Although I'm a big supporter of Italian exploitation director Antonio Margheriti, even I'm hard pressed to be a booster for everything he does, and this early science fiction effort -- his second film -- certainly falls into that category that makes me shrug my shoulders and go, "Well, at least he made Yor, The Hunter from the Future." Rick Van Nutter stars as Ray, an irritating blowhard reporter in the year 2116 who gets assigned to travel with a space crew to a remote station. Problems arise when Ray immediately rubs the captain the wrong way, and the audience is forced to endure the ongoing sniping between these two equally obnoxious guys. The only thing that keeps this crew from deserving to be jettisoned out the airlock is Al, the black guy with snow white hair.

After the movie slowly introduced everyone, it unravels totally into a seemingly disconnected barrage of episodes that finds the crew changing course first to Mars for some emergency, then to Venus, and finally to Earth. It seems that some sort of really poorly engineered experimental spaceship has malfunctioned and is plummeting toward Earth, where the super awesome experimental engines will destroy all life. Needless to say, only our intrepid crew can save humanity from this horrible fate.

Although I love movies crammed full of outdated future stuff and speculation on what space travel will be like, Assignment Outer Space gives you very little besides that, and even I get tired of looking at rocket models and tiny spaceman figures eventually. What remains, then, is a poorly written story that never bothers itself with its own continuity and expects us to be interested in the petty bickering between space reporter Ray and the captain. This movie would actually be much better if you watched it with the sound off and just marveled at all the cool old special effects while playing some Esquivel in the background. Most of the effects are typical 50s-60s scifi stuff -- rockets that land vertically and fly through space with a smoking sparkler sticking out the butt, good stuff like that. The big special effects misstep comes when a ship explodes and, for some reason, they use stock footage of an explosion that happens on a city street with cars parked around it. What the hell???

All in all, I can get through this movie purely on the power of the goofy old effects I love so much, but really, the whole thing is a pretty boring, poorly made affair. Margheriti would go on to make a few other scifi films that also managed to be simultaneously really cool looking and sort of boring. He was better off with cannibalistic Vietnam vets and futiristic cavemen laser battles.

Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics