12 to the Moon

An international team of 12 scientists, along with a menagerie of animals, including a Cocker Spaniel dog, blast off for the unknown satellite. Luckily, the crew has their seatbelt-equipped, foldable, patio lounge chairs for added comfort. Plagued by meteors and nationalistic quibbling, they finally reach their destination.

Upon arrival, the explorers soon realize that the Moon is a cruel mistress indeed.

12 TO THE MOON is a silly, but enjoyable sci-fi yarn from a far more innocent time. Ken Clark is as stiff and stolid as ever in his Commander role. Tom Conway provides a dubious Russian accent. The Cocker Spaniel provides the cuteness. This is all topped off with an utterly absurd finale.

The rocket's interior and some of the equipment may be quite familiar to fans of movies like ANGRY RED PLANET or JOURNEY TO THE 7TH PLANET. This movie is recommended especially for lovers of such harmless, interplanetary fluff...

12 to the Moon (1960) has ordinary special effects, acting and direction while a variety of plot devices at least keeps the action going.

The spaceship which lands on the moon is called the Lunar Eagle One. Nine years after this movie was released, the first human landing on the moon was accomplished in a lunar lander called the Eagle.

Coincidentally, the six NASA manned moon missions had a total of twelve astronauts who walked on the lunar surface.

For real-life lunar missions, it was originally conceived that a mission to the moon might involve the launching of a complete rocket, sending it to the moon, landing it on the surface and taking off again for return to earth. As we know, by the time of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions that idea had been ditched in favour of using a multi-staged rocket and employing command and lunar modules to undertake the moon landing mission.

Instead of having a cast of thousands going on a mission to the moon along with the associated problems of weight to fuel ratios, as well as oxygen, food and water supplies, the Apollo missions had a crew of three with two to land on the lunar surface and one to remain in the orbiting command module.

In relation to the Secretary General of the ISO's speech at the start of the film, many people today might recall the global telecast of the first manned moon landing in 1969, along with the name of the lunar lander ("Eagle.") Despite it being a US mission, the landing was proclaimed as a "giant leap for all mankind."

This 1960 release was the first U. S. science fiction film to have a spaceship with a multi-racial crew, six months after the East German/Polish production of "The Silent Star"/"First Spaceship on Venus" (1960) with its multi-racial crew.

Considering the era in which the film was made, the composition of the crew should keep even wokey-dokey, PC & inclusive obsessed modern audiences reasonably happy. The international make-up of the crew was also quite an innovative idea for the time considering that such a notion hadn't really become a reality on such a scale until the development of the International Space Station program.

Putting racial and gender considerations aside, it appears that compatibility and emotional stability weren't factors in the selection process considering how some of the crew fly off at the handle over nationalistic and ideological differences.

What shows through is the speculative nature of our view of space and space flight at the time the film was made. Many still believed that there might be life, even intelligent life on Mars and Venus. Such films as 12 to the Moon ought to be viewed as both harmless entertaining film fun and as a snapshot of the values, attitudes, concerns and ideas of the time.

I remember having seen "12 to the Moon" in theatrical release in the 1960's, the last hurrah of the matinees on Saturdays. While many of the "gen-X-ers" would not truly understand the times and feelings of the era, we "baby-boomers" were there, and shared in the fun and excitement of the times, and the thrill of going into a theater as a young person to see even a not-so-good sci-fi flick. "12 To The Moon" was, as I recall, another one of those "dislocated dramas". By that I mean--it took place on the Moon, but concentrated more on human elements than on actual science. It did not take itself seriously, and was un-ashamedly released strictly for entertainment value, as were 95% of the flicks of that era. The US had not yet conquered space, let alone the moon, in 1960. It was an era of expectation, anticipation, and discovery. The scene that still haunts me from the film is the ill-fated space voyager who dies in a form of "lunar-quicksand". The others are virtually helpless to assist their fellow traveler. There is a warmth and an empathy present in the sci-fi flicks of that era that is not present in to-day's "in your face" media and world. In those days, "attitude on a stick" was equated with a flawed, or even evil character, and required redemption on the part of the

"attitu-dee"..that is to say, the one who has the attitude. I don't remember a lot of the film, not having seen it since I was in third or fourth grade. But audiences then got a lot from a little, and what was unspoken or not shown spoke volumes over that which was more conspicuous.

This film remains rather stilted and slow-moving and that's not a good thing in what is essentially a 1950s style Rocketship B-Movie...it has many of the trademarks common to those...hurtling meteor storm attacks!, silly and impossible solutions to every problem usually involving shooting a rocket at something else and an intergender crew(although this one also has the daring for its time interracial crew!)...the problem with this film isn't its story really which could have been fun but the fact we see so little of what we hear about after the fact..more on screen adventure would have been a tremendous help..the gay undertones present in this film are also disturbing and sometimes laughable(although how else could the subject have been brought up in the time?). Still deserves points for being so daring.

A slapdash screenplay filled with random emergencies, 15 second solutions, random melodrama and emotional outbursts, and worse than usual unscientific "science" cripple what is nonetheless an optimistic effort.

The ship boasts a pre-Star Trek multicultural crew, but even here the screenwriters can't resist making the African man the superstitious one, and the Japanese woman the one who is capable of on-the-spot translation of hieroglyphics which "resemble Chinese" characters.

Still, it is an interesting effort within the context of the international space race, and worth 75 minutes for fans of that era's matinee science fiction culture.