Silver Needle in the Sky

Rocky Jones and chums transport some VIPs to an outer space conference that is being held on a space station. The evil empress Cleolanta has different ideas and kidnaps the passengers in order to have leverage in having two of her imprisoned spies freed. Jones and the gang have to come to the rescue.

This is another in a series of 50's films that were created by knocking together various episodes of the 'Rocky Jones: Space Ranger' TV series. I've seen another one, Crash of Moons, and all I can say is at least Silver Needle in the Sky isn't as terrible as that one. But that isn't really saying a lot to be perfectly honest because this is also a very dull effort indeed. I think it would only be fair to say that these were very much products of their time and will do very little for anyone but the most committed fan of 50's sci-fi. On the positive side, the recurring villainous queen Cleolanta is quite a good character and the daft models are quite good fun. But other than that, I'm struggling.

Silver Needle in the Sky is yet anther tedious feature length film cobbled together from several episodes of 50s sci-fi series Rocky Jones: Space Ranger. This time around, Rocky (Richard Crane) and his happy-go-lucky crew must escort a group of space ambassadors to an interplanetary peace conference on space station X-07 (a strange choice of venue given its complete lack of defense systems). Miffed that she hasn't been extended an invitation, wicked Cleolanta of Ophesius (Patsy Parsons) plots to abduct the ambassadors and use them to secure the release of two of her men who are being held for trial on Earth (this ingenious plan is given the rather obvious codename Operation Surprise).

A very dull adventure, even by Rocky Jones' standards, 'Silver Needle' is for sci-fi masochists only, with a dearth of action and excitement, but plenty of boring dialogue-heavy scenes featuring embarrassingly naff futuristic space jargon. The lousy script is also full of plot holes and contrivances, the seemingly pointless inclusion of sexy interpretor Vena (the delightful Sally Mansfield) and spunky tyke Bobby (Robert Lyden) in Rocky's crew once again paying dividends, Vena's lipstick becoming a handy make-shift screwdriver and Bobby conveniently being able to squeeze into an air duct to help our heroes escape from a life-threatening situation (groan!).

With only three minutes left to go, my DVD player decided that enough was enough and refused to play any more of the film. I wasn't too upset.

Silver Needle In The Sky is a series of episodes from the old Rocky Jones - Space Ranger series where Richard Crane as Rocky and the rest of the crew of his ship the Orbit Jet are taking a whole bunch of delegates from earth and other worlds to a peace conference on one of the United Worlds Space Station. This gives the evil empress of Ophesius, an outlaw planet the chance to do some more dirty work.

Patsy Parsons is Cleolanta, ruler of Ophesius, part empress and all diva. How dare they have a peace conference and not invite her. Of course fans of the show remember her as the running villain who was pulling all kinds of schemes every week. She resolves to kidnap the conference delegates and exchange them for a couple of high level Ophesian operatives that are prisoners on earth.

With a couple of close calls Rocky and the crew pull it all out. It becomes a real bust for Parsons and part of the reason also is a little bit of an Ophesian power play by a couple of her trusty aides. And young Robert Lyden has his moment to shine in the series where for once his small size comes in handy to get them all out of a bad mess.

It's still enjoyable to me, but with the advances we've made in the past 57 years not even seven year olds today could really appreciate Silver Needle In The Sky.