Spaceflight IC-1 (1965)

Memorable, crazy movie

Best movie ever!

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I stumbled upon this movie and unfortunately missed the beginning, however it was quite easy to catch up on the basic plot. What first intrigued me was that the info button showed this as one star, yet the little bit of dialogue I had heard seemed pretty intelligent (a grouchy meal time exchange is happening when a lovely character who looks uncannily like Natasha Richardson comes in and cheerfully says "good morning" and another character replies, "how does she know it's morning, or even good"...also another actress looks very much like Felicity Jones). I have no faith in the ratings done by these cable services--I once saw Citizen Kane rated 2 stars (it's since been updated to 4) and Deadpool, 4 stars, and the 3 Godfathers described as "...three outlaws on the lamb..." Yikes. ...so I dove in. I notice many of the scathing reviews here are from at least 4 or more years ago, pre-Trump. One of the things I noticed immediately about this movie is how perfectly timely it is. We have had the hottest recent years on record, the EPA is being stripped, auto emission regulations reversed, he's bringing coal back (yeah, right), and climate scientists are saying that without CO2 emission reductions, we're on track to be at 900 parts per million for CO2 by 2100 (in context, pre-industrial revolution, about 200 years ago, CO2 was 280 ppm). We are on track to recreate the early Eocene Epoch. A baby born today will be 83 in 2100 and by the time his or her grandchild is 83, it's possible life on earth will pretty much resemble the dystopian vision portrayed in so many science fiction works. And thus we land in the world of Spacecraft IC-1, where a group of people are carefully chosen to go to an Earth-2 colony and populate it with a healthy, as perfect as possible genetic line. Meanwhile, back on messy old earth, the population is oppressed by what sounds like a nefarious dictator class and a strict code known as RULE, "the Reformed United League Executive council". This apparently was supposed to take place in 2015 (something I probably missed at the beginning)--fast forward to 2017, and instead of trying to fix this beautiful, perfect planet full of trees, rivers, mountains, waterfalls, butterflies, and rainbows (thanks Bill Maher), we have pledged NASA 20 billion dollars to send men to Mars. Billionaire hobbyists are busy spending their spare change on elaborate bomb shelters in New Zealand and manned Mars missions, because what do you do with all that money--certainly not help your fellow man on Earth. One of the main criticisms of this movie is how cheap it looks--in other words, it doesn't have a glossy, futuristic look. Please remember that this was made in 1965, 4 years before man landed on the moon. Under the circumstances, I think the film's vision is just fine. In fact, I admire that they put the characters in ordinary clothing and didn't try to cook up some crazy futuristic look. It kind of reminded me of the simple look of a Twilight Zone episode. Keep in mind, if you re-watch the original Star Trek, it looks pretty cheap and cheesy too by modern standards. The other part of the movie's plot that I thought was pretty well done was that of mutiny. Really, mutiny is timeless and what happens aboard Spacecraft IC-1 isn't so very different than what happened on the Bounty. Overall, of course the special effects are very outdated by today's standards, but if you overlook this, the story is complex and intriguing, the acting is decent, and the dialogue is quite well-written. Give it a chance.

Low-rent at every conceivable level, this overheated British space opera has a turgid script, laughable "special effects", ham acting--except by lead Bill Williams, a reliable American character actor who usually plays a good guy but here does a good turn as the ship's tyrannical captain--flat and dull photography and isn't worth spending your time on. The story of a crew being sent on a 25-year journey to a habitable planet because Earth is on its last legs had possibilities, but hack director Bernard Knowles shoots everything in the most boring, unimaginative ways possible, without anything even remotely resembling thought, flair, or any kind of style whatsoever. Even low-budget veterans like Edward L. Cahn or Sam Newfield would have given some pizazz to this suffocatingly dull, plodding cheapo. Don't bother with it.

As earth has become more uninhabitable a desperation journey to a new planet that is going to take years to complete goes awry when the ship's captain becomes completely unreasonable. The crew is made up of husbands, wives, and children, picked out by earth super powers to start a new colony. As well, the ship also carries some other passengers who've been frozen, to be thawed out and revived when they get to their far off destination. The story goes in several interesting directions, with a mutiny led by the ship's doctor, the captain who's wife hasn't gotten pregnant (which provokes classic insecurity symptoms), not a good development for a captain of a space ship carrying humanity's last chance at avoiding extinction, the kids on board, the shifting allegiances between the crew, etc... However interesting the film is thematically, it suffers from a lack of resources, looks incredibly cheap, and has an unknown cast that utters a lot of bad lines.

A spaceship on the way to populate the new world "Earth 2" endures a mutiny when the tyrannical leader tells a woman with a critical disease that she can't have a second child. People argue a lot. There is a "closed circuit man" (a head in a glass case) and people whose bodies have been frozen (to later be revived upon arrival). Not much to entertain or surprise here and almost what I would call a "non-ending". The most recognizable cast member to me was child actor Mark Lester.