a friendly race of people who live underground. One of the crew starts to fall in love with one of the Martian women, which puts off the female crew member who had been pinning for him. Luckily, Mitchell’s wise-cracking reporter is there to step in! But the longer they stay while their rocket is getting repaired, they realize the some of the Martian people are not as friendly as they thought, wanting to recolonize on Earth, since Mars is a dying planet, with limited resources. Getting some help from some of the “good” Martians, they plan their escape.

Morris Ankrum plays Ikron, one of the leaders of Mars, that wants to steal the ship to go to Earth to invade. Ankrum was actually an attorney and an economics professor at Berkley before joining the theater. With close to 300 screen credits, he appeared countless genre films, mainly ones in the sci-fi horror genre and in the ‘50s. From titles like Invaders from Mars (1953) to Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) to low-budget classics like Zombies of Mora Tau, The Giant Claw and The Beginning of the End, all 1957.

Arthur Franz plays the leader of the rocket crew who falls in love with one of the female Martians, was another familiar face in the sci-fi / horror genre, also appearing in Invaders from Mars, as well as Jack Arnold’s Monster on Campus (1958), The Atomic Submarine (1959), even hitting a few in the ’70s with Dream No Evil (1970) and Sisters of Death (1976).

The real name behind this picture is producer Walter Mirisch. Included on that disc is an archival documentary on him which I found extremely fascinating and very informative. Knowing that he was behind changing Monogram Pictures, who was known primarily for poverty row films, changed them into Allied Artists, and produce films like The Maze (1960), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), and eventually a bunch of Peter Sellers films, and even the 1979 version of Dracula.

That’s one of the best parts of these releases from Film Masters. Not only do we get amazing looking prints, but a bunch of extras that we can learn so much about the films and those that worked on them. This set has audio commentary by Justin Humphreys on both features. There is also another documentary from Ballyhoo Motion Pictures on the making of Destination Moon, as well as an updated featurette called Interstellar Travelogues.

So yes, these are not horror films. But as fans of fantastic cinema, I think there is plenty of here to entertain everyone, especially taking a look at the very beginning of the sci-fi genre when space entered the picture.