The sweethearted George Pal was a very religious man, and there was a strong bible-class theme running through all of his previous work, even his morally-centered Puppetoon productions. It looks as though he was steamrolled by studio pressure on Conquest of Space, mainly through the plot hook of the commander's religious meltdown en route to Mars. The concept of Destination Moon was such a novelty in 1950 that Pal's quasi documentary approach was welcomed - a dramatic plot would actually have been a hindrance. Five years later, space travel had become established in the public consciousness and Pal's straight Mars Mission idea probably wouldn't have worked. But the hash of bad writing and screwball ideas in the final script (which went through several attempts) is equally unsatisfactory.

Outer space in Conquest of Space is colorful but not very consistent. This appears to be an early attempt to do full-on travelling mattes in Technicolor, and the results are fairly embarrassing. Hand-painted mattes are used a lot on the space wheel, resulting in fluttering edges and erasures of parts of the station from frame to frame. One has to picture the Paramount brass keeping a tight lid on optical expenditures and frustrating Pal's effects team by forcing them to accept composites that needed one or two extra tries to succeed. When they can, the optical experts try to do away with mattes, resulting in transparent spacemen flying between shuttles and the wheel. The models themselves were probably built on a smallish scale, particularly the space station. It often looks like a toy, especially when it wobbles under a meteorite bombardment.

The science is silly but not terrible ... a moon mission becomes a Mars mission as easily as pulling out a new set of maps, and the technological details are highly oversimplified. How to cross a hundred yards of space with no tether and no means of propulsion? Just have someone give you a good push ... how many astronauts did they lose that way? "Oops, sorry Fred!"

This is the first space movie I can think of that has no scenes on Earth, although I'm sure someone will be able to point out a Flash Gordon serial or something that came before. Earth is said to be ruled by an international one-world political body. That in itself is a far cry from the jingoistic saber-rattling of the average Sci Fi film, in which, as Pauline Kael once put it, spacemen never launch into the heavens without itchy trigger fingers on their ray guns.

Where Conquest of Space goes slack is in the dramatic unfoldment. The spacemen are a mix of altruistic scientists and guys you'd expect to find in a filling station, with a very Destination Moon-like Brooklyn bozo along for cheap laughs. Phil Foster is more lovable than his predecessor, but he's an awfully dumb type to take along on a Mars mission.

The conflict imposed on the movie is the real joykiller. Walter Brooke's mad space captain is a rogue maverick unsuited for normal command, let alone this kind of hazardous undertaking. Merritt has bullied his son into becoming a space cadet as well, with the backing of a fanatical sergeant straight from a bad WW2 movie (Mickey Shaughnessy). Brooke spouts freaky bible babble before the launch, but nobody does anything about it, even when he tells them to their faces that this abominable mission needs to be aborted. Here's one space odyssey that needed a HAL computer along to terminate some life functions, for the good of the mission.

The spaceflight is standard stuff with some nice touches. The astronauts have to evade a giant rolling asteroid that looks like Gorath, jetting out of the way in a maneuver identical to that in Starship Troopers. Poor Ross Martin gets plugged when a meteorite hits him like a sniper bullet, and is given a brief but eerie burial in space. At least the talented Ross gets more than halfway through the picture; in Colossus of New York he's hit by a truck in the very first scene!

In outer space the ship is obviously rolling on uneven rails (accompanied by some nice Van Cleave) spacey music trills) and the Mars landing is an okay but overly familiar scene. For some reason, Mars seems incredibly dull. There's little sense of wonder or mystery about the landscape and except for Benson Fong's efforts to get a seed to sprout, the crew shows little interest in doing anything but waiting. I won't give away the plot, but a fight between the commander and his son is resolved with the sergeant bringing ridiculously unsubstantiated charges against Merritt junior. Events become a tiny bit exciting for a last-minute earthquake and relaunch, but the overall effect is of a very slow 81 minutes. I can see 1955 space fanatics coming to this one and not catching on at all.

That seemed to be the pattern for any actor cast in 50s fantastic genre fare. Eric Fleming made Queen of Outer Space and retreated to TV's Rawhide, only to be overshadowed by his co-player Clint Eastwood. Walter Brooke stayed with character acting, to become famous twelve years later by saying the immortal line "Plastics!" to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.

Paramount's DVD of Conquest of Space is the first acceptable version of it I've seen. It's properly formatted in an enhanced transfer that crops away a lot of dead space above and below, eliminating some of the worst of the bad mattes in the process (I remember whole parts of the space station being blooped away for individual frames on televison). The picture looks a tiny bit soft and grainy, but that may be a function of the effects work. For a no-frills plain-wrap bargain edition, you can't go wrong.

Now Paramount needs to steel itself and release its even rarer genre oddities, the paranoid The Atomic City and (is this too much to ask?) a 'scope, uncensored disc of Roger Vadim's version of Carmilla, Et mourir de plaisir (Blood and Roses). That, as Dr. Seuss would say, would be a priority if I Ran the Circus.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Conquest of Space rates:
Movie: Good --
Video: Very Good
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: none
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: October 30, 2004

2. Or as my daugher Rebeca says, Oregano, the Lost Condiment.
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3. Dick Dinman has the answer, 10.30.04: Hi Glenn, Rosie's harem number in Conquest of Space was simply lifted from a completed number that was used in Paramount's '54 Bob Hope flop Here Come the Girls. By the time Conquest of Space was released (as a second feature to Run for Cover) Clooney's option at Paramount had been dropped. Enjoyed your review of Conquest a great deal more than the film itself. Upon hearing the "Pearl Harbor" speech I threw my hands up in the air and moved on to another DVD. Cheers, Dick Dinman
(Note: Dick's review page is called the DVD Classics Corner.)
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