Assignment: Outer Space (1960)

Must See Movie...

Best movie ever!

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Space Men finds Rik Van Nutter on an assignment for the Interplanetary News in earth year 2116 on a space ship with a secret mission. They are charged with saving the earth itself from running into another runaway space ship that's spitting out radioactive heat. If it collides with the earth or even assumes orbit around it the results could be fatal for all life on earth.This ship is really run on a business like basis by Captain David Montresor and his ship has nothing on the Borg, his entire crew is referred to by number. But he's not all business, in the middle of this mission Montresor takes time to notice Gabriella Farinon especially after Van Nutter saves her life. These two start squaring off in heat over Farinon who fills out those space suits real nice. But as is usual in triangles they'll be an odd one out. You'll have to watch this rather cheaply made Italian science fiction epic to find out just who.

*Spoiler/plot- 1990 Assignment: Outer Space, The Earth is threatened by a rogue computer controlling a Earth spaceship orbiting Venus and moving closer. Differences between the crew are tense as a runaway spaceship heads for planet Earth. *Special stars- Rik Van Nutter (CIA man Felix Leiter from 'Thunderball') stars as a obnoxious but decent reporter on a space mission. Alain Dijon as the authority figure butts heads with everyone and seems to be doing his best 'Ed Sullivan' impression ordering everyone about in the space service. The plot has a interesting black helpful and fatherly character (choreographer/actor Archie Savage) with stark white hair that provides most of the film's necessary 'exposition' to glue the film's plot together. His film presence is huge and overwhelms all others in camera frame. *Theme- Hunanity, when working together, can always beat the odds. *Based on-rocketry of the 50's. *Trivia/location/goofs- Huge 'continuity' errors in this film's photographed scenes from one to another. *Emotion- The special effects are good. The script is poor and makes this film an effort to watch.

This movie isn't half bad. At first glance, you think it's just another cheesy, sci-fi B-movie. Outside of some technical blunders (things done outside the parameters of reality) it's pretty good. Al is a very interesting character. I think a remake of this movie wouldn't be a bad idea. Steven Spielberg once said, "An audience will believe even the most far fetched fantasy if it's done seriously and with a lot of credibility". So given the right cast, and a good rewrite of the original screenplay this could make a good, modern day sci-fi. I'd even go as far as purchasing a remastered version if such care were given to preserve it.

Very odd sci-fi film. Filled with quirky little details of some historical interest: The film is Italian and overdubbed in English; but if you watch the actors' lips carefully, they are mouthing the English words; so the film was intended for an English language market from the start.The writers assume that the Russians will win the space-race of the time, hence the reporter refers to the spaceship crew as "cosmonauts).The film claims to be shot in Technicolor; this simply cannot be the case. Occasionally the color red shows through, but much of it does look black and white. When Technicolor washes out, it takes on a light blue tint - other processes get very blue, light green, or, as here, simply washed out all together.Gabriella Farinon is very easy to look at; she later did a very pretty spread for the Italian edition of Playboy Magazine (1975)(some of it can be searched for on the 'net), but her film career went pretty much nowhere.The year is 1960; that may make this the first film ever to depict a black male as extremely intelligent, brave, wistfully philosophical, and treated by the other crew members as simply another crew member, no reference to race whatsoever. I'm afraid that would make this one of the most important films ever made, in terms of social history (which doesn't mean it's a good film - it isn't).Director Antonio Margheriti, AKA Anthony M. Dawson, was extremely prolific; however, a filmography search, both here at IMDb and on Google, only discovers his fantasy films, and a small handful of westerns; but I remember his name popping up on almost every other spaghetti or sauer-kraut western produced in the '60s, at least until Sergio Leone came along (and radically changed that genre).Yes, I can see the influence of this film on Kubrick's 2001; but beyond the film's essential pessimism, it's unclear why Kubrick would be impressed by a film so poorly made.My viewing confirms a previous reviewer's note that the explosion of a spaceship is represented with brief stock footage of a car blowing up in a parking lot. Why?! Not the lowest budget imaginable for such a film can excuse this gaff - it would have been more effective to take the spaceship miniature and toss it on the ground - and then step on it.Yet despite flaws like this, the writers seem to be determined to deploy science and technology (at least as it was popularly known at the time) in a fairly realistic manner.A real stew of a film, made of leftovers as yet not fully cooked.