Now Playing: First Man Into Space (1959)
Pros: Effective use of stock footage for a semi-documentary feel; Above average, spooky black and white photography; Simple but effective monster
Cons: Obtuse technobabble will have you scratching your head; Somewhat implausible sibling rivalry
Pros: Effective use of stock footage for a semi-documentary feel; Above average, spooky black and white photography; Simple but effective monster
Cons: Obtuse technobabble will have you scratching your head; Somewhat implausible sibling rivalry
Ever since the first telling of the Icarus story in ancient Greece, couch potatoes the world over have found a thousand and one excuses for taking it easy, settling into that easy chair and letting some other fool take risks, test boundaries, and crash and burn in the process (and don't those crashes look awesome on our high definition 46 inch flatscreens!).
As couch potatoes have gotten ever lazier and ever larger, the vicarious lives they lead through television have also changed dramatically. Where once they were thrilled by images of soldiers storming beaches under heavy fire and "right stuff" astronauts blasting into space with thousands of pounds of highly combustible fuel under their keisters, now they thrill to the sights and sounds of celebrities blowing their routines on Dancing with the Stars and American Idol contestants not quite hitting their high notes.
In spite of (or perhaps because of) the tragic space shuttle accidents, piloted space flight no longer fires the collective imagination. Except for a small, dwindling number of space geeks, circling the earth at an altitude of a couple hundred miles does nothing more than elicit yawns. And proposals for actual human space exploration that might awaken at least some of us from our slumber -- going back to the moon, visiting an asteroid, making the long, arduous journey to Mars -- sputter around in the low atmosphere of our 24 hour news cycle and then unceremoniously crash like lead balloons.
It seems like the more we fiddle with our iPhones and tweet each other about the latest reality shows and misbehaving celebrities, the less able we are to think "big" or to take risks to accomplish something important (or even bother to cheer on other risk-takers). I won't go into details here on why I think piloted space exploration is important for humanity -- please see my post on the Czech space drama Ikarie XB-1 for more thoughts on the subject. But if we're to thrive as a species, we've got to somehow challenge ourselves beyond figuring out how to use the latest smartphones.
NASA X-15 pilots like Bill Dana truly had the "right stuff." |
With all the attention on the "spam in a can" Mercury 7 astronauts, few Americans in the early '60s fully appreciated the contributions made by the fearless test pilots who first broke the sound barrier, then flew to the edge of space and beyond in their cool, dangerous rocket planes. Chuck Yeager, the decorated World War II fighter pilot and the first man to break the sound barrier, is still the best known test pilot from this period, immortalized in Tom Wolfe's 1979 book The Right Stuff. Virtually forgotten today are the jet jockeys who fired up the engines of the coolest rocket plane ever, the North-American X-15, and took it to heights never before seen from a cockpit. To this day, the X-15, built in the late '50s and retired in the late '60s, holds the official record for the fastest speed ever attained by a manned aircraft.
Several X-15 pilots earned astronauts' wings from the U.S. Air Force for exceeding heights of 80 km (50 miles). One, Joseph Walker, twice flew higher than 100 km (62 miles), qualifying as an astronaut by international definition. Neil Armstrong, before he joined the NASA astronaut corps and eventually became the first to walk on the moon, donned the X-15 pressure suit and logged one of the fastest flights ever-- a dizzying 6,420 km/h (3,989 mph). And there was the inevitable tragedy. Major Michael J. Adams was killed on November 15, 1967 when his craft went into a hypersonic spin and the airframe broke up at an altitude of 18 km (60,0000 ft.). (Considering the ambitious missions designed for the X-15 it's fortunate that more pilots weren't killed during the program's nearly decade-long span.)
Cmdr. Prescott (Marshall Thompson) and Dr. Von Essen (Carl Jaffe) are worried that hot shot test pilot Dan Prescott (Bill Edwards) is not following the flight plan. |
We gather that the rocket plane program is a rehearsal for the day that they shoot a man into outer space for real -- the limits of man and machine need to be tested at extreme high altitude, data gathered and analyzed, and so on. Charles and Von Essen are relieved when Dan passes what they call the "controllability barrier" (presumably the altitude at which the rocket plane becomes difficult if not impossible to control), but the flight isn't over, and there's still a lot that can go wrong.
At an altitude of almost 100 miles, Dan the man can see the curvature of the earth, and he becomes giddy. (Okay, so the first actual American in space, Alan Shepard, only flew to an altitude of 116 statute miles in his Mercury capsule, and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale defines the limit of space at 100 kilometers / 62 miles, but we'll set all that aside for now.) He loses control of the craft, it starts to spin out of control, and he passes out. Fortunately, the unflappable Dr. Von Essen gets the pilot's attention over the radio and talks him down. "First, control yourself," he tells Dan (which come to think of it, is pretty good advice for anyone, at any time of crisis).
Dan crashes his rocket plane in the New Mexico desert (which looks more like a quiet forest in, oh, I don't know, the English countryside maybe… more on that later...), but emerges unscathed. As the Commander investigates the crash site, he notices a sort of shiny dust on the plane wreckage, but then doesn't think anything more about it. (Uh-oh… cue the ominous music.)
Dan is positively giddy at the prospect of being the first man into space. |
Dan's straight-arrow, duty-bound brother tracks him to Tia's apartment. He is beyond outraged: "You just wrecked $10 million in equipment and I find you lolligagging around here!" (I think Dan was doing more than lolligagging, but we'll set that too aside for now.) It's hard to believe Chuck and Dan are brothers -- Chuck is all business, and Dan is 100% all-American hot dog. Later, Chuck complains to the good doctor Von Essen, "How can I make him understand that even though he's up there in space alone, he still has to obey orders?"
In spite of Chuck's reservations, the military brass select Dan for the next test flight because of all the favorable publicity generated from the previous record-setting flight. When he gets to the altitude limit set for the mission, Dan keeps going. An exasperated Chuck orders him to keep to the flight plan, but he demurs: "No sir, I'm going straight up -- first man into space!" ("Top of the world ma!!") He fires his emergency boosters and the craft rockets to an altitude of 250 miles! In the control room, the somber Commander tells Von Essen, "he'll either hit the moon or orbit the earth for the rest of his life."
Unbeknownst to Chuck, there is a third possibility. A blizzard of meteor (?) dust hits the rocket plane. Dan separates the nose cone/cockpit from the booster, and down he goes. Back on earth, the recovery team finds the nose cone completely encrusted with a strange, silvery material. There is no sign of the fame-hungry test pilot who wanted to be the first man into space. Chuck eulogizes his brother: "Even as a kid, he was always climbing the highest tree…"
Tia (Marla Landi) reacts somewhat negatively to the shiny new coat of space dust that her boyfriend is wearing. |
First Man Into Space is a taut, well-crafted B sci-fi horror thriller. It uses stock U.S. military footage to good effect, lending an air of authenticity to the test flight scenes. And the monster is simple and well done. It's all the more poignant, given that it was once a human being, and not some strange invader from space whose motivations are a complete mystery. The cattle mutilations are a nice touch as well, and prophetic, given that cattle mutilations attributed to UFOs didn't hit the headlines until the late '60s. Marshall Thompson, an actor of limited range, is just right for the part of the stoic, by-the-book commander. And Italian beauty Marla Landi shines at the climax when she finds out what has happened to her lover (considering that she hardly knew English at the time, it's a very good performance).
Back at the lab, Cmdr. Prescott spends a poignant moment with what's left of his brother in an experimental pressure chamber. |
Von Essen's dry explanations and screwy speculations serve only to confuse the poor viewer, and should have been cut back drastically (the film never follows up on the idea that the dust was put there by intelligent design). A possible explanation for the nonsensical dialog can be found in the accompanying short documentary "Making Space" on the Criterion Collection DVD. Director Robert Day, who confesses he was never a fan of the sci-fi genre, also confesses that he and the producer were constantly rewriting the script on the set. I have strong doubts that they made it better.
Tom Weaver's book-length interview with Gordon was published in 2011 by Bear Manor Media. |
While the UK shooting locations weren't normally problematic, Gordon told Weaver that there was something of a glitch at the U.S. premiere of First Man into Space:
"The funny thing was that when we eventually delivered the picture to MGM, they turned it over to their distribution department, which of course had no idea what the background of the picture was-- they were just presented with the finished film and told to release it. Someone in the publicity department looked at it and said, 'It would be a great idea if we had the world premiere in Albuquerque, New Mexico, because that's where the film was shot.' So they staged an opening in New Mexico and it got a somewhat sarcastic reception [laughs], because the people recognized immediately it wasn't shot there!" [Ibid.]If you're not a native New Mexican and can overlook that the southwest desert looks like a sleepy English forest, and, like me you happen to be a fan of piloted space exploration (fictional or otherwise), you might just want to take a 77 minute joyride with the First Man Into Space.
Where to find it:
Oldies.com
"Can science prepare him for what no man has experienced before?"
I have this on the Criterion collection,which I mainly acquired for the Karloff movies,but I really had a WTF moment when I saw the New Mexico Naval Research Lab....that and when the state troopers tangle with the errant astronaut in one of our many swampy forests (?)...New Mexico is the 5th largest state,but unfortunately no ocean front or swamps
ReplyDeleteYep, if you're gonna try to pass off the boggy forests of ye olde England as New Mexico, you sure don't want to have your world premiere in Albuquerque, where they know what their own state looks like! :)
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