Conquest of Space *** (1954, Eric Fleming, Walter Brooke, Mickey Shaughnessy, William Hopper, Ross Martin, William Redfield) – Classic Movie Review 2573

Director Byron Haskin’s painstaking and realistic 1954 documentary-style sci-fi film comes from the illustrious stable of fantasy producer George Pal. It motors on an interesting screenplay by James O’Hanlon, derived from Willy Ley’s 1949 classic The Conquest of Space and Wernher von Braun’s novel Mars Project. It stars Eric Fleming, Walter Brooke, Mickey Shaughnessy, William Hopper, Ross Martin and William Redfield.

Some time in the future, well the 1980s anyway, a team of American astronauts leave their base in space to look for materials on Mars, but the religious beliefs of Captain Barney Merritt (Eric Fleming) threaten to get in the way.

It is still a fairly impressive movie, with decent trick work (by special effects wizards John P Fulton, Irmin Roberts, Ivyl Burks, Jan Domela and Paul K Lerpae), imaginative sets (by production designers Hal Pereira and Joseph McMillan Johnson) and striking cinematography (by director of photography Lionel Lindon) in Technicolor.

Also in the cast are Walter Brooke, Phil Foster, Benson Fong, Vito Scotti, John Dennis, Michael Fox, Joan Shawlee, Iphigenie Castiglioni, Dan Barton, Maurice Hart and Mike Mahoney. Rosemary Clooney is seen on the space station’s screen singing Ali Baba from Paramount’s 1953 Here Comes the Girls.

This essentially serious, though surface-slick style of sci-fi film-making promptly went out of fashion until 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968. The esteemed producer Pal also made Destination Moon, When Worlds Collide, 1953’s The War of the Worlds (also directed by Haskin) and The Time Machine.

The spaceship design was taken from von Braun’s designs in a 1954 issue of Collier’s. It was used as a background set decoration in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982).

Illustrator Chesley Bonestell never saw the completed movie after a dispute over how to depict the surface of Mars. He was the illustrator of 10 books including Willy Ley’s The Conquest of Space. An asteroid and a crater on Mars are both named Bonestell in his honour.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2573

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