Monday, February 02, 2009

Assignment: Outer Space

Assignment: Outer Space (or Space Men) is a 1960 science fiction film about a reporter on board a 22nd century space station. In the year 2116, we have reporters embedded in science expeditions in space, which is much preferable to embedding them in military expeditions in Iraq.

Googlevideo has it complete in one video:

or in 10 segments. It's also at the Internet Archive.

Being "congealed" sounds icky. I like talk of "suspended animation" much better. This movie is slow, even tedious, and I spent it thinking that surely something would eventually happen. Even when there's supposed to be some tension about impending danger or interpersonal conflict, the actors say their lines as if they are reading sentences from a boring book. It's very talky, this movie. Writer Ennio de Concini is an award-winning screenwriter just recently deceased (11/17/2008), but, oh, this is dreadful. Late in the film the Captain says, "But now it's late. What have we been doing all these thousands of years?" That's exactly how I feel at the end of this movie!

Weird Wild Realm says, "Lovely designs for the space suits & space ships make this a surprisingly attractive old piece of sci-fi jibberish."

Million Monkey Theater starts off with
I have never seen a sci-fi movie that flat out BORED ME TO DEATH like 1960's Assignment: Outer Space, a lame Italian "technological thriller" from cult director Anthony Margheriti. The faults of this movie are legion.

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