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I recently picked up the DVD of this film for a look. I originally saw it in 1951 when it got to my town on the bottom of a double bill with the western of the day. At that young age, the screaming cave-girl was my most vivid memory, but I liked it. Also saw it maybe 20 years ago on VHS. Still pretty good. Lloyd Bridges was cool, underplayed the whole part. On this last viewing, it's still a good sci-fi flick but from a vastly different point of view. The science as since provided by the real rockets that have been put into space was fairly on the money, especially the two-stage rocket explanation. Since special effects are practically nil, the look is O.K. The fiction, on the other hand was way, way out there. Please note, that all instruments were manual and mechanical and calculations were done with pencil and paper. Not a digital instrument or computer in sight. The idea of doing the Mars locations in Sepia-tone was as brilliant as it was cheap, as well. Lloyd Bridges and Morris Ankrum were head and shoulders the most talented actors in the cast of otherwise good players. Ankrum especially ,always under-rated, could read a grocery list and make it sound important. It also didn't hurt that Kurt Neuman put the whole thing together, either. This film probably inspired in it's own way a lot of young people to explore science and space exploration for real.

I first saw this when it came out in the theater. Though only 13 at the time, I was an avid reader of "hard science" science fiction stories. The technical gaffes of the film are burned into my memory.

Some of the following may have significant spoilers.

Even as a youngster, I knew the premise is silly. The rocket takes off for a lunar mission, in a cosmos where there is always a gravitational effect on the crew (though loose objects float as in zero gravity) and because of that, the "cabin" (the area with the controls, whatever they called it) was gyrostabalized to maintain the "correct" orientation (so that when they landed, why didn't they land standing on their heads?) and where, at least in near-earth space, the rocket engines had to be running continually -- with propellant combusting away without an oxidizer. When the engines quit, the rocket stopped _dead_ in space, and couldn't start going until a PhD chemist determined it needed at a little oxidizer. This time, the rocket recalled it had momentum, and the next thing our heroes know they're near Mars (even a 13-year-old nerd knew such a minimum-energy trip would take over 200 days).

They land, find the air was breathable (though at the time scientific data revealed that the pressure, even if the atmosphere were pure oxygen, would be too low to do any good). They decide to camp outside the ship, and even build a campfire. They come armed, even though they were supposedly going to the Moon, where firearms wouldn't be needed.

They get a sight of a collapsed civilization, encounter stray martians who look just like people, develop an anti nuclear war philosophy, and those who survive try to get back to the home planet, and die in the attempt by crashing on the Earth! To do that would require such a long orbital period, they'd have died of starvation long before approaching their destination.

The film it preceded, Destination Moon, used real science most effectively (even though their "rescue" with the Oxygen Tank forgot about the moment arm from the tank's center of gravity to the output nozzle). This film showed woeful ignorance of even the most basic science. Only the most technologically illiterate should think of it as a science fiction film: it's on a par with the old Flash Gordon serials where their rocketships took off from their bellies and climbed in spirals, and whose engines were always on.

The story on this one I considered banal, and I can recommend this only as a film to be shown to students for them to pick out technical gaffes.

To call "Rocketship X-M" a science fiction classic is due more to its release date (1950), its savvy ability to capitalize on the publicity for "Destination Moon", and the appearance of actors who would later star in television as Sea Hunt's Mike Nelson, Rockford's dad and Wyatt Earp.

The movie itself is bad enough to be good fodder for MST3K and is best viewed with commentary from Joel and the robots. This is the type of movie best suited to added riffing from the MST3K characters; something preachy, slow-paced, poorly scripted, and full of painfully bad acting. While unintentionally funny stuff like "Plan 9 From Outer Space" don't lend themselves to satirical commentary (because the movie constantly upstages the hosts), really bad and dull movies like "Rocketship X-M" are ideal. So add some stars to the rating if you are watching the MST3K version.

The basic story has the crew taking an unplanned right turn at the moon and ending up on Mars. What they find on that planet are the remnants of a human-like civilization devastated by an atomic war. Only one Martian is shown in close-up, a normal looking woman who is blind or at least has no pupils in her eyes. The men look like the "goons" in the old Popeye cartoons, they scamper agilely around the cliffs and throw boulders at the crew with amazing accuracy-especially if they are supposed to be blind. Of course none of this is ever explained as doing so would require some sign of logical analysis from the writers of the screenplay.

The scenes on Mars are presented in something called "Sepia Color" to distinguish them from the rest of the B&W movie. If this has you thinking "Wizard of Oz" you will be disappointed because it is just black and white stuff with a slight brown tint added to the print in post-production.

In keeping with the moronic sexism of the movie, the icy female scientist screws up her fuel calculations-both coming and going. Her failure to measure up to the men causes her feminine side to surface and she and Mike Nelson coo sweetly to each other as they face their doom (insert sound of gagging here).

The real stars of the movie are the reporters at the command center. So much so that MST3K was inspired to specially salute these unheralded heroes. The intrepid squad of "newsies" are featured for the first 10 minutes of the movie, then take stations about 12 inches behind the technicians and monitoring equipment in the command center. Later they are called upon to ask the moronic questions needed by the mission director to expound on the movie's already too obvious message.

The DVD has an extremely low audio level, is not captioned, and is accompanied by a trailer. Although you will be thankful that it is only 77 minutes, it is still about 60 minutes too long as any 30 minute episode of "The Twilight Zone" has several times more content than this entire movie.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Some films are blessed (though the producers would argue) by having less money with which to work. "Rocketship X-M" (the initials represent "eXpedition Moon") relies therefore upon, ahem, a real Story, with Acting, rather than flash and effects. That's why a half-century later, the well-remembered "RX-M" has held up so well. (An analogy could be drawn with the co-incidental 1949-1955 television series "Captain Video and His Video Rangers", where the bulk of budget also went towards quality writers and cast.) John Emery is - surprise!- a good guy here.

Osa Massen, one of the screen's most photogenic stars ever, is radiant. The whole cast carries through the forgivable inconsistencies with style. Ferde Grofé's music takes us from exultant triumph to eerie mystery and, finally, into bitter realization of what the RX-M crew discovers, the utter waste of an entire civilization. (Remember the real-life "face" on Mars?) Grofé well-illustrates the withering madness in the crew's panicked escape and return attempt. And the final moments aboard the doomed RX-M are of the stuff that makes for great film. I saw this in theatrical release, and you, too, will find "Rocketship X-M" one of your most memorable. Highly recommended to all.

Wow, this was a real stinker. This early sci-fi flick has nothing going for it than pure camp. There's so much scientific mambo-jumbo in the dialog it's laughable. The female character played by Osa Massen is just a plot device for the male characters to serve sexist remarks during the entire length of the film. Watch this one with your girlfriend I guarantee it will make her blood boil.The only good thing is the musical score which expertly build the moods of the film. The special-effects are rather crude but not bad considering the vintage of the movie. With some good B-stars in the lead roles,the acting isn't too bad. But the lines they are given must have given them quite a challenge. The challenge of not laughing their heads off.

This movie is great in its predictions of how space travel would take place in the future (remember, it was released in 1950, way before any manned rocket launches). Of course there are some mistakes, but overall I am impressed how accurate they are. The plot is extremely simple, but the ending is in style with the realism it portrays (although not very hollywood-like) Acting is adequate, but stereotype of its age.

All in all, an enjoyable movie for SF fans

This is one I've carried in my memory for years.

Without the Technicolor budget of George Pal and Robert Heinlein's "Destination Moon," "Rocketship X-M" succeeds in becoming a far more meaningful and memorable pre-"2001" science fiction film.

"Destination Moon" attempts a "scientific" preview of man's first lunar visit. Of course, this effort seriously dates the movie (I also smile at the rather whimsical, seat-of-the-pants, "outsider" endeavors of our heros as they manfully put forth, launching their rocket one-step ahead of the narrow-minded "authorities." Okay, so much for that!).

Rocketship X-M had to vie with "D.M." for entertainment bucks at the box office. X-M's b&w budget (with special effects courtesy of White Sands V-2 stock footage and model-making of the string and cardboard variety) didn't allow the producers to throw a lot of "science" at us, however. What they did have going for them, however, were a few excellent character actors doing star-turns for a change of career-pace, a script by Dalton Trumbo, music by Ferde Grofe, and excellent -- and evocative -- sound and camera work...etc.

Granted: The film's overall messages are a bit simplistic -- nuclear war is bad and should be avoided and the human spirit for exploration and discovery cannot be put down by failure and difficulty (I guess they never considered budget shortfalls as a "failure of spirit"). These ideas are, at least, given voice here during what was, after all, a dangerous era in American politics. Remember, Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted!

The science? Okay, it sucks. Who cares!? Science fiction, to my liking, is less about science and numbers than it is about people and life. This has all of that and carries it forward with distinction and class.

When I first saw this movie as a kid, I remember being truly frightened by the bleak view of a post-apocalyptic Mars and shivered in disbelief then terror at the onrushing tragedy of the about-to-crash rocket bearing the two doomed lovers and their sole-surviving crew-mate (a young Hugh O'Brien) to a fiery demise over the Ural Mountains. The producers did a terrific job with what they had and they deserve a great deal of credit.

I've seen some scenes from this movie in a documentary about 50's sci fi movies called Watch the skies. Directors such as George Lucas, Spielberg or James Cameron talked in this film about his favorite sci fi films and Rocketship X-M was one of their favorite ones. So, i decided to downloaded it from Edonkey, because i live in Peru, and here is IMPOSSIBLE to find this kind of films. Unfortunately, i saw the film without Spanish subtitles, so, i didn't understand the dialogs well. Despite that, i think the plot is quite understandable. The tragic ending is great and the vision that the producers of this film had, 17 years before the first trip to the moon and even 6 years before Yuri Gagarin was the first man in the space, makes this an essential film. The plot may be not so "scientific", but i think is an unforgettable film. I could see this film again in a TV channel or in a cinema.

Writer-Producer-Director Kurt Neumann put together an excellent ensemble cast, and accomplished having Lippert Pictures finance this $96,000 venture in 1950. This is a simple picture that works due to fine direction, players and technical staff. Karl Struss, one of Hollywood's most admired photographers, lensed the picture. One of the best known American composers, Ferde Grofe, wrote the musical score, and one reviewer found it more original than John Williams' STAR WARS score. Although the technical knowledge that exists today dates the picture somewhat, this picture is not campy because it has a serious tone to it, and most audiences key in on that. The original soundtrack recording of the score received an LP release on the Starlog label during the 70's. There are now moves underfoot to re-record the entire score for a CD release, possibly in 2001.

ROCKETSHIP XM received some updates in the 70s, when some new special effects scenes were shot and released on VHS. This version is currently available from video sources.

I've seen some pretty cheesy and unrealistic sci-fi flicks in the past and this one is surely among them there.

Rocketship X-M, written and directed by Kurt Neumann who has done many alike films in his heyday in the 1950s, tells a story of five astronauts going to the Moon but due to an unfortunate event end up on planet Mars and decide to discover it a bit.

First off, this movie bears almost zero scientific authenticity - the pilots do not experience gravity in the slightest, hear sounds in space and what is happening on Mars is beyond your wildest dreams - Georges Melies' 1902 'A trip to the Moon' could have easily been this movie's blood brother by merits of imagination. And second and the most disappointing thing is that even the story itself, despite being moralizing and touching on the subject matter of nuclear war and its consequences, erases it all with kooky, idiotic dialogues full of misogynistic stereotypes and scientific mumbo-jumbo and therefore is not worthy to stick around for.

Lloyd Bridges in one of his first leading roles is far from being great, mainly due to his character being just your average Joe trying to earn a sympathy of a girl, but in space. All the rest of the cast members are just as bad and their characters seem as if written out of textbooks on how not to write an engaging story.

The filming of this movie took only 18 days and it figures: the creators were trying to beat Destination Moon in their race to be the first interplanetary movie but failed just as well as they did.

At 31:00 sice start I couldn't stand anymore of this horrendous movie. It had nothing going for it. No good acting, no talk plot, no math or physics or sense. It's the most stupid movie I've ever seen. The Killer Tomatoes is a better Movie. Kentucky Fried Movie has better science. The first, silent Tarzan movie in low redoyand B&W has better acting and a plot. Thank luck the smarty pants had paper and pencils to do basic math and land on Mars instead of their target the Moon.

I think they wasted their very meager budget of under $100,000. They should have hired a fifth grader to write a better script. Now, if only Ray Harryhausen had added a dinosaur battle on Mars this movie would be worth watching. Unfortunately, Ray wasn't on this absolutely rotten movie.

Pioneering sci-fi film about the first manned space flight to the moon that drifts off course and heads to Mars! The cast is good, with classy John Emery the standout as the mission leader. Osa Massen is the sole female on board the flight. She's all business until he-man Lloyd Bridges thaws her out. Bridges' horndog character seems to have only joined the mission to get in Massen's pants. Every scene he's putting the moves on her, no matter what danger they're in. Noah Beery is the obligatory character who talks about being from Texas all the time. A staple of many World War II films was a character who was either from Brooklyn or Texas and always bragged about it. This character type made the transition from those earlier war films into science fiction films in the '50s.

It's full of what would later be clichés of the genre and it's all very modest and even cheap in some ways. The sets aren't comparable to the higher budgeted Destination Moon, which was released a month after this, but they're nice in their own way. Some scenes were added in the '70s to replace stock footage used in the original. I enjoy this movie a lot. It isn't going to please many but I think it should be very entertaining for fans of Golden Age sci-fi movies.

A crew take off into space to land on the moon. However, once on their journey, they get re-directed to Mars instead. Can they make it back to Earth to let the world know what they discover?

The film breaks up into 4 stages. We are first introduced to the cast and given an explanation of the mission. Ok, the scene is set. We then proceed to take-off and this next stage is where the film loses momentum. They are in the rocketship in space and we just get bored. I nearly fell asleep twice. The third stage takes us into a sort of "Planet of the Apes" film and is presented in a red-coloured hue to signify Mars (I assume). It's fun (kind of silly). Finally, we get a poignant ending.

The ending is memorable but the rest of the film up to that point is slightly dull and so it doesn't merit a second viewing. Seen it. What they find could well be the truth. Somewhere.

It's good to have the location scenes (filmed in Death Valley and Red Rock Canyon) restored to their original theatrical red tints in the current DVD release. That's certainly a considerable improvement over the washed-out prints circulating on TV in the late 1960s. The black-and-white scenes look great too.

One thing, alas, that has not improved is Lloyd Bridges' overweeningly smug, self-satisfied, aren't-I-just-too-heroic performance. Mr Bridges here packs all the charm of a cheap carnival barker. Normally he's a very reliable player and I don't know what possessed him to show off. Director Neumann should have imposed some restraints. Although equally hampered by Mr Hampton's tired, if tried and true, additional dialogue, the other players, even Noah Beery, Jr., seem engagingly realistic, even when the story wanders from the highly unlikely into the utterly impossible.

Still, although the movie pretends to offer scientific and astronomical facts, its sole purpose is to entertain and this it does reasonably well. In fact, production values look so impressive overall, it's a wonder to me that the picture came in at a negative cost of only $94,000! Lots of "crowd artists" pack the benches in the briefing scene, but many of these "reporters" are actually behind-the-camera personnel who have been suddenly (if briefly) thrust into the limelight. There was no sign of photographer Karl Struss in the crowd, but I think I recognized producers Lerner, Lippert and Neumann.

Look I know this is 1950 and I always make allowances for gender stereotypes back in the day but this film definitely has one if the most sexist lines ever basically saying a woman is too sensitive and men aren't sensitive at all. But to the story itself it's great for a laugh in a schlocky horror sci fi sense but a pretty boring and - as others have said on here - even adjusting for its time frame pretty much nonsense all round. Great cast does it best with the plot and dialogue though.

Ferde Grofe, one of America's great composers, was somehow persuaded by Lippert Productions to write the music score for their low budget production of ROCKETSHIP X-M. It is a wonderful operatic score, because RXM, after all, is a space opera. The main title is heroic in nature; the weightless music conveys that feeling perfectly, and there is a lovely tune, begun by a solo violin, that suits Lisa and Floyd's mild flirtations perfectly( very similar to THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY by Tiomkin, but written two years earlier). When the ship approaches and lands on Mars, the theremin is included in the orchestration for music that truly sounds alien. As the crew faces doom as they attempt to return to earth, the music takes on very dramatic moods. The picture's music ends with an upbeat Hollywood thrust. This is truly one of the outstanding sci-fi scores, and except for an original soundtrack LP album on the Starlog label (released in the 1970s) it has been virtually ignored. This score deserves a new and updated recording.

Despite this picture being produced quickly and cheaply in order to capitalize on the publicity generated by George Pal's big budget 'Destination Moon,' this movie is better than a lot of scifi flicks produced today costing tens of millions of times more and having our 21st century futuristic technology for special effects.

It's interesting to note that the film was directed by the German-born Kurt Neumann and features the beautiful Teutonic actress Osa Massen in the female lead. The original version of this film, screened by American audiences 5 years after the surrender of Germany, contains footage of the WW2 German V-2 missile, used in lieu of FX miniature shots of the titular rocketship. The V-2 footage is not from WW2, however. The V-2 film comes from the American rocket program, which in 1950 was still using captured V-2's for testing and development, due to the fact that even 5 years after WW2, the USA still did not have anything that could touch it.

These facts are interesting because Germany was hugely important to space exploration movement of the 20th century. It was a clique of German rocket experts in the 1920's who first proposed plausible trips to the moon for humans, and who served as advisors for German director Fritz Lang for the silent 'Frau Im Mond,' the first attempt at a serious cinematic depiction of space travel. The space enthusiasts were co-opted in the 1930's by the Hitler regime, eventually designing the A4, which rained indiscriminate technological death upon England in a manner similar to way US drones rain indiscriminate technological death upon the villages of Pakistan and other Muslim nations.

The German rocket experts were all captured by the US and Russians as Germany finally fell to the Allies in 1945, and they were forced to share their expertise with their captors. One German rocket expert, Werner Von Braun, did well for himself in the USA, designing the mighty Saturn V, which eventually took the first humans to the moon.

In this film, the lustful American pilot Lloyd Bridges, dressed in military fatigues, spends a lot of screen time trying to put the make on the serious German rocket scientist Osa Massen. It's kind of a metaphor for the USA, ostensibly seducing but perhaps also coercing the German rocket program for it's own uses.

There are some long, dull sections of this film in the beginning and middle where Neumann should have compressed things...probably he had orders to make this film over 1 hour so that it might pass for an 'A' picture (in those days, 'B' pictures were frequently just at the one hour length). And there are numerous scientific boners, like a zero gravity environment where a jacket floats but humans don't.

At the same time, there are a number of visuals, such as the meteor scene, where you can appreciate the ingenuity of the filmmakers, who created these images with almost no money and almost no time, and none of our futuristic technology. The acting is, overall, pretty good, and there are some very nice uses of language in certain parts of the script.

The scenes filmed at the launch center and inside the rocket, are spartan and atmospheric in a way that makes the film seem more realistic than it actually is. (The later Lippert feature, Flight to Mars, which used the same rocket sets, is inferior to this film.) As is often the case, black and white film stock gives this feature an unintended documentary quality, toning down the unrealistic elements.

The Martian sequences, filmed at Death Valley, contain some artistic visuals and there is a nice use of the theremin sound, the earliest example I know in scifi films.

Many others have noted that this is the first scifi film to discuss the possibility of earth being destroyed by atomic war. It should also be noted that this film touches upon all the other major themes of science fiction films of the 1950's: human space flight, alien races, the planet Mars, and atomic mutants.

Despite the primitive FX and numerous scientific boners, Neumann and his writers achieved a tone that is adult and dramatic, all the while avoiding the embarrassing emotional excesses of George Pal's later, big budget Mars film, 'Conquest of Space.' Also, the ending of this film is very different than most scifi films of this period, containing a nice bit of poetic dialogue. This film should be on the curricula of any 1950's scifi film buff.