Remember that 50s sci-fi skit in Joe Dante's Amazon Women On the Moon (1987), the one with the deliberately bad special effects, lack of scientific accuracy, space women in short skirts, and heroic but dumb astronauts? Well Beyond the Moon is just like that (the only thing that's missing is a pet space monkey), proving just as funny as Dante's spoofery at times, although never intentionally.
Gallant space ranger Rocky Jones (likable Richard Crane) and his goofball sidekick Winky (the equally amiable Scott Beckett) travel to another planet to investigate exactly why Professor Newton (doddery Maurice Cass) has pledged allegiance to the evil Queen Cleolanta (a perfectly wicked portrayal by the attractive Patsy Parsons). Director Hollingsworth Morse relates the entertaining story at a brisk pace and maintains a pleasant tone throughout.
Ignoring its episodic origins and taking this just as a self contained movie, this is marvellous stuff, a good old fashioned boys own space drama for those who don't want no cooties.Our main heroes are clean shaven white t-shirt wearing brill creamed pals in the musical navy mold.
"Beyond the Moon" edits together the first three episodes of the 1954 space series, "Rocky Jones, Space Ranger," episodes that originally ran as a three-parter called "Beyond the Curtain of Space." It introduces the characters we'd see as series regulars in such later feature compilations from the series as "Menace from Outer Space" and "Crash of the Moons.
You need to go way back to the 1950's when special effects were not even close to today's CGI. For the time this was a ground breaking movie and then a series.
Rocky Jones is gay, right? Just look how much of a fuss this guy makes about having a girl on board his spaceship.
I was expecting something else from this film I guess. I didn't realize it was from three episodes of a TV serial cut down and put together into a film version.
