Assignment: Outer Space (1960)

This is possibly Antonio Margheriti's first film, as I've read somewhere, or perhaps his second feature, as I've read somewhere else. It may also be the first Italian sci-fi film ever made, but then in the crazy world of cinema from a foreign country from almost 60 years ago, who knows what is true and what isn't? This one stars Rick Von Nutter (great name) as a roving reporter sent into outer space to a space station to report on something or other. Once awoken from hypersleep (just like Alien!) he's told that basically he's a pain in the arse and no one likes him. He space walks from the shuttle to the space station and it's round about this time where you can guess that the special effects budget perhaps wasn't that large. Also, when Rick tires some fancy moves out in space and almost gets himself killed, you get the feeling  that Rick's brain isn't that large either.Once he eventually gets to the space station he's basically told he's a pain in the arse again! Rick sort of proves them right when he ventures back into space, saves someone from a meteorite, but destroys gallons of space fuel in the process! Turns out the Cosmonaut he saved is a girl, which seems to confuse him for a moment, until the film then becomes Assignment: Under Garments.Rick's got to get into this lady's pants and also get involved in stopping a runaway space station that's heading for Earth! We also get a sequence here involving another space ship which crashes on Venus, and we're given a split second shot of an explosion taking place in a car park, complete with cars? I'm not making this up. I guess you couldn't really ask the projectionist to pause and rewind the film to the head scratching thing you've just witnessed while watching the film in the cinema.First time I tried to watch this film I was in a coma almost straight away, but second time round it's not so bad. It's the weakest Margheriti film I've watched so far but is still full of his trademarks: namely loads and loads of miniature sets! Tiny models of astronauts floating about in space certainly help the film along, as do all the crappy shots of people floating through space, simulated anti-gravity acting from the cast, and the idea that it's impossible to conceive that women might work in scientific fields in the 22nd Century.

This movie is not as bad as some of the reviews suggest.It's made on a shoestring budget but still pretty neat.The special effects are better than you'd expect considering and it keeps your attention.The plot.In the 21st century.Ray Peterson, reporter for the Interplanetary News, is assigned to write a story aboard a space station. Tension mounts between Peterson and the station commander, who believes he is in the way, but has orders to leave him alone. Errant spaceship Alpha Two enters the solar system and its photon generators are radiating enough heat to destroy Earth as it approaches. It falls to Peterson to try to figure out a way to enter the spaceship, disarm the generators, and escape before suffocating.

OK, bad FX but given it was 1960 don't be too harsh in that judgment. Not having seen all SF films from that era it's hard to say whether it was below standard or not. Star Trek didn't get so much better by 1967, substituting flashing lights for analog gauges and completely rewriting/ignoring physics. I liked some of the techno babble here - the multi-stage rocket, the sleep chamber, the arched trusses inside the space station, weightlessness, hydrazine, the paramilitary dialogue. Tossing objects out to detect the beams and stay in the middle seems reasonable and inventive for a mere reporter. "Pecking the lobe" is an electronic way to do the same thing against enemy radar in modern warfare. There was a story here but things got compromised, as usual in movies time and space (ie distances), are ignored in order to cut to the chase (see Armageddon, 1997). The guy waxing philosophical during his space walk has been done in almost every space movie since, and even Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, et al spoke that way once on earth. Anyhow, good for a laugh.

Now and then you encounter a film so tiresome that the thought reviewing it is every bit as tiresome as the film itself. Such is the case with ASSIGNMENT: OUTER SPACE, also known as SPACE MEN, a 1960 Italian flick.The story is unimpressive. A reporter (Rik Van Nutter) is assigned to cover the goings-on aboard a space station--and happens to arrive just in time for a nuclear space ship to go out of control and threaten the earth and everyone on it. So they all blast off for Mars, and then they blast off for Venus, and then they blast off for the runaway space ship. There is a romantic subplot and more uninspired cliffhangers than a Pearl White serial.The special effects aren't, the actors are stiff, and there are numerous insults to audience intelligence along the way. The absolute best thing I can say for this movie is that I've seen worse dubbing jobs--and now and then it does have an idea that seems interesting, although in truth nothing much comes of it. Unless you are a die-hard fan of lousy 1960s sci-fi, give this one a miss.GFT, Amazon Reviewer