So what was happening in 1950?
Let's see... Sunset Boulevard, Rashomon and
All About Eve were at the theaters, Ray Bradbury published
The Martian Chronicles, Edgar Rice Burroughs and George
Bernard Shaw died, Sen. Joseph "Commies! Get 'Em Off Me!"
McCarthy was starting his own little power trip, Communist China
invaded Tibet, Communist North Korea invaded South Korea...
Whoa... that's a whole lot of Commies.
Small
wonder then that the Red Menace is such a driving force in Destination
Moon. Ballyhooed as "Two Years in the Making!",
this 1950 film was long revered as a model of scientific accuracy;
though it gets a few of the practical details wrong, it is certainly
prescient about the Space Race, made as it was a full seven years
before the real thing was kicked off by the U.S.S.R. and its
Sputnik.
We begin with two men in a bunker, anxiously awaiting
the launch of a rocket: they are Dr. Charles Cargraves (Warner
Anderson), the brains behind the missile and its satellite payload,
and General Thayer (Tom Powers), the military man who got the
appropriations pushed through after months of struggle. The rocket,
unfortunately, barely takes off and draws a picture of the human
small intestine in the sky before plummeting to earth and exploding.
Cargraves, knowing his design was tested and perfect, feels the
failure was due to sabotage (those filthy Commies!). Thayer agrees,
but also realizes this means the end of the rocket program and
his military career. Cargraves squares his shoulders and vows
to return to his lab work, as both men watch their dream burn
on the desert floor.
Two years later, Thayer
visits Jim Barnes (John Archer), a Howard Hughes-type who runs
a massive plant that builds the planes he designs. It's not just
a social call, Thayer reveals - he wants to rev the rocket program
back up, but this time in the private sector. He feels that American
Industry can design and build a rocketship in the time it would
take a government program to even think about starting
one. Cargraves, he tells the industrialist, has spent the last
two years perfecting an atomic engine that will not only allow
them to escape Earth's gravity, but journey to the Moon.
Why the rush, Barnes asks the general. "We're not the only
ones trying," Thayer announces ominously. Those filthy, Godless
Commies!*
That's
all Barnes needs to hear, and he hosts a get-together of the various
luminaries of the Industrial world. To prove to them that the
trip is indeed feasible, he shows them a Woody Woodpecker cartoon.
No, I'm not kidding. Woody is used to demonstrate the basic principles
of physics and space travel to the ignorant industrialists (and
anybody in the audience that didn't read science fiction pulps
or Popular Science). But even more than the testimonial
of everybody's favorite psychotic woodpecker, it is the announcement
by Thayer that whoever gets to the Moon first (and sets up missiles
there) will rule the world (those filthy, Godless, murdering Commies!),
that works the attending millionaires into a patriotic frenzy,
and the project begins.
It isn't long before the rocketship is built, and
it's one of those elongated-
teardrop-with-fins
beauties - a design that I am still more than a little bitter
that NASA did not employ (though I am sure they had their reasons
- like, say, practicality). There are unforeseen problems,
however - for one thing, they are denied permission to test their
atomic engine, unless they move the entire ship to a South Pacific
island where atomic testing has already occurred. The project
almost out of funding, Barnes decides to launch without an engine
test in 17 hours, just before the launch window closes. He, Thayer
and Cargraves will be the crew, along with the guy who designed
and installed the radio and radar systems.
Oops! That guy has appendicitis, and his assistant
Joe Sweeney (Dick Wesson) is pressed into duty. Ah, a wise-cracking
Brooklyn guy! And here I was wondering where the Odious Comic
Relief was! Joe agrees to go simply because he does not believe
the ship will get off the ground.
Well,
it does get off the ground (just seconds ahead of a court order
forbidding the launch), giving everyone a chance to contort their
faces to show the effects of many G's pressing down on them. This
begins the first of many instances where the Eggheads must explain
to Joe what is happening and why, as Joe is also our Ignorant
Audience Surrogate. Thus physics and the mechanics of zero gravity
must be explained all over again (though why they just didn't
show Joe the Woody Woodpecker cartoon is beyond me). This is where
some of the technical accuracy does come in - when the astronauts
eat, they take the trouble make an effort while swallowing, and
use shoes with magnetic soles to walk about - some clever camera
tricks are employed here.
The
inevitable problem does crop up, though to my surprise, it did
not involve the meteor shower I had thought mandatory in all space
flicks. It seems that Joe, stupid prole that he is, greased the
radar antenna before they left, and now the grease has frozen
in the cold of space and the aerial will not extend. It's time
for an EVA, and for Joe to get more lecturing when he fears he
will fall out of the airlock into space. Still, it's Cargraves
who intentionally slips his safety line to inspect the engines
and winds up adrift in space (take that, eggheads!), and
must be rescued by Barnes, who uses a spare oxygen tank as an
improvised jet pack. I really love the soundtrack in this scene
- a trumpet fanfare whenever Barnes lets loose another smoky white
blast of oxygen.
The moon landing turns out to be much rougher than
anticipated (shades of the last-minute maneuvering on the Apollo
11 landing!), but the ship and crew, at least, are intact. Barnes
and Cargraves waste no time stepping out on the lunar surface
and claiming it in the name of the United States (take that,
you filthy, Godless, murdering, treacherous Commies!). Oh yeah,
for the Good Of All Mankind. At least until we get the missiles
up there.
The
various scientific sidetrips are taken as Barnes gets some bad
news from home: he used up too much fuel on that landing, and
they have to lighten their load or they'll never make it home.
So much for all of Thayer's mineral samples and the astronomical
plates Cargraves has been taking. Even after offloading practically
everything, sawing all the ladders in half, and ditching all but
the bare minimum of oxygen and rations - they still have to ditch
110 pounds or they'll never leave the Moon's orbit. With the ship
stripped to the walls, this only means one thing... somebody has
to stay behind.
While the eggheads are arguing over who is the most
noble and will therefore stay behind, Joe - wearing the last spacesuit
(the rest were jettisoned) steps outside and announces that he
is staying behind (take that, eggheads!). Barnes, however,
comes up with a MacGyver-esque plan that will get everybody home,
because we're smart and, dammit, American! Though I note
they also threw out the cushions on the accelerator couches, and
are lying on cold, naked metal for the liftoff. Ouch. The end.
Back
in my review for Space
Monster, I complained that this is the type of movie
no one makes anymore*
- the Space Exploration movie - mainly because they would be
compared, unfairly or not, with 2001: A Space Odyssey.
There are parallels that can be drawn between Destination
and 2001 (colorful space suits, for instance);
but while both remain compelling in their own ways, the
Kubrick film has a distancing effect, as an important part of
its story arc is that mankind is at a dead end, and the next
stage of evolution has become necessary; this imparts a certain
sort of leadeness, a deadness on the characters and proceedings.
This is absent from DM - there is an intellectual liveliness
to the tale's unfolding, as the characters rise to meet challenges
both before and after the launch. No need for evolution here,
Mr. Monolith : life seems full of possibilities, just waiting
for strong, willful men to reach out, grab them, and shake them
for all they're worth.
There
is also a terrible earnestness about the story, though, that
seems to keep it from rising to the level of fun that could
be reached. Here there are no rock men, no cat women, no giant
spiders. Just some fairly hard science and the magnificent paintings
of Chesley
Bonestell, who for many years was THE MAN as far
as space art was concerned. Sadly, this aversion to sensationalism
seems to date the picture worse than any technical errors would
have - and there truly aren't many errors on display.
Sure, we know now that this is not the way to go to the moon,
but it was in 1950 - and kudos must be made to the filmmakers
for still being able to wring tension from the modern viewer
during the adrift-in-space and who-stays-behind segments. Destination
Moon was very successful upon its release; of course, when
a movie is "two years in the making!", the Cormanoids
cannot be far behind... Robert Lippert managed to get his Rocketship
X-M into the theaters a full month before DM. Ah,
knock-offs....the surest sign of success. An even surer sign
of success is the fact that practically every space-faring movie
for the next fifteen years featured a ship that was some variation
of DM's Luna.
The movie is probably the best adaptation of Heinlein (the
source novel was Rocketship Galileo) that I've yet seen
- Puppet Masters and Starship Troopers both glommed
onto the most superficial aspects of his writings and ran with
them, losing the novel's headier aspects totally. Here, though,
the concept of Captains of American Industry as Brave Pioneers
Doing What Has To Be Done in the name of Enlightened Self-Interest
is pure Heinlein. As are the main characters, all Competent
Individuals doing what is Right in the face of the small-minded
- taking off in defiance of the court order, even laughingly
calling to the sputtering 
lawyer,
"Sorry, can't hear you," over the noise of the gantry
elevator, is a particularly Heinleinian moment.
You know, I wouldn't half mind living in Robert A. Heinlein's
universe- your companions would all be Competent Individuals,
and all a person had to do to succeed was hold on to their innate
sense of right and wrong. Courage and confidence would be plentiful
commodities. And in the case of this movie, a corporate presence
would not be immediately suspect.
Quite a difference half a century makes, eh?
