In 1950, A Shockingly Dark Sci-Fi Adventure Tried To Predict The Space Race

Several years before the Space Race officially began, two suspiciously similar Hollywood movies raced to launch their lunar expeditions onto the big screen. And even though it had a year-long head start, Destination Moon ended up as the Soviet Union to Rocketship X-M’s United States.

George Pal Productions had started working on the former in 1949, proudly teasing its state-of-the-art construction, scientific accuracy, and Technicolor visuals in an extensive marketing campaign. But when various snags delayed the release date, Lippert Pictures saw an opportunity to steal its thunder, and landed Rocketship X-M in theaters 75 years ago today.

Quickly assembling a cast which included Beau “father of Jeff and Beau” Bridges, future Rockford Files star Noah Beery, Jr., and western favorite Hugh O’Brian, the studio tasked German director Kurt Neumann (The Fly, She-Devil) with making a different-yet-same sci-fi tale on a budget of just $94,000 and in only 18 days.

Remarkably, the finished product rocketed into theaters just 25 days after shooting wrapped. And while the fast-tracked film doesn’t soar to the same heights as its costlier rival — it’s largely in black and white, for one thing, while the lack of any expert consultants soon becomes abundantly clear — it still stands as a fascinating curio.

Like the making of the movie itself, Rocketship X-M doesn’t waste any time, thrusting its heroes into deep space just minutes after their pioneering mission to the Moon is announced. It doesn’t take long for things to go awry, either, as the crew is forced to contend with a wayward booster, meteorite storm, and malfunctioning engine before a fuel recalculation sends them spiralling off to Mars.

This being the early 1950s, it’s the sole female presence, Dr. Lisa Van Horn (Osa Massen), who wrongly gets the blame. “For what? For momentarily being a woman?” Dr. Eckstrom (John Emery) asks after she meekly apologizes for daring to question her male colleagues. If that wasn’t enough, Bridges’ Colonel Graham later argues that cooking, sewing, and bearing children are all the opposite sex is cut out for. Still, the fact that a woman was even allowed on the expedition was relative progress, given that Destination Moon had an all-male crew.

Whoever’s at fault for the wild careening, the group initially appears to take it in stride. “There are times when a mere scientist has gone as far as he can, when he must pause and observe respectfully while something infinitely greater assumes control,” Eckstrom philosophizes. But they become a little more alarmed when they step outside their rocket (with only winter coats and oxygen masks for protection) and discover evidence of a long-lost civilization ravaged by radiation.

In one of several clever moves disguising the production’s slim resources, Rocketship X-M turns from monochromatic to dusty red as the astronauts explore their new surroundings (California’s Death Valley National Park serves as Mars). They soon realize they have company, though, as primitive, radiation-scarred tribesmen emerge from the mountainous terrain. “From Atomic Age to Stone Age,” Eckstrom notes, before happening across a blind woman whose screams of terror turn the situation hostile.

In the first sign that Rocketship X-M might not provide the happily-ever-after expected, both Eckstrom and Beery, Jr’s comic relief Major Corrigan are killed via axe and large boulder, respectively. Meanwhile, O’Brian’s severely wounded astronomer Chamberlain retreats to the rocket with Graham and Van Horn, a pair then given a groanworthy, entirely unearned romantic subplot, for a journey back to Earth. Or so they think.

Having finally burned through all their fuel, the three survivors are unable to make a safe landing, and instantly perish upon crash-landing. It’s a shockingly nihilistic denouement, particularly for an era in which the feel-good ending reigned supreme, but the crew’s fatal mission hasn’t been for nothing. During their uncontrollable descent, Graham is able to deliver a timely and potentially humanity-saving warning to Dr. Fleming (Morris Ankrum) about how nuclear war destroyed Mars, a timely message considering the impending breakout of the Cold War.

Although Rocketship X-M was undoubtedly anti-atomic warfare, it was firmly pro-space exploration. “Every point of our rocket theory has been established,” Fleming notes to a stunned press who’d assumed the final frontier had become too dangerous to traverse. “No, gentlemen… the flight of the R-X-M was not a failure,” he says. “Tomorrow we start construction of R-X-M 2.” It feels like a sneak preview of the real Space Race persisting amid real fatalities.

Rocketship X-M might have needed stock footage and a script hastily doctored by then-blacklisted Dalton Trumbo to pull off its mission impossible. But while it lacks the finesse of the film it desperately tried to trump, its willingness to subvert the usual tropes ensures it’s more than just a pale imitation.