First Man Into Space

The early reels of First Man into Space should delight fans of the Mercury/Sputnik era in rocket technology... though it may delight fans of low-budget '50s sci-fi even more. A small manned rocket, launched from a jet cruising at high altitude, manages to poke its nose up about 250 miles above the earth---thus making its cocky, reckless pilot the (you guessed it) first man into space. Unfortunately, weird cosmic debris clings to the spacecraft when it crash-lands, and also to the astronaut: he's now covered with a layer of scaly, sparkly space rock. To put it in technical terms, the returned pilot is categorized as "a great big lumbering deformed monster." He's lumbering around a rocket facility in New Mexico, and the monster-pilot's brother (played by the always sober, always reliable Marshall Thompson) must find the thing before it kills again. Oddly enough, once the cheesy space-flight FX wear off, First Man into Space turns into a competent and surprisingly thoughtful thriller; give this movie some points for at least trying to emphasize the science in its fiction. --Robert Horton