First Spaceship on Venus

1960 science fiction movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Some space taffy is found at an excavation site, and following examination, it's decided that the space taffy actually contains a message from the planet Venus. A rocket ship with an international crew is sent to figure out what the Venusians want. On the way, the crew discovers that the message is actually all about plans to invade our planet.

I really sort of liked this movie. Sure, it's choppy and has terrible acting. Sure, it is overly verbose, and, to make that verbosity worse, has really poorly written dialogue. But there's an artistic quality to this cheap science fiction movie that makes it all worth it. There's great imaginative set design with some odd special effects that give this some charm. Popcorn meteor showers, great moogy sound effects, superimposed drifting fog, syrupy lava flows, hopping spidery Venus inhabitants. Venus has a really nice texture, gnarled and weather-beaten and kinda Seussian, and the designs for the space vehicles are pretty good. There are some space craft details that push this ahead of the typical flat B-movie science fiction ships. There's also a funky little chess-playing robot that rolls around like a tank and occasionally mumbles something about the weather. I even liked the bizarre wardrobe choices--uniforms with seemingly random letters on them, odd spacesuits that looked almost like chipmunk costumes, rubbery planet-exploration suits. And even though it's a little too talky, there are some nice themes about persevering through tragedy and fear and possibly even about the importance of Earthlings uniting in order to overcome the problems we face. Good 50's sci-fi drama!