First Man into Space (1959)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

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

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

A not too exceptional fifties science fiction film involves an impulsive astronaut who can't follow orders. The up side is that it has allowed the program to go ahead by leaps and bounds; the down side is that he is out of control. On a dangerous mission, he breaks through the earth's atmosphere and finds himself in orbit. While there, he passes through some space dust which coats his ship and him. The ship comes down, an automatic parachute breaking the fall (sort of hard to swallow) and when it is found, Dan is gone. We finally get to see him. He is in a monster suit that is impenetrable (actually it's his skin). He also has a lust for as many pint of bloods as he can get his hands on. He goes on a killing rampage. Hs brother, who warned him about his lack of coach-ability (spoilsport), is trying to save him while other work to do him in. He ransacks a blood bank and siphons several innocent people. The movie shots of space are better done than most, but the acting is stiff and uninspiring, with dull sets and little real action.

Released ten years before man actually landed on the Moon and during the height of the race to the stars between Russia and the United States, First Man into Space is oddly deficient in actual science. No, it's not very good, but it's okay for a few unintentional laughs.Simple plot runs like this: cocky ace test pilot Dan Prescott (Bill Edwards) is on a mission to fly an experimental plane/rocket (it's kind of both) up, up, and away, higher than anyone's gone before, and then come back down, nice and easy. But our Dan, he's a daredevil! So he goes higher and higher, trying to become the first man to go into space. Not the first IN space, just into it. I know, it's sketchy. Anyway, he does come back down, sasses his superior – his brother Charlie (Marshall Thompson) – and is immediately assigned to pilot the next plane, to go even higher.Which he does, only instead of making his turn and heading back Earthward, Daring Dan goes higher and higher, and this time his craft, bombarded by meteorites (I know, I know) and the ever-popular cosmic rays, is smashed open. Dan and the ship crashland. And then the killings start, and no one can find ol' Dan's body.As the picture hints, there may be some kind of ugly monster involved. I don't want to give away the twisty plot, but – oh, who am I kidding, there is no twisty plot. Dan's survived his crash, only he's now covered in some sort of protective layer of cosmic whatever. Seems that when his ship broke apart, this stuff coalesced on Dan's mortal human body in order to protect him from those nasty cosmic rays. (Doesn't explain how he could breathe when there was no air to be breathed, but perhaps they were SUPER COSMIC RAYS, now with added Oxygen!)Anyway, it's a funny movie.

What if Ed Wood had an actual budget of some type? And he really, really, really applied himself in his directing chores? And maybe had some other person do a polish on the script for him, to smooth out some of his legendary surreal dialog? And then he hired some people as actors that were much less embarrassing than anyone in his usual stock player company?The result would have been something close to First Man Into Space.It has a low budget, and some really obvious science fiction tropes. Everyone plays the whole scenario deadly seriously, but not SO seriously that they enter bizarro world, say, in the manner of Criswell in Plan Nine From Outer Space. If you want to be generous, you could say the acting is reserved and tasteful. If you want to be less generous, you could say the performances are stiff and mind-numbingly boring.There have been many other bad, low budget science fiction movies with similar premises (astronaut goes into space, comes back to Earth as inhuman monster), such as The Crawling Hand, The Incredible Melting Man, and that abomination to end all abominations, Monster-A-Go-Go. I'm sure there were some that pre-date this film as well.Nobody's shaming themselves here, but still, this is not worth seeking out as some sort of lost classic or anything. There are many science fiction classics of yore you should check out before this one. If you want a bonafide well-done, outstanding film, it isn't this. By the same token, if you want a hilarious, goofy, over-the-top slab of goofball incompetence to mock and deconstruct, this is not that type of movie either. Put this one on the back burner, there's plenty of other flicks to get to before you spend 75 minutes with this puppy.

All in all, First Man Into Space is a solid example of mid-level 1950s science fiction. It's not on par with Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, Forbidden Planet, Gojira, nor The Day The Earth Stood Still, but it's amongst the better entries in the second tier, and a good deal of the 'believability factor' has to be credited to the always underrated Marshall Thompson. In both presence and ability, he was one of the few B film actors it can honestly be said it was a shame that he wasted his talent in them. The obvious exemplar of this was Vincent Price, but not even Price could pull off military and leading man roles the way Thompson did. And, although he eventually did garner some level of fame on television, to me, he will always be best recalled in such films as this, where the joy received, especially to young boys, was always far greater than it reasonably should have been. And how many films, A, B, C, or Z, can claim that?