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Very disappointing...

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Ah, just what I love, a '50s B-movie. This low budget, shuddery sci-fi shocker uses much the same premise as THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN would twenty years later, but obviously without the gore. The plot is pretty minimal, and with most '50s films, the main thrust concentrates on pseudo scientific babble about why what has happened has happened. Although the film is obviously dated because of this, it's kind of fun too, as we listen to the gobbledegook about 'cosmic dust' and stuff like that. Very funny indeed.The cast is nothing to write home about, but the dialogue can be hilarious and frequently is, because it has dated so badly. The man of the title is an excitable chap who speaks like one of the teens from I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF all grown up, talking about "dope" and other silly things. The rest of the cast are all pretty stiff and stilted in their delivery of their clichéd lines, but there's no need to worry about that, it's just typical for a film like this.The special effects aren't bad. The space travel looks quite poor in these post-STAR WARS days, but at least it has some imagination put into it and has that odd quality of looking fake and unrealistic yet looking interesting, magical even, in a way that CGI animation can't create. I can't explain it very well. The makeup for the monster is surprisingly simple and effective, he just looks like he's been covered in some molten rock or something which has then settled. I like the way you can see one of his eyes too.While FIRST MAN INTO SPACE may not be original, or scary, it remains a solid piece of entertainment from a much different time. The scenes of the rampaging monster and weird space travel deserve classic status, these types of things WERE cinema in the '50s. Not brilliant, but okay anyway.

First Man Into Space is set in Albuquerque where the US Navy are trying to send the first man into space, that man being pilot Dan Prescott (Bill Edwards). Dan pushes things too far & disobeys orders going higher than he should, while in space his spaceship is engulfed by a mysterious cloud of meteorite particles which attach themselves to the ship & Dan inside. Crashing back down to Earth in Mexico Dan has undergone a hideous transformation into a space crud encrusted monster who needs to feed on blood to survive, it's up to Dan's brother Commander Charles Prescott (Marshall Thompson) to hunt Dan down & try to help him...This English production was directed by Robert Day & feels like an attempt to cash in on the success of Hammer studios The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) in which an astronaut is sent into space comes back turned into some sort of alien monster, personally I think First Man Into Space is a little slow going & not as good as Hammer's effort. The script by John Croydon & Charles F. Vetter for some reason is set in America even though the film was financed & made in England, disappointingly even at a scant 75 minutes in length First Man Into Space felt really padded & slow moving. The first 30 odd minutes are totally forgettable with the initial exploration into space which goes alright & it's the second time Dan goes into space that he gets turned into a monster where I feel it should have been the first, I mean the makers could have hit the ground running with the monster turning up within the first 10 minutes but for some reason they padded the story out. I wouldn't call it a bad film, there's a few minutes of decent monster action & it's competent throughout but I will probably have completely forgotten about it by the end of the week.Don't be fooled by the DVD box artwork, the monster feels like a secondary sub plot for the majority of the film before it turns up at the end. The monster itself is quite good with it's deformed space mud encrusted face. There's a bit of blood but nothing too graphic. The special effects aren't too bad either, even though the spaceship looks like an ordinary US Navy jet plane the model work is alright as are the scenes set in outer space.Technically the film is OK, filmed in black and white the cinematography is satisfactory & help make the very English locations look American. There's plenty of stock footage as well just to pad things out even more. The cast are alright, look out for an appearance by Roger Delgado who would later go on to star in several Doctor Who stories from the 70's as the Master.First Man Into Space is a passable way to spend 75 minutes even though it still seems slow & padded. The monster is decent as are the effects but when all said & done it's nothing special. Although not credited as such AIP remade this in the 70's as the rather good The Incredible Melting Man (1977) which is much, much better & a lot gorier.

Lame rip-off of THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (1955): the first half is deadly dull, even dreary - but the latter stages improve considerably with the scenes involving the rampaging 'monster'. In the accompanying featurette (a rather dry affair at a mere 9 minutes, when compared to the ones created for the other titles in Criterion's "Monsters & Madmen" set), director Day - who admits to not being a fan of the sci-fi genre - tries to justify the film's shortcomings by saying that he had a zero-budget to work with (where all the outer space scenes were composed of stock footage!)...and I'd have been inclined to be more lenient with the film had I not recently watched CALTIKI, THE IMMORTAL MONSTER (1959) - a similar (and similarly threadbare) but far more stylish venture from Italy! Bill Edwards as the cocky but unlucky astronaut - obsessed with achieving the titular feat - is positively boring at first, but he eventually manages to garner audience sympathy when his physical features are deformed and the character develops a taste for blood! Marshall Thompson as his commanding officer and elder brother is O.K. as a leaner Glenn Ford type; he had previously starred in FIEND WITHOUT A FACE (1958), another (and more successful) Richard Gordon-produced sci-fi which, incidentally, is also available on DVD through Criterion. Italian starlet Marla Landi, struggling with the English language, makes for an inadequate female lead; even her input in the featurette proves to be of little lasting value! The Audio Commentary is yet another enjoyable Tom Weaver/Richard Gordon track where, among many things, the fact that FIRST MAN INTO SPACE was intended as a double-feature with CORRIDORS OF BLOOD (1958) is brought up - but it was eventually put out as a standalone release, so as to exploit the topical news value of the current space race; it's also mentioned that the monster dialogue was actually dubbed by Bonar Colleano (who, tragically, died in a traffic accident prior to the film's release!). Weaver even recalls a couple of anecdotes from the time when he was involved in the production of the DVD featurette shot by, of all people, ex-cult-ish film-maker Norman J. Warren: Landi, who by then had become a lady of title, was still ready to help out in carrying the equipment necessary to film the interview down several flights of stairs!; Edwards was supposed to have contributed to the featurette but, once in London, he proved reluctant to co-operate with Weaver - eventually, the latter learned that the actor had been recently diagnosed with cancer and, in fact, he died in 2002!

A first rate little sci-fi story, told on a modest budget. Air Force office Marshall Thompson (star of 'It! The Terror from Beyond Space', and 'Fiend Without a Face') is the Earth-bound brother of an undisciplined test pilot who yearns to be be the 'first man into space'.While testing a new rocket plane, the pilot kicks in all his reserve power and takes his ship right out of the atmosphere. Please note that this not a far-fetched idea in view of the fact that the X-15 had special attitude rockets along the fuselage to allow it to maneuver in the near vacuum of the upper atmosphere!In space the pilot encounters a strange cloud of meteoric particles that smashes through his canopy and envelopes both his ship and his spacesuit-clad body in a flexible, asbestos-like coating. The material alters his physiology, changing him into creature that can survive in the low pressure of the upper atmosphere but NOT in the killing pressure at sea level.He returns to Earth as a hideous monster (good makeup), gasping as his lungs struggled with the pressure that he's now unsuited for. In his dazed and desperate mental condition, the monster commits acts of violence, using the razor-sharp edges of his rough coating to slash his victims flesh. While trying to track down the monster, Thomas and a scientist discuss the possibility of using the strange substance on the wreckage of the rocket plane as a heat shield for future space craft. Nice thinking, there.All in all, a film with more to think about than to laugh at, unlike so many other low budget 1950s films.