War Of The Satellites (1958)

Starring Dick Miller, Susan Cabot, Richard Devon, Eric Sinclair, Michael Fox
Directed by Roger Corman
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A scientist sending manned satellites into space witnesses their destruction by a cosmic barrier, and after ignoring an alien warning to stop, he's replaced by a duplicate ready to sabotage the missions.

Roger Corman tackles an outer space adventure, with a story and special effects by the team that were everywhere in low-budget sci-fi in the 1950s, Jack Rabin and Irving Block.  The story's however a little more ambitious than the production design and effects on this production can keep pace with.  The chairs the space travelers strap themselves into to survive takeoff are clearly Barcaloungers from a furniture showroom, a message from space arrives in a tiny model rocket, and wires suspending spaceships and planets are clearly visible.  Still, the picture's a lot of a fun, with plenty of action on Earth and aboard ship, including a rare heroic lead for character actor Miller, and spotlights for plenty of other Corman regulars in the cast, from Cabot, to Devon, to Beach Dickerson, Bruno Vesota, and Corman himself playing a mission control operator.  Roger keeps things tightly paced, Walter Greene's bold music score sustains excitement, and a few well-staged camera tricks and effects allow us to suspend our disbelief, even when the cheapness shows through.