Menace from Outer Space

The professor spots a rocket that attacked earth on both his telescope and video graph. A rocket is dispatched to a moon of Jupiter to see what is up. The crew: Richard Crane as Rocky Jones, wearing the obligatory space t-shirt Scotty Beckett as Winky, wearing the issued baseball cap Sally Mansfield as Vena Ray, a cape with legs Robert Lyden as Bobby, casual space garb Maurice Cass as Professor Newton, 18 Th century bow tie and tails

What kind of civilization will they find and will they be perceived as friend or foe?

Maybe the real threat is from space rogues from earlier episodes?

Talk about technology such as the video graph. Even mobile versions in cars. Lots of oscilloscopes, an analog fuel gauge, and lots of stilted dialogs. A mechanical canary.

This animal may even have looked hokey to adults of the time. However, I can tell you as an underling of the time this is really an intriguing program.

In the mid-50s most episodes of the early TV sci-fi show Rocky Jones: Space Ranger" were assembled into a number of TV movies for re-broadcast. Unlike some of these recycled TV movies, Menace from Outer Space has less of a serial feel to it, and flows as if it were intended to be a feature-length film from the beginning.

To summarize the Rocky Jones show - Jones (Richard Crane) is a space-ship captain who flies around the solar system with an improbably named sidekick "Winky" (played by ill-fated child prodigy Scotty Beckett) representing the United Worlds - an interplanetary political entity which has a very strong resemblance to Star Trek's federation. Also like Star Trek - the Rocky Jones series also consistently cast women in positions of considerable power and responsibility - a bold move for 1950s TV. Like later series from the Star Trek franchise, the show also employs pseudo-scientific black-box technologies and technobabble quite liberally in order to avoid plot holes and speed bumps on the highway of logic.

In this story arc, Rocky and his extended family (a little kid named Bobby, prodigy scientist Veena, an elderly professor and, of course, the stalwart Winky) are drawn into high-stakes interplanetary political intrigue . One of Jupiter's moons, formerly believed to be uninhabitable, has launched a missile at the earth and forensic evidence concerning the missile suggests that the moon has a tremendous wealth of mineral resources never before suspected. Of course, Rocky is immediately dispatched to attempt to establish peaceful trade relations.

The special effects are not bad for their time, but the average viewer today will probably find them laughable. The cinematography and directing are quite good for early TV, and the editing creates a fine pace for this family sci-fi space adventure.

The script is predictably silly, but the characters are very consistently developed from show to show, and they are all quite likable. The acting is serviceable for its intent - family TV viewing.

Recommended for those interested in Sci-Fi TV history and pulp sci-fi film addicts. Keep what this is intended to be in mind and keep your expectations low, and you just might have a good time with it!

"Menace From Space" begins with strange missiles made of crystal being hurled at the Earth. The brainiac professor determines they are from one of Jupiter's moons, so Rocky Jones takes a small crew to this strange world to try to determine why this is occurring. Once there, an evil Earth scientist is already there and he's manipulating the locals to his own wicked and greedy ends. So, it's up to the Earth heroes to save the day.

I love 1950s sci-fi movies--even though the special effects are often pretty silly and the plots a bit campy. I particularly love the films taking humans on their first trips to the Moon or Mars. However, despite my strong predisposition to like such material, this movie made up of three episodes of TV's "Rocky Jones Space Ranger" is pretty bad. Of course, being made for television the special effects were worse than you'd find in a real movie--this I could accept. What I couldn't accept were the awful characters! Rocky is wooden, but he's not the problem. The biggest problems are Winky and the little brat they took along for no reason whatsoever. Winky is the second in command but you wonder why they'd put a complete moron in such an important role! He's clearly the 'comic relief', though since he isn't funny, he's more the 'annoying relief'! And the 'precocious kid'?! Well, apparently although they barely have enough fuel to make it to Fornax and back, they decide to bring this whiny kid along--even though he can't possibly contribute anything to the mission (unless, of course, they want to use him as a shield). The writing of this show and the ensuing movie is pretty poor and clearly is being marketed to kids, not anyone wanting sci-fi that is realistic or well-written. As a result, it's only good for a laugh and not much more.

I usually love not very good Sci-Fi films from the 1950s but this effort was an exception to that. I could only bear to watch about ten minutes at a time but I was determined to get to the end, which I did eventually.

Poor in every way which can sometimes be entertaining but not with this film. The baddie looked like a kindly grandpa and was not in the least threatening. Bad acting all round and even in 1956 this was probably not seen as being a good film, even if it was cobbled together from a TV series of the time.

It's worth watching to see how bad a 1950's Sci-Fi effort can be but it's a struggle to get to the end as it's so bad.

Not a film for those seeking gripping, Hollywood style entertainment, in fact, not a film at all. Menace from Outer Space is an agglomeration of the first three episodes of the Rocky Jones, Space Ranger series starring "B" movie veteran Richard Crane.

"Menace" appears to have been created for re-packaging and re-licensing of film length features and is quite similar to its companion feature, "Crash of Moons."

"Rocky Jones," and the feature length films assembled from the serial shows, is a wonderful example of early television coming to grips with its role as an entertainer of children. Unfortunately, many of these early efforts come across as childish, and "Menace" is no exception.

While it's fascinating to see movie serial themes and dramatic situations reformatted for the small screen, the dialogue and acting is excruciating. Perhaps most difficult to bear is the director's obvious fascination with posing all of the actors for good TV images. Rather than a film, this piece comes across as a series of poses, interspersed with contrived dialogue. True believers only!