Very Cool!!!

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

I could write a book on this heavy-handed Italian-made cliché fest. The filmmakers treated a simple space opera like it was King Lear!First, the paper-thin plot. In the year 2116, Ray Peterson, a reporter for the Interplanetary News, is assigned to write a story aboard a space station. Tensions mount between Peterson and the station commander over the affections of Lucy, the ship's navigator. But the men set their differences aside to keep a runaway spaceship from colliding with the Earth. The ship somehow has the power to incinerate our beloved planet. (The commander explains it all, but like most of the scientific explanations in these films, it sounds like BS.)When Ray boards the space station, the commander is readying his crew for a mission to Mars. When the High Command orders that Ray be allowed to go, the commander must leave a crew member behind due to weight issues. He decides the mission can do without Lucy, the navigator. However, in the very next scene, guess who's aboard the ship on its way to Mars?The visual effects are as cheesy as one would expect. In one particularly memorable scene, a ship crash- lands on Mars and blows up. During the explosion, both a building and a Chevrolet are clearly visible in the shot. But the worst thing about ASSIGNMENT: OUTER SPACE is its numerous failed attempts at profundity and moralizing. Here are some examples:LUCY (to the commander): You work hard to prove that you're worthy of your position, but are you worthy of yourself?RAY: Why is it that whenever man wants to protect himself, he hides under a dome?AL (the ship's engineer): One of man's dreams has finally come true: an indestructible destroyer.AL (again): A man in space changes his position, but not his character. He is what he is, wherever he is.COMMANDER: The world of human feelings has been much less explored than the whole of the universe put together. What have we been doing all these thousands of years? We've congratulated ourselves on our progress and going faster and faster and faster, when in reality, we've only been getting further away from ourselves.RAY: I believed, but there's no faith that can destroy the fear of death.There is, however, one thing here that impressed me. Six years before "Star Trek," ASSIGNMENT: OUTER SPACE prominently featured a black man: Al, the ship's engineer. And he's not just a token; he is essential to the storyline. In 1960, skin color must have mattered a lot less in Italy than it did in the U.S. (How's that for a profound statement?)

This is possibly Antonio Margheriti's first film, as I've read somewhere, or perhaps his second feature, as I've read somewhere else. It may also be the first Italian sci-fi film ever made, but then in the crazy world of cinema from a foreign country from almost 60 years ago, who knows what is true and what isn't? This one stars Rick Von Nutter (great name) as a roving reporter sent into outer space to a space station to report on something or other. Once awoken from hypersleep (just like Alien!) he's told that basically he's a pain in the arse and no one likes him. He space walks from the shuttle to the space station and it's round about this time where you can guess that the special effects budget perhaps wasn't that large. Also, when Rick tires some fancy moves out in space and almost gets himself killed, you get the feeling  that Rick's brain isn't that large either.Once he eventually gets to the space station he's basically told he's a pain in the arse again! Rick sort of proves them right when he ventures back into space, saves someone from a meteorite, but destroys gallons of space fuel in the process! Turns out the Cosmonaut he saved is a girl, which seems to confuse him for a moment, until the film then becomes Assignment: Under Garments.Rick's got to get into this lady's pants and also get involved in stopping a runaway space station that's heading for Earth! We also get a sequence here involving another space ship which crashes on Venus, and we're given a split second shot of an explosion taking place in a car park, complete with cars? I'm not making this up. I guess you couldn't really ask the projectionist to pause and rewind the film to the head scratching thing you've just witnessed while watching the film in the cinema.First time I tried to watch this film I was in a coma almost straight away, but second time round it's not so bad. It's the weakest Margheriti film I've watched so far but is still full of his trademarks: namely loads and loads of miniature sets! Tiny models of astronauts floating about in space certainly help the film along, as do all the crappy shots of people floating through space, simulated anti-gravity acting from the cast, and the idea that it's impossible to conceive that women might work in scientific fields in the 22nd Century.

While this film may be slightly better than PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, at least technically speaking, overall it is much more dull and less fun to watch. In fact, during the first twenty or thirty minutes I kept finding my self falling asleep. I don't think this says a lot about my sleep habits but more about how tedious and uninteresting the film was--at least for the first half or so. About the only interesting things at all are that there is an important crew member ("Al") who is Black (a little unusual for 1960) and it's fun to watch the Captain and Al make fun of the reporter who they were forced to take along with them on the mission. In the second half, things pick up a bit (they couldn't have gotten any slower or duller--otherwise audience members would have begun committing suicide), as they are called away from their mission to rescue the Earth. It seems some space ship built by the Earth is screwed up and its engines will vaporize the Earth when it returns. So it's up to the useless reporter to spring to action and save them all--and teaching us an important lesson that when the safety of the planet is in question or you need someone who's an expert in astrophysics, get a reporter.By the way, the special effects were awful--even by 1950s or early 1960s sci-fi movie standards. As usual, the space rockets have flames that come out at an angle (due to gravity--which should NOT be a factor in the vacuum of space), they wear silly silver suits and there are a lot of useless dials and gizmos. The film was originally an Italian flick and with a bit of re-dubbing (with really awful voice work), it became this "masterpiece"---yech! Even for fans of bad films (and I am one), this one is pretty tough going!

Antonio Margheriti's 60's outer-space saga is pretty typical of the Italian space stuff being done at the time.Here's the plot with spoilers: OK, this reporter guy is constantly treated like crap throughout this whole movie. The only guy that's nice to him at all is this black dude with white hair and he calls him a leech all the time!(and I guess the chick who grows flowers is sorta nice to him to) So anyway there's a bunch of scenes of them floating around space(and I guess they have some special kind of suits that let them steer and swim around in whatever direction they want to go) then another spaceship crashes on Mars and we actually see some stock-footage shot of an explosion right next to a car(which I guess someone left parked on Mars?). Then another ship is on a runaway crash-course with the earth which they say is gonna wipe out all humanity somehow. I guess it had a lot of nukes on it? So the black dude gets killed trying to stop it then the reporter dude knocks out the captain guy with one wimpy-ass looking punch and saves the earth. Oh yeah and of course he gets the girl in the end(even though she was supposed to already be with the captain guy in the beginning, I guess the punch really turned her on).The cheap-ass 25 cent DVD I have of this doesn't exactly lead to optimal viewing conditions. I think it's supposed to be in color but I really couldn't tell from the print I saw. It only took me 2 tries to be able to stay awake long enough to actually get to the end of this so I guess it's not the worst but don't spend more than a quarter on it.