Horror beast
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Horror beast |
| Original title | Missile to the Moon |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1958 |
| length | 78 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Richard E. Cunha |
| script | HE Barrie , Vincent Fotre |
| production | Marc Frederic , George Foley for Astor Pictures |
| music | Nicholas Carras |
| camera | Meredith Nicholson |
| occupation | |
| |
Beast of horror ( English : Missile to the Moon = rocket to the moon ) is an American science fiction film from 1958.
action
The inventor Dirk Green is being cut funds for his planned moon flight project by the US military, although Green's moon rocket , which is on his property, is practically ready to go.
The local sheriff appears surprisingly and informs Green that the two convicts Gary and Lon have escaped. Since they could have hidden in the rocket, he wants to search them. During the search, Green precedes the sheriff and discovers the two escaped. Under a pretext, Green prevents the sheriff from entering the hiding place, but locks them up so that they cannot leave the missile.
After the sheriff leaves, Green presents Gary and Lon with two alternatives: Either they become members of his spaceship crew or they are handed over to the sheriff. You agree to the lunar expedition. During the preparations for the launch, Green's partner Arnold Dayton and his fiancée June Saxton enter the rocket unnoticed in search of Green. When the starting process is initiated, they can no longer leave the spaceship and have to take part in the lunar expedition.
During the flight June is sexually molested by the brutal and stupid Gary , which Green stops. When crossing a meteorite field, the rocket gets into turbulence. Green is seriously injured by a falling battery . Before he dies, he gives Dayton a locket and asks him to give it to his Lido. Dayton is confused as this information is incomprehensible.
Landing on the moon, the space travelers have to use space suits because the atmosphere is too thin for humans due to a lack of oxygen . They are pursued by clumsy rock creatures and flee to a cave where the atmosphere contains enough oxygen so that they can take off their spacesuits. They are attacked by mysterious figures who put them to sleep with a gas .
When the spacemen wake up, they find themselves in a palace. There they are received by the Lido, ruler of the Orlando realm. Only young women still live in Orlando. On the basis of Dirk Green's medallion worn by Dayton, the blind Lido believes that Dayton is Dirk, her lover, who was indeed a lunar inhabitant and worked as an agent on Earth a long time ago . Because the oxygen supply in the moon caves is decreasing rapidly and the inhabitants of Orlando are forced to leave the moon and colonize the earth. Dirk should scout out the conditions on earth.
But Lido competitor Alpha wants to become Lido herself and marry Dayton, whom she also thinks is Dirk. Alpha wants her earthly competitor June to be killed by a gigantic black spider , but the beast kills the moon girl Lambda, who in turn fell in love with the convict Gary. Alpha murders the Lido and declares itself the new Lido. With the help of Zeta, who fell in love with Lon, the space travelers manage to escape from the caves. Gary, who has appropriated a huge number of diamonds , is killed due to his greed when the rock creatures attacked by the harsh solar radiation. June, Dayton and Lon can take the rocket off the moon and return to Earth while the Orlando realm is in chaos.
Production notes
Beast of horror is a remake of Cat-Women of the Moon from the year 1953. In the film are documentary footage of the German V-2 rocket and scenes from rocket moon starts einmontiert . The exterior shots were filmed in Red Rock Canyon in the summer of 1958 . Actors wrapped in foam rubber acted as rock creatures .
Nina Bara (1920–1990) was one of the two leading actresses in the role of Tonga in the popular science fiction television series Space Patrol . However, after leaving the series, she had hardly received any engagements and was hoping for her breakthrough in the film business with Beast of Horror , which after Bill Warren did not succeed due to her exaggerated representation of the alpha.
Beast of Horror premiered in October 1959. The German premiere was on January 26, 1962.
Other performance titles included Terríveis Monstros da Luna ( Brazil ), Invasión de la Luna ( Mexico ) and Fusée por la Lune ( Belgium ).
Reviews
The lexicon of international film gave a succinct verdict: “Science fiction in penny-pound quality.” Leonard Maltin , who saw a lot of laughs, sees it similarly , only for the wrong reasons. Glenn Erickson said that the film is looking for the depths of mediocrity and is extremely successful in doing so, it is not possible to show a trip to the moon in a film without a budget. The spider is a poor puppet, but since no threads are visible it is still a high point of production.
… In the late 1950s, Astor Pictures developed an unenviable but justified reputation for releasing the very worst science fiction and horror films ... “Missile to the Moon” is not only one of the most boring, preposterous movies ever made, it is one most cynically motivated: just take the bucks and run ...
Bill Warren , Keep Watching the Skies ... , p. 573
Lore
There are several DVD editions available, also in German and a colorized version.
literature
- Ronald M. Hahn / Volker Jansen: Lexicon of Science Fiction Films. 720 films from 1902 to 1983 , Munich (Wilhelm Heyne Verlag) 1983. ISBN 3-453-01901-6
- Bill Warren : Keep Watching the Skies! American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties , Jefferson, NC / London (Mc Farland & Company, Inc., Publishers) 2010, pp. 573-576. ISBN 978-0-7864-4230-0
Web links
- Beast of horror in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Trailer on youtube.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for the horror beast . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , November 2011 (PDF; test number: 27 176 V).
- ↑ Missile to the Moon (1959). In: AFI catalog of feature films. American Film Institute , accessed February 22, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Beast of Horror. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 22, 2020 .
- ^ Leonard Maltin : Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide . Plume, New York 2015, ISBN 978-0-14-751682-4 , pp. 453 (English): “Lot's of laughs, for all the wrong reasons”
- ↑ Glenn Erickson: Missile to the Moon. In: DVD Savant. July 22, 2000, accessed February 22, 2020 .