Starring Ken Clark, Michi Kobi, Tom Conway, Tony Dexter, John Wengraf
Directed by David Bradley
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
An international crew of scientists take off on a rocket ship to land on and investigate the moon, which they discover is a dangerous world with a hidden civilization.
Writer/producer Fred Gebhardt offers a science fiction tale with low-grade special effects, but the quality of the actors and some excitement in the script made this an enjoyable programmer for me. Starring Ken Clark as the American commander, Tom Conway as a Russian geologist, John Wengraf as the German designer of the spacecraft, and Michi Kobi and Anna-Lisa as the ladies aboard, there's a number of interesting personalities to pay attention to. Cory Devlin, as the Nigerian navigator, was especially interesting to me, allowed to showcase his intelligence and spirituality, without a sign of stereotype, and treated by his shipmates and the screenplay with respect. A subplot involving Wengraf's shame of his father, and Richard Weber's hatred of that man, seems unnecessary but makes up what little conflict there is among the crew. As our crew traipses out upon the moon, the perils are low-tech but believable enough, and Michael Andersen's score brings some eeriness and tension to those scenes. The film is far from a great science fiction entry, and may not even be as good as Gebhardt's followup, The Phantom Planet, which reuses some of the costumes and opticals. I found it to be enjoyable enough however, and worth my time.
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