Conquest of Space

Visible wires during virtually all of the anti-gravity and space suit sequences, but particularly visible attached to the helmet of the suit when the unconscious "Mahoney" is laid on the floor of the ship.

The transparent image of an effects crewman can be clearly seen to the right of the screen, hunched over, pulling Siegle and Fodor during the antenna repair sequence just before the asteroid hits.

The transparent image of what appears to be the flying rig can be seen moving towards the upper left as the floating body of Fodor drifts after being struck.

When the engines are turned on during the asteroid scene, strings can be seen holding up the ship.

In most shots of the "Wheel", it is shown turning counter-clockwise.

But in the scenes of Cooper being transported to it after becoming paralyzed aboard the rocket, the Wheel is suddenly turning clockwise - until the final shot of the rescue craft heading toward it, where once again it is moving counter-clockwise.

When the spaceship jettisons its tanks upon entering the Martian orbit, the tanks burn up in the planet's atmosphere.

In fact, the Martian atmosphere is so thin that there is little friction to so thoroughly destroy an object falling into the atmosphere.

When Captain Merritt enters the ship as his father is emptying its tanks, he's wearing a spacesuit and has to close the ship's hatch before getting out of it.

Yet the entry to the engine room below, where his father is, is completely open, exposing his father directly to the lethal Martian atmosphere through the ship's open hatch.

- PLOTThe astronauts all wear spacesuits on Mars, yet take off their gloves and handle the Martian soil bare-handed, exposure which would in reality destroy their hands and probably kill them.

A well-trained astronaut would not carelessly take off a glove to plunge a hand into unknown soil not knowing what chemicals or organisms would be in the dirt.

The crew uses Martian "snow" to replenish their water tanks.

From what is known now about Mars, the snow would likely be dry ice flakes and would have produced the gas carbon dioxide when they sublimed, not water.

This film has good-for-the-time FX, but unfortunately has a few really egregious errors depicting astronauts kicking themselves off a space platform in a zero-g vacuum. In a better film, that kind of error would be more tolerable, but this is not such a film.

There is much going on of interest in this film if you like classic sci-fi movies. Technically this film is one of the first Hollywood films to try and make the concept of spaceflight look possible.

I don't know what to make of this film- it is OK production-wise. It is way too talky definitely, but the acting is quite good by the some of the cast (although Phil Foster is just terrible) so when most of them talk its OK as such.

Nice special effects by George Pal, and a good musical score by Van Cleave don't save this mess of a movie. The script insists it's man's' duty to explore space, then turns on a dime and says it's a sacrilege to explore space.

Classic sci-fi film from producer George Pal about astronauts on board a space station known as The Wheel. The Wheel's crew is made up entirely of men.

A serious exploration of a manned mission to Mars it rises above the genre conventions of its time and delivers a compelling (if contracted) character study.

Falls firmly in the so-bad-it's-good category: Superbly over-acted. Note that the most sympathetic character was probably the Japanese crewman (film was made 10 years after Hiroshima).

This movie recently came out on DVD so I rented it from Netflix. I'm reasonably familiar with the plot and the work of Bonestell, Pal, and Willey Ley, so I don't think I had unreasonable expectations for this movie.

Although it has George Pal written all over it; it is not his best project, but a pretty darn good Sci-Fi flick for its time. A team of American astronauts assemble a space station called "The Wheel" to enable a spaceship to be built.