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Space Probe Taurus
In the year 2000 the spaceship Hope One sets off to find new galaxies for colonization. However, an encounter with an alien being and a swarm of meteorites sends the ship streaking off course into a sea of monsters on an uncharted world. Written by Jeremy Lunt
Release : | 1965 |
Rating : | 3.9 |
Studio : | Leonard Katzman Productions, |
Crew : | Art Direction, Director of Photography, |
Cast : | Francine York James Brown Baynes Barron Russ Bender |
Genre : | Horror Science Fiction |
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To me, this movie is perfection.
It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.
This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
This journey into outer space flick is fairly typical of the B movies, the low budget films that weren't supposed to be liked. As a result of being the low man on the totem pole, those involved made the most out of a little. That often resulted in the superior sci-fi flicks. Such is the case here. The overwhelming factor in these cases is the use of "credible characters in incredible circumstances", something I believe I was the first to use in critiques some thirty or forty years ago. Here, the astronauts are three men and a woman. They begin as seeming to be one dimensional, but that's where the writing, directing, acting team fool you. They gracefully become real characters, particularly the two supporting astronauts. I admit I usually pay more attention to the "supporting players", and usually it's the women who care about the romantic leads. The romantic lead pair go through this as a bit of a cliché, but show some dimensions in character near the end. All together, the quartet was superior to most of the "A movie" astronauts in credibility. The character of John Andros must have been the delight of the team making this film, and it's fascinating in the way they bring him along late, almost as an after thought, as though he would be just "hanging around". He is basically the story here, and I believe the story is told through his eyes, which I won't spoil by how it ends. There's a lot to like here. It is craftily directed. Despite the low budget and limited action, there's not a dull moment. It grips you throughout. That's some directing, writing, editing, acting, the who shebangs! There's even a terrific Gilligan's Island style dream sequence. A hidden gem. I probably won't put it on my top 20 sci-fi films of all time, but it's definitely in the top 40. Of course, as I noted before, this is more of a "man's movie" than a chick flick.
Where to begin? They set off "to find new galaxies for colonization" in the year 2000. The narrative starts: "Beyond this, and into infinity, is Man's last frontier. Over 2 billion light years of solar system, reaching from the great clouds of Magellan to the galaxies of Andromeda and Triangulum". They go "far beyond Earth's universe". This is a sample. So they lift off from Cape Kennedy, which looks like a large desert. Actually seems to be a V-2 launch from White Sands, New Mexico. The meteor shower shows the objects on fire - not likely out in space with no air. Taurus the Bull is a constellation. You really can't go to a constellation - they are just outlines in the sky as seen from the Earth. Usually they are based on some figure that brighter stars have made. Go can go towards a constellation, but after some time you would pass the obvious stars and go beyond them, past our galaxy and on and on. "We should be nearing the Triangulum Galaxy". "Of all the lifeless galaxies we had to land on this planet". OK - A galaxy is a swirling cloud of stars and dust - billions of stars. A solar system is a group of 1 or several stars, and maybe planets, comets, asteroids and other junk, bound together by gravity. A constellation is an apparent shape made by some stars, originally. Used to tell stories or as an indicator of the seasons. (When you see this shape, start to prepare for winter - you would say that to your kids.) They have instant communication with the Earth control center. They at one point their speed is 125,00 - with no units, like MPH or meters per second. Triangulum is not really near the Taurus constellation at all. There is a nice galaxy there, M33. Mr. Messier made a list of things that look like comets, but are not. People would keep bothering him with their great discoveries. You may not realize that if you look at a galaxy with your eyes, it looks like a gray fuzzy blob. Maybe with a really big mirror you see more. Your eye is not a camera- that can take long exposures, or stack many pictures together. Then you get the nice color images. M33 is about 3 million light years away. Light goes 6 trillion miles in one year - that is what a light year is. The main problem is that these galaxies are really far away. We can't even get to a nearby star yet. To check out a galaxy would take eons of time. The writers give kids a wrong impression of things.
Watching 'Space Probe - Taurus' is a salutary reminder of how lucky American International Pictures were to have been associated with the gifted Roger Corman. Without Corman, what we get is perfectly competent but thoroughly routine and uninspired, without the budget to create convincing spaceships or even to plunder a Soviet sci-fi picture for its effects. And it's not even in colour. The crew is the usual combination of three middle-aged looking men to one hot chick; the hot chick in this case being the late Francine York as Dr. Lisa Wayne, who wears the same unisex coverall as the men, but unlike them accessorises it with silver go-go boots instead of the lace-up army boots the others wear (presumably the quartermasters back on Earth didn't have them in her size). The name of the ship is apt, as she resembles a piece of porcelain in this bullpen. Dr. Wayne is initially charmlessly cold-shouldered by skipper Hank Stevens (James Brown) because he hadn't wanted a woman on board, before he eventually mellows and charmlessly falls in love with her instead. (Ho Hum...) The early scenes resemble Season One of 'Lost in Space' when it was in black & white. It then becomes 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' when - forced to make an emergency landing on an alien planet - they end up on the bottom of one of its oceans, to be attacked by crab monsters and a cousin of the gill-man from 'The Creature from the Black Lagoon'.Considering how excited scientists get at the slightest suggestion of moisture in outer space, they take the presence of oceans on this new planet in their stride. Dr. Wayne's supposed to be a scientist, but when they encounter what are obviously enormous crabs her first question is to ask "What are they?" We're told early on that the equipment the ship can carry is severely circumscribed by weight, yet it fortunately turns out to include scuba gear. Naturally the new planet has a breathable atmosphere, but I wouldn't relish sharing my new home with crabs the size of elephants; presumably any other gill-men would be dealt with the way the settlers saw off the American Indians.Bearing in mind that this was made the year that Malcolm X was assassinated, the most striking observation made by anyone in the film is by Dr.Andros after they've just killed a hostile alien whose ship they'd been trespassing on. He makes a number of comments about the unlikelihood of different species being able to peacefully co-exist that are remarkably near the knuckle ("We've got enough troubles on Earth now. I mean we're barely keeping from killing each other off...pretty soon someone on Earth decides that we don't like the way they look...after all, one of us is going to be a minority group. And the next thing you know, Whammo, we're trying to blast each other out of existence."), and remain as scarily pertinent as ever over half a century later.
This movie is a classic. It has a sexist spaceship captain, who is very angry that a WOMAN has been assigned to his ship. The woman quickly puts him in his place. The special effects in this movie are totally unbelievable! You must see them! I am sure that other movies such as "2001" stole a lot of ideas from this classic. Also "Star Trek" is obviously playing homage to "First Woman In Space" with everything they do. WATCH THIS MOVIE TODAY! YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED! Although you might be terrified by the horrific space monsters.