Space Master X-7

Like the previous commenter I also saw this as a child, and in the spirit of his well written comments, I will add it was at the old Nile Theater in South Minneapolis. I was about 10. I had nightmares about this film for many days after, and to this day 50 years later, I still remember the title! Definitely not for the discerning adult, but my sci-fi grandson would love it! Solid 8 rating for the memories and thrills. However, it is only marginally acted. The special effects are good, and the airplane scene mentioned is thrilling. The oozing through the vent duct in the lab will remind you you are not safe even in your own home. I'd sure like to see this again!

Space fungus menaces planet earth. Okay, everything else was menacing the besieged 1950's planet, so why not a creepy fungus. Well, it's actually a bloody slime from outer space that spreads like a dirty carpet, and unless trackers can catch up with the shapely blonde Typhoid Mary (Thomas) carrying it, we're all one big toadstool. I'm trying hard, but I just don't recall this epic from 1958, and I rarely missed one of these drive-in specials. According to IMDb, TCF didn't syndicate the film, which is why, I guess, it's gone unseen for 50 years.

Actually, the movie's pretty well produced for its kind. The location shots lend at least some credibility to the wacky plot. And catch those early versions of protective Hazmat suits in the train yard scene. Williams and Ellis do well as the bloodhounds, but why Ellis remains a lowly Pfc with his officer-level credentials seems odd. Also, I really like the unheralded Lyn Thomas as the nervous blonde.

Note that brilliant screenwriter Dan Mainwaring, e.g. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Out of the Past (1947), collaborated on the screenplay. I'm guessing that promising trapped-in-the-airliner concept came from him. Too bad the full potential of those scenes is not realized by director Bernds. At the same time, the movie ends all-too-abruptly, as though the production suddenly ran out of money. I get the feeling that with better backing and a more perceptive director, this drive-in programmer could have turned into an uptown smash on the order of Alien (1980).

Behind this bland, forgettable and indescriptive title is one of that decade's more interesting low budget items. "Blood Rust" was probably the script's original name, and this refers to the red coloring of Mars which, as is found out on the return of a space probe, is a fungal overgrowth that could easily thrive on the Earth. THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN, while not exactly a remake, shares both the panicky concept and something akin to realism in its approach. SPACE MASTER's an Edward Bernds quickie, no nonsense drive-in fare with logic secondary to pace, but there's a continual teetering on the edge of DETOUR-like brilliance that makes it, if not a classic, quite exceptional.

The strength of writing is ever evident, as the threat to humanity theme is subverted away from the usual conquering hero routine to documentary-like police procedural, the pursuers taking on near anonymity as our attentions, and sympathies, focus on the fleeing "Typhoid Mary". She's finely played by Lyn Thomas, a mature and intelligent 50s beauty in the Jan Sterling mode. We're told just as much as we need to know about her, that she once was involved in an S&M fling (I kid you not, it's ALL THERE in 1958) with arrogant scientist Paul Frees (Richard Deacon doing Clifton Webb, and does he deliver cutting lines!) Their unholy reliance resulted in a child that she now wants back in her new life of respectability. His experiments with the alien fungus result in his hideous death and the government, knowing that she was with him at the time, has to track her down so that she won't infect the world. However, they can't throw the public into panic (cover-up stuff, another first) by saying why they've put out an all-points bulletin out on her, so she goes into hiding and flees so that she won't be framed for his murder! Now I ask you, how often do you run into plot intricacies (as opposed to absurdities) like this during your typical monster movie round-up?

At the same time SPACE MASTER X-7 is as frustrating as it's intriguing, because get-it-out-on-schedule Bernds never quite takes that extra step ahead of his time. There's a beautiful scene involving Miss Thomas and a cop the predates PSYCHO, where you're rooting for her to get away and the world's fate be damned, and though this perversion of empathy carries on the irony of it is somehow lost in the climactic shuffle. Said climax, stunningly prepared for in both mood and pacing, aboard a threatened air liner complete with children on the threshold of death, is shied away from in terms of intensity when it could've become a Hitchockian runaway carousel. One feels, by the movie's end, that something truly magnificent just didn't quite break free from the shackles of its period's conventions.

I think this one's ripe for a remake and hopefully by someone with brains and taste. It certainly has a plot, very friendly to updating, that doesn't sit still. One thing that gets this film footnoted out of the collective amnesia is the presence of Moe Howard as a cab driver. He's funny as can be but plays it straight, as a regular Joe who finds himself in the midst of things, and makes one wish that, like brother Shemp, he and the rest of those Stooges would've done a little more dramatic character work.

Better than it had a right to be! The premise was good, the screenplay was good, even the acting and direction were good. When I was in grammar school, the film was re-released about 1960 and several of my schoolmates kept referring to the "blood rust", some calling it "blood lust" and telling me about the film, I was jealous! I figured it was some sort of zany shocker but never *sighs* got to see it on the big screen. 2009 rolls around and The Fox Movie Channel runs it and at long last I get to see it......Quite good! I have to admit that I was disappointed only because it was such a literate and well handled film and not something akin to a Corman flick. Paul Frees, one of the most overused voices in H'wood gives an amazingly solid performance as an obsessed scientist. I also like the stock music tracks used as well...I picked up several composers in the mix, not the least was Victor Lazslo. Too slick for it's own good! As a child I would have been bored, but not now.....

Not sure why they called it Space Master X7. This is more a very light film Noir chase thriller with some rubbery omelette monster thing in a supporting role. Still you can see how it is an ancestor of The Andromeda Strain or Contagion.