Destination Moon (1950)

Director:

Irving Pichel

Writers:

Robert A. Heinlein (novel)
Alford Van Ronkel (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

August 1950 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | Sci-Fi

Tagline:

TWO YEARS IN THE MAKING!

Plot:

One of the first science fiction films to attempt a high level of accurate technical detail tells the story of the first trip to the moon.

Plot Keywords:

Moon | Astronaut | Scientist | General | Doctor

Awards:

Won Oscar. Another 2 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

John Archer	...	Jim Barnes
Warner Anderson	...	Dr. Charles Cargraves
Tom Powers	...	General Thayer
Dick Wesson	...	Joe Sweeney
Erin O'Brien-Moore	...	Emily Cargraves
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Grace Stafford	...	Woody Woodpecker (voice)

Runtime:

92 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Certification:

Canada:PG (Ontario) | USA:Not Rated (DVD) | Finland:S | Sweden:Btl | USA:Approved (certificate #14432)

Filming Locations:

General Service Studios - 1040 N. Las Palmas, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

George Pal Productions

Trivia:

In order to make the space suits appear to be in a vacuum they were padded to make them seem inflated. The padding and the studio lights made the suits so hot the actors could wear them for only a few minutes at a time.

Goofs:

Continuity: The crew first looks back at the earth through a glass hatch in the floor (looking 'downward' through the spaceship's cylindrical shape), as though that hatch in the floor were a window into space, then a short time later they open that hatch to go on a spacewalk outside to loosen their antenna, and the hatch in the floor actually opens into the another section of the ship where the spacesuits are. Then the external view of the ship shows that the spaceship is a rocket and the tail (or 'bottom') of the ship is the rocket's exhaust nozzle meaning they could not have looked through a glass porthole in the floor anyhow.

Quotes:

Woody Woodpecker: Ha-ha-ha-HA-ha! It'll never get off the ground. Hmph - no propellers!
Cartoon Narrator: Rockets do not employ propellers. They use jets.
Woody Woodpecker: So do gas stoves, but they don't fly to the Moon.
Cartoon Narrator: Obviously you know nothing about rockets. Now, let's pretend that umbrella of yours is a shotgun.
[It turns into one]
Cartoon Narrator: Shoot it.
[Woody shoots and goes sliding backwards]
Woody Woodpecker: Who pushed me?
Cartoon Narrator: The gun, Woody. The charge not only fired out of the muzzle, it kicked back with equal force against the barrel.
Woody Woodpecker: Ahhh, it wouldn't happen again in a hundred times.
[...]

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Amazon Women on the Moon (1987)

A rare bit of 1950s science-fiction.

Most science-fiction films are actually raw fantasy, with a disregard for reality that commonly borders on pure contempt. This isn't always a bad thing, since I really like fantasy. But techno-babble and flashy gadgets are too often only gimmicks favored by dumb producers, ignorant directors, and lazy writers who get themselves into of a jam. "Destination Moon" is rare and different. An enormous amount of time and effort were expended to make it as technically accurate as was possible in 1950. Even Kubrick wasn't this consistent in "2001"; he often let gravity appear where it shouldn't be. They never made that mistake in "Destination Moon". So it's unfortunate they didn't spend as much effort on the story and the acting, but both cast and crew were so wrapped up in creating a real moon trip they skimped on these aspects of story telling. The result was surprisingly impressive visuals for the time, but characters who are shallow, trite, and dull, and crises that arise and are solved while leaving us indifferent.

But there is real drama here, the drama of people trying to imagine what was virtually unimaginable back then -- how to actually get people to the Moon and back -- using real physics and engineering. And if it doesn't measure up to the story of "Apollo 13", another technically accurate film about a REAL trip to the Moon, it still stands out as unique among 1950s films and remains almost as unique among all science-FICTION movies ever made.