writes:
(5.66)This is another low-budget Roger Corman picture, available now in the Sci-Fi Classics Triple Feature set along with two other pictures.
After the launch of Sputnik, satellites became a "hot topic," and this sci-fi pic was rushed out.
Richard Devon stars as the head of the United Nations space project, the delectable Susan Cabot (who was dating Corman at the time) is a lead scientist, and Corman regular Dick Miller plays another scientist.
The basic idea is that the U.N. keeps putting up spaceships (which this movie confuses with satellites), and they keep blowing up. Then a message is dropped from space: Stop trying to explore space, or we will destroy your planet! But threats and nuclear bombs aren't going to stop the brave explorers of the U.N.!
The movie eventually veers away from being a sci-fi movie and turns into more of a horror/suspense plot, as the alien force infiltrates the crew and is attracted to an earth girl.
The spaceship interiors are minimal but quite effective, including space couches; some of the space effects are good for the time and the spaceships are quite Wernher von Braun. Other effects are cleverly animated, but look bad by modern standards.
Richard Devon probably does as well as he can, given the loony plot. Susan Cabot is ravishing but has little to do except "check her calculations" and become an alien target. Dick Miller is quite good in a heroic role. Roger Corman is boring in a cameo as a ground controller.
The big let-down is that we never get to see any aliens, and they seem rather easy to defeat. And then the U.N. spaceship engages intergalactic mode?
So in the end, this is silly nonsense masquerading as sci-fi. But it's fun.
Could You Game It?
You could run a campaign loosely based on the Earth spaceships fighting for liberation against aliens, with failed missions meaning another nuke for Earth…