A Brilliant Conflict

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The rocket engineer Dr. Charles Cargraves (Warner Anderson) blows-up a rocket during the tests and loses the government funding. Together with his friends General Thayer (Tom Powers) and Jim Barnes (John Archer), they raise funds from American industrialists to build a rocket using atomic engine in the desert to reach the moon. However the public opinion is against the project afraid of radiation leakage in the spot and they decide to anticipate the launch of the spaceship without tests. The radar and radio operator Joe Sweeney (Dick Wesson) is invited and teams-up with them and the rocket is called Luna. During the descent on the moon, they use too much fuel to safely land. After the exploration of the lunar soil, Charles realizes that they need to reduce the weight of the rocket to launch back to Earth based on the remaining fuel. They remove all the essential equipment but Charles concludes that someone must be left behind. Will they return to Earth?"Destination Moon" is a surprising good sci-fi from 1950. The story uses technological concepts to explain the situations and is very well developed. The use of the Woody Woodpecker is very funny and the special effects are impressive for a 1950 film. The conclusion "This Is the End of the Beginning" is visionary. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): Not available on Blu-Ray or DVD.

Wonderful movie. I watched it when I was 6 years old and this film impressed me a lot. Then, I had to wait for 40 years before I could see it again. In the meantime Apollo II had landed on the moon and everybody could see that the film had anticipated reality with great accuracy. The famous comic strip "Tintin" was greatly influenced by this film : the space-suits, the magnetic shoes, the extra vehicular activity,the propulsion of the rocket etc...are almost copy-pasted from the film At the end of the film, the astronauts have to leave a lot of stuff on the moon because their rocket is too heavy and in the mission Apollo II we can see the real astronauts do the same but this time to minimize the risks of a possible contamination. The end of the film is a bit frustrating as we don't see the astronauts land safely on the earth,but, anyway this film is exceptional and ranks high in my personal movie hit-parade

DESTINATION MOONThis film is very good... and even though there are some things about it that doesn't make much sense or are realistic, for it's time it is amazing.The movie is about a group of men who believe they have what it takes to travel to the moon and back. The problem is, they realise that when they are up there, they don't have enough fuel to get them back. This film was made in 1950, which is 19 years before Neil Armstrong actually stepped foot on the moon. So back then it was thought near impossible to actually do it.The fact is, because of the age of this film, the effects are terrible. But for it's day I can imagine it being quite impressive.The acting is quite good too... I really liked the characters in this film and hoped they would make the journey. The film stars John Archer, Warner Anderson, Tom Powers & Dick Wesson.There are some funny moments in the film as well as suspense and drama. The whole film is very entertaining.Obviously, because nobody had been to the moon before when this was made, they were guessing what would happen and they got it pretty close... there were a few things that were wrong, but you can';t expect them to get everything right. There were a couple of moments when they were in space when they were not floating, also when one of the astronauts opened a drawer everything stayed in there... they didn't float either.I really liked this film... so I will give it 7 out of 10.A very impressive look into the future and it was amazing how close they got it to real life.For more of my reviews, please like my Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ordinary-Person-Movie- Reviews/456572047728204?ref=hl

The problem I have with a lot of the early science fiction stories is that they were more often than not heavy on the fiction and light on the science. I have to give credit, therefore, to "Destination Moon." It completely reverses that. It's actually quite heavy on science and the fiction element is pretty light - at least in the sense that it treats the story very seriously. The title sums it up perfectly. A group of scientists and industrialists team up to build a rocket to travel to the moon. As it turned out those who made this movie weren't accurate prognosticators - the method of space travel portrayed (atomic powered engines) turned out not to be what eventually propelled humans to the moon - but the thoughtfulness was there, and I appreciated it. I liked the fact that the effort didn't involve the U.S. Government - in fact, the government wasn't completely supportive. It was all American (and in the context of the very early years of the Cold War the point was made that "we have to get there first or else we're in trouble") but still, it was private citizens doing this. I appreciated that. For 1950, I thought most of the effects were pretty good; the movie rarely seemed dated at all. It had a fresh look and feel pretty much the whole way through, with perhaps only the animated scenes (which were long distance views of the "astronauts" outside the rocket while in flight) looking a bit primitive. Even the Woody Woodpecker cartoon seemed appropriately placed.This isn't especially dramatic. There are a few attempts to introduce drama and excitement, but for the most part I didn't feel any real tension until the very end, when it did seem as though someone was going to have to be left behind on the moon's surface. Aside from that, it was the technical quality and the serious nature of the movie that really appealed to me. The cast (largely unknown, at least to me) was decent enough. Until seeing this, I would probably have dated "Forbidden Planet" as perhaps the earliest truly "serious" sci-fi movie made that I had seen. This was made 6 years earlier, though, and so now takes that prize. Well done, indeed! (7/10)