One of the earliest space exploration films "Rocketship X-M" is a product of its time. The idea of space exploration was becoming a reality when this was made as were the real horrors of nuclear war. Both of these topics are the key elements of "Rocketship X-M" which had to be thrilling to theater goers in 1950. Looking back on it the science of this movie is at times way off the mark. There are a lot of computations and other gibberish that takes the place of actual dialog enough so that we don't care much about the crew. The first hour is actually quite a yawner but the last 15 minutes are surprisingly good. It's not like I should worry about spoilers at this point (its been released for 60 years!) but "Rocketship X-M" has a mostly unhappy ending which was welcome as much of its runtime was filled with the kind of monologues that laid the foundation for countless other science fiction movies with typically happy endings (which nearly all of them had). The worst part of the movie is the crew engineer's constant recollections of growing up in Texas. This guy was obviously scripted to add comic relief but he was annoyingly stupid. The woman of the crew was also constantly badgered about being a scientist instead of a housewife. In fact I'm unsure if her character may have been to blame for the unhappy ending. The special effects here are expectedly crude but it's fun to see the early visions of space of the filmmakers.

It's just a bit too derivative, this film. Lloyd Bridges and his team of astronauts set off for the moon, but en route they are thrown off course and end up landing on Mars. It doesn't take them long to discovers the remains of a substantial civiliation on the surface - a society that looks as if it met a pretty violent end. Further exploration reveals that there are survivors - but are they friend or foe, and can they help our travellers get home? I was never an huge fan of Bridges, and here he and his perfect coiffure go through the motions with little engagement as, to be fair, do the contributions from the dreadfully wooden Osa Massen ("Lisa van Horn") and the usually more charismatic Noah Beery Jnr, ("Corrigan"). It is short, the pace is not bad and there is enough of a story to keep it watchable, it is just the acting, effects and the dialogue that are pretty unremarkable.