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The near future: Earth sends a rocketship to the moon, with sientists
of all nations, well, many, well, a few actually, on board - but of course
under leadership of an American commander (Ken Clark). The conflicts on
board are predictable, as are the clichées: The Russian crewmember (Tom
Conway) claims every achievement that made this journey possible for his
own country - even though everyone else disagrees, and in the end he's of
course humbled by American ingenuity. Then there's of course the Polish
jew (Richard Weber), whose parents incidently were killed by the father of
the German scientist (John Wengraf) - but they become friends eventually
when the German denounces the crimes of his father. There's also the
arrogant French (Roger Til) whom nobody likes, the American whiz kid
(Robert Montgomery jr), and then there's the token black guy (Cory
Devlin), who trusts his senses more than everything else, but is usually
right - something of a noble savage. Well, on the journey to the moon,
they have the expected rough times with meteors and the like. Once on
moon, they find all sort of weird crystals while the two physicists
(Muzaffer Tema, Anna-Lisa) sneak off, find a cave where there's actual air
(every moon should have one), take of their helmets, start to make out -
and suddenly disappear behind a wall of solid ice. The others want to go
after them, but are stopped first by qucksand, then by extreme cold. And
then they receive a message from the moonmen that the two lovelorn
scientists are living with them now, and our earthmen are to leave moon
immediately, because the humans are an aggressive race, and otherwise
there will be consequences. But they ought to leave the cats they have
brought for experiments with the moonmen because they're really fond of
the cats but have none of their own. Our humans do as told, but when
they return to earth, they find it frozen over, and there's some sort of
shield around the earth that will prevent the rocketship to return to
earth even - but while the Frenchman proves himself to be a commie traitor
who's stopped of all people by the Russian. Then the German and the Jew
give their lives blowing a hole into the shield crashing a space taxi into
is ... and this impresses the moonmen (of course it was them freezing over
the earth) to release Mother Earth from deep freeze, and even invite the
humans to come back to moon eventually. 12 to the Moon
is a typical product of its time: It's full of fascination for space
travel as such, but doesn't really prove any understanding for the science
behind it (and I'm talking about 1960 level of science here), while its
story is full of allusions to the cold war (despite the pacifist premise),
it's full of stereotypes rather than actual characters, and of course, the
budget for the whole thing does not meet up with the actual requirements
... though that said, there were also much cheaper films of the same ilk
around at the time, but they were funnier (if unintentionally so) - this
one plays it just a bit too straight to ever be regarded as a trash
masterpiece - while it's also a bit too trashy for a straight film. Lovers
of vintage science fiction like myself will of course still find plenty to
like about about this one, but it's certainly not one of the more
memorable lunar landing movies.
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find 12 to the Moon at adultvideouniverse.com
