Destination Moon | Classic Movie and TV Reviews | SCI FI Weekly

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November 22, 1999

Destination Moon

The moon can be ours, thanks to American industry


			Destination Moon

			Not Rated

			Starring John Archer, Warner Anderson, Tom Powers, Dick Wesson

			Directed by Irving Pichel

			Written by Rip Van Ronkel, Robert A. Heinlein, and James O'Hanlon

			Originally Released 1950

			91 Minutes

By Mark Wilson

Doc Cargraves (Anderson) and General Thayer (Powers) have reason to be depressed. They've just watched four years of work--what was supposed to be Earth's first man-made satellite--crash and burn shortly after launch. But instead of discouraging them, the suspicious-seeming setback drives them to set their sights higher: the moon.

The peacetime government won't back such an outlandish project, however, so Thayer approaches aeronautics tycoon Jim Barnes (Archer). Barnes is skeptical at first, but Thayer wins him over with the same arguments Barnes later uses on his fellow industrialists. Not only is the moon easier to reach than one might think, Barnes tells them, it's also a national imperative. There's no way to stop a missile attack from the moon, he warns. Whoever controls the moon controls Earth.

Industry responds with gusto, privately funding a major rocket program led by Barnes, Cargraves, and Thayer. Before long, a sleek, silver rocket--humanity's ultimate manufacturing achievement--towers over the New Mexican plateau. Thwarted at the last moment by propaganda-incited public opposition and red tape, Barnes decides they must launch immediately or not at all. There's one last hitch: their radio man is laid up, so they must take a contractor, Sweeney (Wesson), who's certain the whole scheme is "all wet."

Nonetheless, and to Sweeney's amazement, they make it into space. En route the crew even performs a spacewalk to fix an antenna, though they nearly lose Cargraves in the process. But a miscalculation compels them to use too much fuel for their landing. Now, having finally reached their goal (and having claimed the moon for America), they face the dismal prospect of not being able to get everyone back to Earth. There seems to be only one solution--someone has to stay behind.

"The thing won't woik!"

Destination Moon and the novel it's supposed to be based on, Rocketship Galileo, have exactly two things in common: the last name of one of the characters (Cargraves) and a trip to the moon.

Rocketship Galileo was breezy, escapist SF pulp in which aw-shucks teenagers took a lark in outer space. Destination Moon, on the other hand, was conceived with a great and noble purpose: to convince everyday Americans that humanity can--and must--go to the moon. With the book's space Nazis cleverly generalized into whatever inimical power viewers care to think of, the film pounds home both the feasibility of going and the danger of not going. It frantically attacks contemporary skepticism, bringing in one doubting Thomas after another to be won over--to the point of including one in the crew in the form of Brooklyn bumpkin Sweeney ("General, the next time you tell me you can get to the moon, I'll believe you!"). The filmmakers even hired Woody Woodpecker to talk down to the audience about basic physics.

In 1950 there may have been a need for missionary zeal on behalf of the unborn space program, but today most of Destination Moon has the appeal of an especially earnest industrial arts snoozer ("Only American industry can do this job!"). Since this is a George Pal film, there's one obvious exception: The moonscape scenes are strikingly realized by art director George Sawley and beautifully photographed by cinematographer Lionel Lindon (Around the World in Eighty Days). Destination Moon also won an Academy Award for Lee Zavitz's special effects.

Art direction aside, Destination Moon is significant less as entertainment than as an intriguing artifact of pre-Sputnik days, a time of exasperation for those who chafed to launch the Space Age.

The most interesting thing about the film's bland star is the fact that he won his contract (and his screen name) in a radio contest. Born Ralph Bowman, he reportedly edged out Hugh Beaumont for the big prize, an RKO contract--in the name of John Archer. -- Mark