DVD: 7 DAYS OF HORROR, DAY 7 (I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE) -HAS BEEN CANCELLED

Several months ago I selected the remake of I Spit On Your Grave to review. Yet I kept putting it off and off. There was always something more interesting I wanted to watch. Truth be told, I can't honestly remember now why I ordered it.

I have seen the 1978 original -or rather a cut version of the original -one  late night on the Horror Channel a few years ago. My first thought was that if that was the cut version, I shuddered to think what was left out. I'll briefly summarise the story in the unlikely event that you, dear readers whom I know to be sensitive souls, haven't heard of it. A young woman writer moves to a rural area in order to work on a book. She is raped by four locals (one of them subnormal who is forced into it by the others). After the encounter she sets about killing them until all are dead. And that's it.

The devil, however, is in the detail. The rape itself is several rapes. Caught in the woods, she is raped by the men who let her go. She heads for her rented house only to be caught again and repeatedly raped. This may happen a third time, I can't remember. However, on reaching the haven of the house she finds that the men are there and she is raped yet again. This extended sequence, which seems to go on forever (actually an astonishing 25 minutes), is one of the most repulsive things I've seen on film. The later killings, even the genital severing, are mild in comparison. Except for when she hangs the the subnormal rapist (who was supposed to shoot her but only pretended to do so) who is unable to defend himself, possibly because he understands why she's doing it.

This is a very difficult film to watch and it's even harder to decide what the intention of the film-makers was in making it. It has been widely condemned as exploitative trash which glorifies the subjugation of women. Yet writer-director Meir Zarchi has constantly denied this, claiming it to be a moral film. I can see his point: my view of anyone who actually enjoys watching the rape sequence is simply a sick fuck. Zarchi also claimed it to be inspired by his helping a woman who had just been raped by a gang (check the IMDB entry for details). On the whole I tend to go with the view that it isn't exploitation. Zarchi's preferred and original title on release was Day of the Woman (a title which has a different emphasis) and only in 1981 was it retitled and came to wider attention.

Nevertheless, it's a gruelling film to watch but there is an argument to be made that, in its depiction of the experience, it's just about definitive. Which makes me wonder why it was felt necessary to remake an already controversial movie, particularly as attitudes to sex have changed for the better in the thirty years since it was made. The same can be said for Last House On The Left to which it has similarities. Again, I've seen the cut original but not the remake. To answer that question I should, by rights watch the remake of I Spit On Your Grave but I just can't bring myself to do it. I have heard that it's more of a horror movie than the original  which ought to make it more appealing to me but for now, doesn't.

Basically I just don't want to watch a film in which the first half is dominated by an explicit rape. I suppose I could always flick through it to the gory killings. I mean, that's okay, right?

DVD: URBAN EXPLORERS (2010) -7 DAYS OF HORROR, DAY 6

I got this one recently when it was on the current Amazon Vine list. (Selected Amazon regular reviewers get sent a list twice monthly of stuff to review for free.) There wasn't much else on the list so I settled for this. To be honest, it's not the sort of horror movie I usually go for being on the edge, but not over it, of torture porn. That said, it's quite effective.

Set in Berlin, four people in their early twenties, plus an equally young guide, go down into the many tunnels under the city looking for a Nazi bunker. An accident happens, the group separates, and a demented ex-East German border guard takes advantage of them in a very violent manner. Basically it's setup, encounter, attempts to escape. There isn't a lot of actual gore in it but it is very intense and, unlike some other horror movies I've seen this week, deserves the 18 certificate. The villain manages to be genuinely frightening and completely believable which makes it even worse.

It's well done, but I can't say that I actually enjoyed it.

DVD: NEEDLE (2010) -7 DAYS OF HORROR, DAY 5

 

I bought this on the basis of a new good reviews on Amazon. They were wrong.

The supernatural premise is basically a macguffin. There's this magic box, see, and you have to insert a photo of your victim, add some drops of your blood and a somewhat larger quantity of molten wax, turn a key to start it, wait for it to whir for a few moments and then out pops a wax voodoo doll for you stab, maim, or mutilate according to taste. Congratulations! You now have the means to commit a perfect untraceable stabbing/maiming/mutilating/ murder.

So basically this is another teen slasher and thee is plenty of teen slashing. For example-

Yes, there is plenty of gore as our unseen slasher has lots of fun usually intercut with shots of the victim and shots of what's being done with the voodoo doll. However, as the killer is not in the same place as the victim there's little sense of menace and none of the one on one brutality normally associated with a slasher. 

Ah yes, the story, what little there is of it. It's set on an Australian university campus and revolves around a group of twenty year olds, one of whom receives the magic box from his dead father's estate and it get stolen almost immediately. Here they are. Can you spot the killer?

I was pretty sure I knew who did it before the killings even started. Slasher rule 1: if it's one of a group it's always the one who seems the least likely. So I sat through this not very impressive movie waiting for confirmation. Except I forgot Alternative Slasher Rule 1: if it's not the one who seems the most likely, then it's the one you never even considered because there was completely no point. Okay, okay, I got it wrong.

Not for the first time recently, I thought the 18 certificate was rather harsh. While gory, it's not brutal. The language is standard for a teen slasher. There is no titillating sex or nudity, only some brief affectionate lesbian lip-locking. 

The police and our heroes and all particularly stupid as the former never interview the latter and a little more perceptive research by the latter who have revealed the killer much sooner. But then we wouldn't have a movie. Basically it's all fairly flimsy and doesn't really have anything going for it apart from the gore.

DVD: ZOMBIE VIRUS ON MULBERRY STREET (2007) -7 DAYS OF HORROR, DAY 4

Above is the original DVD image and below is one I bought.

 

Let's make one thing clear: this is not a zombie movie. Aggressive mutant rats bite people and infect them with a virus which turns them into highly aggressive flesh-eaters (human, cat, dog, whatever)  with claws, rat-like teeth and snouts. A bit silly really but it works in the context of the film. The original title is Mulberry Street and remains so on the movie's opening credits. Nope this is just a misleading attempt to cash in on the popularity of zombies. So, if you buy this thinking you're getting a zombie movie, you'll be pleasantly surprised as this is much better than most of them.

It's set in New York over the course of around 24 hours. It begins quietly with a news report of a few people being bitten by rats in a subway station and builds slowly as more incidents happen, people get taken to hospital, bitten people start getting violent, people panic and try to get out the city, martial law is declared, the city is quarantined, and then it's night and the streets belong to the infected.

That is the background against which the human story is told. It focuses on a group of people who live in an apartment building and who are likely to be forced out by the imposition of higher rents. The core group include: two old men who live together, one of them crippled; a gay black man; an ex-boxer; his scarred daughter on her way home after being released from a veteran's hospital; a forty-something mother and her teenage son. These are ordinary working class people who look and sound like ordinary working class people. There are no busty bimbos, sex-mad teenagers, or hero types. They are just going about their normal lives as a crisis builds in the background and finally drags them in to a fight for survival. The performances by the cast are uniformly excellent and believable.

The film itself is very well structured and paced. There's an increasing use of hand held cameras and fast cutting as the pace increases, particularly during the action scenes. Unlike many horror movies, it doesn't linger over the gore of which there is plenty and I think the 18 rating is a little harsh.

In short, a silly idea is transcended by its excellent execution.

There aren't many stills available so here are just a couple.

Or three.

DVD: SLIME CITY MASSACRE (2010) -7 DAYS OF HORROR, DAY 3

 

This is a sequel to Slime City (1988). Is this a record between original and sequel?  But while there are no doubt in jokes referring to the first movie, this one stands on its own. Now I'll be giving away a few spoilers but don't blame me because they are already given away in text and in images on DVD case's jacket. It's on the American Shriek Show label which specialises in low budget grindhouse-style sleaze and horror DTVs. 

One of the four leads is Debbie Rochon who seems (from reading her entry in IMDB) to have appeared in dozen movies or more a year (mostly in cameos) for the last 20 years. She can also act and the other three are okay as well. We also get an early cameo, mugging to the camera as usual, from Troma mastermind Lloyd Kaufman who is thankfully disintegrated within seconds of his appearance. Also appearing is Robert C Sabin who had the lead in the original Slime City but not as the same character (I think).

The beautiful Debbie Rochon as she really is and, below, with makeup.

So, there's ongoing black and white flashbacks throughout the film about a 50's cult in New York. Then five years before the start of the main action, a dirty nuke destroys much of New York causing the rise of a totalitarian state and refugees from it tend to head for and hide out in NY's remains. Unscrupulous businessman Donald Crump (one consonant away from a massive law suit) visits, sees it as a business opportunity and orders in a death squad to clear the out the rubbish, though they don't turn up until near the end. Meanwhile our four heroes find a load of home brew and primary colour indefinite-life yogurt in the basement of the long-gone cult and consume it with gusto. This has the unfortunate side-effect of permitting the free-floating spirits of the cultists to briefly possess their now slime-covered bodies and use them for sex, murder, and other fun stuff.

Our slimers with director Gregory Lamberson.

Basically it's all good fun but just a little too restrained. Even at the climax there's only one truly over the top image of broken bottles jammed into the sockets of a bad guy's eyes with blood pouring out of the top of the bottles. But it never has the glorious mind-boggling manic fervour of movies like Evil Dead 2, Reanimator, Street Trash, or From Beyond. If anything the end is a bit confusing and too silly what with its rubbery homicidal brains with eyes and teeth. Brains have teeth?

This is labelled as a special edition (and is actually probably the only edition) and has a second disc of extras. Most notable is a selection of interviews (more mugging from Kaufman) and background stuff each shot on a different day of filming and a making of which I didn't watch.

All in all, to slightly misquote a famous magician: I liked it, not a lot, but I liked it.

DVD: JOHN RUSSO'S MIDNIGHT (1980) -7 DAYS OF HORROR, DAY 2

 

This DVD is released by Arrow Video which specialises in reissuing classic or cult horror movies in as complete a version as possible, remastered, and with lots of extras. All have double covers like the one above. More on this later.

John Russo's place in horror movie history is secured by his co-writing the script for Night Of The Living Dead with George Romero, but that isn't all he's done. Apart from several novels or novelisations, he wrote the original script for Return Of The Living Dead which was then re-written as a comedy by other hands, and more.

 

As for the film itself, I can't honestly say that it's very good but it isn't very bad either and has several things going for it. Made at the time (and long before today's cheap technology) for the then small sum, by movie standards, of $71,000 it wears its cheapness on its sleeve by not very good acting, barely adequate editing, and poor gore effects by another horror legend Tom Savini.

It opens with a family comprising mother and children who come across a teenage girl whose leg is caught in a trap. The mother then exhorts the eldest barely teenage boy to kill her which he does by beating her to death with a stick. Cut to a 17 year old girl being molested by her drunken cop stepfather who runs away and hitches a lift with two older boys, one black and one white. They never get out of the state. Stopping off at a small racist town for beer they get harrassed by the locals and a local cop. Shortly after that they get caught by a strange family and to say more would be to spoil it for you. 

There are several good things about this film which work. There is some reasonable characterisation for a start, though this would have worked better with more capable actors, not that they are all poor by any means. One of them is the Hollywood veteran Laurence Tierney. The violence and gore effects,though not quite tame by today's standards, aren't all that convincing. The sheer brutality and the delight in terrorising and murdering by the villains most certainly is and is quite grueling at times. There are also a few unexpected twists. All this make it a DVD worth hanging on to and watching again.

As for the DVD itself, it automatically plays, against a loud intrumental guitar-led rock track, a series of incredibly gory snippets from the various movies Arrow Video have released. This is quite intense, especially if you aren't prepared for it. I can say that as someone who's watched Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 without wincing (well, not much anyway). There's a booklet of all their films, a poster of the cover of Midnight with thumbnail images of their movies on the reverse. Plus a short illustrated booklet written by the excellent Stephen Thrower about the movie.On the disc itself is a good selection of trailers, but more importantly there are long and candid interviews with John Amplas (star of Romero's cult vampire movie Martin) and with John Russo himself which are well worth watching.

Three stars for the movie, four for the package.

DVD: THE THAW (2011), 7 DAYS OF HORROR DAY 1

A fairly undistinguished start to to 7 days of horror. This Canadian produced movie reminds me of an episode of the X-Files on a larger budget. It isn't bad, it's just been done before.

Set on island in the far north, a polar bear has been munching on a slowly thawing (global warming is the big theme here) corpse of a wooly mammoth which has been infected by a very hungry beetle which in turn infects a scientific team (lead by Val Kilmer) with disastrous results. A group of students (who have been picked to work with the illustrious professor), the helicopter pilot, and his estranged daughter arrive to find the base empty. And one by one they get infected by the parasites. 

Will anyone survive? Will the parasites spread to the rest of the world? Frankly it's hard to care. Despite being quite competent on the technical and acting fronts and never boring it just isn't very interesting either. One for the charity shop I think.

DVD: STARTING TOMORROW -7 DAYS OF HORROR

Apart from the films of Brett Piper, this blog's been a little light on the horror movie front. It's not that I haven't been buying them, I've just been watching other stuff on DVD like Game of Thrones Season 1 and, and this is the first mention of it here and may come as a surprise to those who know my tastes, Downton Abbey Series 1. With regards to the latter, I picked it up cheap and had nearly got to the end thinking that it was okay British TV when something clicked and I realised it was actually very good and I'll buy the second series when it comes down in price to around a tenner. I really want to find out what happens next to the characters. Not as much as Game of Thrones, mind you, but then even the much-loved Chuck would take precedence over GoT.

But back to the topic in hand. I've still been buying horror DVDs I just hadn't got around to watching them. I've now got a backlog of seven, six of which you've probably never heard of plus a remake of a controversial film you will, and I now plan to watch one a night for a week. Here they are:

 

SOCIETY: FOOD PACKAGING

Is This Information Really Necessary?

Susan and I are just about to have our tea -smoked salmon with scrambled egg on toast. Having nothing better to do, I read the back of the packet of salmon and came across the following information-

Allergy Information: Contains fish.

I should bloody well hope so.

TV/DVD: GAME OF THRONES (HBO, 2011)

 

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I read the first volume in George R R Martin's epic fantasy saga not long after it came out in 1991 and thought it was terrific. For some reason -it seemed too much of a good thing- I gave up halfway through the second book and never went back to it. Twenty years later when HBO put out their ten episode version of the book, I couldn't remember a damn thing about it except that it was good. I didn't watch the TV series when it was shown on Sky's Empire channel. It wasn't out of lack of interest rather because I have Virgin Media, Empire wasn't one of the channels they paid Sky for.

When the DVD set of this first season came out I still didn't rush to buy it despite all the praise heaped on it. Then I thought, what the hell, I can always recoup most of my losses by selling it, so I bought it and watched two episodes a night for successive nights, and most of the extras.

And, well, it's as good in its own way as Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. Not in special effects, I should add. While the show clearly had a healthy budget there is little in the fantasy element where sfx  are used mainly because there is very little fantasy involved at all. Sometimes it's quite obvious when a matte painting has been used for a castle or background scenery but that's the worst criticism I can make of a genuinely outstanding piece of television drama.

The script is a superb distillation of Martin's novel. I'm sure there'll have been some filleting but it never feels watered down. Martin, who appears frequently in the making of extras, appears delighted as well he may be.

The cast is outstanding featuring many of the best of British and Irish (location shooting was filmed in Northern Ireland and Malta) character actors from both tv and film. The standard of acting is, needless to say, exceptional with the youngest included. It's an ensemble piece, though it's anchored by the key figure of Lord Eddard Stark played by Sean Bean with immense dignity. It's also true what they say about how good (his Emmy was well-earned) Peter Dinklage is as Tyrion Lannister who, lacking stature, has to rely on his wits to survive.

Stark with his youngest daughter -a great feisty character herself.

Dinklage as Tyrion.

The beautiful and exiled Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) with a claim to the throne, married off to a barbarian horse-lord so her brother can use his army.

Okay, I'm going to stop with the photos or I'll be here all day as I'll have explain the very complicated plot. suffice to say that it's all about scheming and fighting for the throne of the Seven Kingdoms. But the reasons why it's so good are many. The world (in terms of environment and societies) in which it is set is well worked out. Despite the existence of magic and monsters, they play very little (albeit highly significant) part which makes them all the more effective. The characters are very well rounded human beings. Good people do bad things and bad people do good things. Clearly some characters you'll identify as good or bad but (with one repulsive psychotic exception) none are what you call evil. All do things because they believe what they are doing in right. There are constant surprising developments. You can never tell when a character might die and it could well be your favourite. Also characters grow and change with Daenerys above being a prime example from quiet girl to...well, I won't spoil it. I don't know the full chronological span of the series of novels but I suspect it will be a decade if not decades. One pre-teenager is clearly (well I think so) being set up to be a warrior woman when she gets older (though she could just as easily get killed in the next season and, yes, it's Stark's daughter pictured above).

Amazingly I've forgotten to mention that the language can be really crude, the violence is really violent with blood and limbs and heads all over the place, and the sex sometimes verges on soft-core porn.

So basically this is just a brilliant piece of television which I hope will continue until the very end. (Note: the final two books haven't even been written by Martin yet.) 

Post Script.

Yes, Barry, the music is terrific as well.

DVD REVIEWS: "TEENAGE KICKS" - INBETWEENERS THE MOVIE (2011), SUBMARINE (2011)

It's always best to assume a lack of knowledge, so I'll explain. Inbetweeners is the massively popular (at least in the UK and probably Europe) movie of the cult tv series which it brings to a conclusion. The inbetweeners of the title are 16-18 year olds who aren't the cool kids (cf. cult TV series Skins) or the jocks (sport not Scots) or the geeks. They are just the ordinary kids muddling along trying to grow up and making a bad job of it.

Submarine is a World War 2 story about a teenage boy who lied about his age to get a place on a submarine which is protecting the Atlantic convoys from the U-boats.

No, it isn't.

Submarine is a metaphor for the protagonist who spends more time submerged in his own little world than in the real one. I think. It's a little known, but critically praised, film about a 15 year kid in a small Welsh town who, if he could get his head out of his arse would be an inbetweener in a year's time. And I watched both of them within a week so it only seems reasonable to do a compare and contrast.

Both are supposedly comedies but comedy is an unfair label to lumber Submarine with as it's a much more inward looking film. Whereas Inbetweeners is a bust your gut 100 gags a minute. Our heroes, now free from school, go on holiday to Malia, Greece (but it's really filmed in Magaluf Spain where they changed all the signs and stuff to read Greek. Why they didn't just change the film's location to Magaluf and save a lot of time, money, and effort I don't know).

I can't really explain all the ins and outs which are dependent on three series worth of continuity but there is a linking thread about our heroes making friends with four girls over the course of the film. A missed opportunity I feel would have been to make the girls more sophisticated counterparts to the gang instead of normal intelligent young women. But the writers didn't so there. As any viewer of the series would expect there are almost countless jokes about sex, bodily fluids, unwanted nudity, copious drinking, and more. Some scenes are so excruciatingly embarrassing as to be almost unwatchable: almost. And that's par for the course anyway. It all rounds off the series very nicely at the end.

Credit is due to all the cast -lead, supporting, and extras- who make you believe it really is a hot summer and not three degrees above freezing point -watch a making of and see the thick jackets and hot drinks appear as if by magic the instant the director calls Cut! There's a nice cameo by the always likeable Anthony Head whose daughter plays Carli, one of the main ongoing characters and who displays a promising talent in the process.

Submarine is set in a small town in Wales where sea and country clash with a post-industrial landscape. Oliver, our introverted hero,  has several problems including an inability to communicate not helped by two introverted parents. His mother (played by an unrecognisable Sally Hawkins who is much better known for larger than life roles) is having a flirtation with an ex-boyfriend. Oliver (an amazing performance by Craig Roberts) is bullied at school but begins to develop something that's more than friendship with the problematic Jordana (Yasmin Paige who, like Roberts is 20 playing 15). Jordana is problematic because she's aggressive and a bit of a bully and also a bit of a pyromaniac albeit not in a way dangerous to life, limb, animals, or owned property. They both have problems (Jordana's is only revealed over halfway through and I'm not going to spoil it here) and each needs something from the other.

In case you're thinking that this sounds grim bleak and depressing, it's actually a comedy, just not a lighthearted one. Great script based on a novel by Joe Dunthorne, great directing by Richard Ayoade on his first film, and uniformly terrific acting.

Now I was going to do a compare and contrast so here goes. Apart from being comedies about teenagers, the two films are completely different and both are excellent in their own different ways. There you go, that's it. I'm done now.

Post Script.

Coming soon: a review of the DVD of HBO's Game of Thrones which isn't a comedy about teenagers..

TV: WATERLOO ROAD AND THE JOY OF PEACE

Waterloo Road is a weekly hour long show focused on the school of the same name. When I first watched it a couple of years ago I thought it was great but later series have become rather inconsistent in quality. Not bad exactly, just less interesting so that I don't follow it on a regular basis.

All that changed last night with the third episode of the new series when Heather Peace joined the cast (see above). A well-known actor, though until recently more of a face you recognised but couldn't put a name to. That stopped with last year's ensemble lesbian drama series Lip Service where Peace (who is openly gay) played, and brilliantly so, a butch police inspector, turning down a lucrative role in Coronation Street -respect!) to do so (see image below).

In Waterloo Road she plays the new head of English who used to be in the army and after watching that one episode, I've added Peace to my list of actors who I'll watch whatever they are in. This list includes Nathan Fillion (new season of Castle has just started), Dana Delany (who I've seen do the impossible by stealing scenes from Fillion in Castle, second season of Body of Proof currently showing in the UK), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (see review of 50/50), Miranda Hart, Julie Benz, and several others whom my aging disintegrating fails to remember.

So, no excuses, watch Waterloo Road now and experience the joy of Peace for yourself.

When not acting, she goes on the road as a highly respected singer/songwriter.

DVD REVIEWS: SCI-FI ADVENTURES (GREATEST CLASSIC FILMS COLLECTION)

Specifically-

Well now, I bought this because of one these films -World Without End (1956) - which I'd seen as a kid in the 50's and have never seen since, though I have brief memories of it and just wanted to see it again. Having Them (1954) and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953) in one set was an added bonus. Satellite In The Sky (1956), however was completely new to me and sounded like creaky low-budget crap.

Beast was stop-motion animation giant Ray Harryhausen's first full length movie and for a small studio. Made for a couple of hundred thousand dollars, the producer accepted Warner Bros offer of twice the budget for all the rights and went on to tear his hair out when it proceeded to make millions at the box office. Harryhausen was still learning his craft and had to do a lot on a small budget so what we get is brief glimpses of the monster throughout the movie until it attacks New York in the last 15 minutes. 

Of course it's creaky by today's standards though that is hardly a fair criticism as it couldn't be anything else. What it does have is an honoured place in the history of Science Fiction and monster movies. As does-

The opening sequences of Them are quite eerie with its desert scenes, moaning of the wind, and obscuring wind-blown sand. There's the mute, blank-faced, doll-clutching little girl wandering in from the desert and the contorted body  of the elderly shop-keeping in the basement remains of his store. All this builds well to the first shot of a giant ant looming above our heroine. The pace keeps up well until the ants nest is destroyed and we get a long period while the two escaped queens are searched for before the final climax in the Los Angeles storm drains which doesn't match up to the first part of the film. 

Unlike the rhedosaurus of Beast, the ants are (often large) animated models which inevitably means they tend to be rather slow moving and, this being the 50's, never bite anyone in half with their large powerful pincers. According to the jacket there are supposed to be extras about making the movie but I couldn't find any. A shame as I was interested in how the ants were done.

As I said, I remember actually going to the cinema to watch this one when I was a kid and remember the following things about it: the spaceship going through a timewarp; landing in the snow; attack of a giant caterpillar in a tunnel; attacked by big hairy men; rescued by underground dwelling civilised humans; a happy end of hairy people and undergrounders getting together to live in peace on the surface.

Actually, as it turns out, that's just about pretty much the entire movie. Not bad for something I haven't seen in around 55 years or more, so it obviously made an impression. Now, the differences. It wasn't a caterpillar it was a very fake giant spider thrown at a member of the cast by the movie's crew. The hairy men were mutants with only one eye and other facial disfigurements. Our heroes spent a lot of time talking with the undergrounders (a bunch of wimps) and falling for their feisty women. Then they go outside for a fight with the cyclopses, kill their leader and let the nicer non-cyclopses (the majority) learn to become civilised.

So basically I remembered the good bits.

I wasn't going to watch this one at all until this afternoon, a wet and windy Sunday one with the cats and Susan all sound asleep, when I thought I'd give it a go and was glad I did. Far from the low budget b/w American cheapie I was expecting, I got a widescreen in colour with a decent budget and decent actors British film. Just look at the main cast: leading man Keiron Moore, vivacious Lois Maxwell (before her Miss Moneypenny days), Brian Forbes (before he started directing), Jimmy Hanley, Donald Wolfit, and several others I recognised from tv appearances. It's a very English film of the period which is quite fun for those fond of nostalgia. Needless to say, everyone (as in all the others except World without End) smokes like chimneys.

The plot is simple, the title misleading. It's the first journey into space. The big secret is that it only got the funding so that a super-duper dangerous bomb could be tested in space without endangering the earth. Needless to say things go wrong and they can't get the bomb away from the spaceship (which has become magnetised to it) because the bomb's propulsion system is faulty. And it's not just the engineering that's a pile of crap. The security is worse as Lois Maxwell, whose cranky anti-space flight journalist, sneaks on board and this is at a supposedly secure installation. But it's all good stiff upper lip British entertainment.

Given that, in my time, I considered myself somewhat of an expert on science fiction and science fiction movies, I'm just puzzled as to how I didn't know that this was a British sf film, especially when one of the three scriptwriters was, now long forgotten, British SF writer J T McIntosh.