Objectif: septième planète

Am I wrong here, or is this plot basically the same as the Ray Bradbury story? I couldn't find any reference to Bradbury on the IMDb entry for this movie.

I know Bradbury did resolve a similar conflict over "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms". Aside from that, I always enjoy John Agar movies, I wish more of them were available on DVD, "The Mole People", "Tarantula", and "Attack of the Puppet People", for example.

There is also a thin similarity to the Star Trek Season One episode "Shore Leave"

Otherwise, I'm happy to have this movie in my SciFi collection.

If you don't know by now, this science fiction adventure is one of the original "mind benders", an outer space flick in which aliens use mind control.

And against this kind of mind control, what can one do? If a character is powerful enough to warp your sense of Reality, then how can you truly fight it? We get a full throttle effect by showing a full length movie in which the outcome is really decided immediately, only no one knows it.

The super formidable enemy, the one you must rely solely on God's graces, or luck, to beat, is the one who controls all you perceive and conceive, the one whose control over what you see, hear, sense, is completely contrived by this foe.

We go through a series of adventures, and the characters seem totally out of control, but that's because they have no idea what Reality is any more. They go through total Chaos.

And the ending, which I won't spoil, leaves the audience in total Chaos, but also explains that indeed, there is nothing to be done but rely on luck if your perceptions are out of your control.

Overlooked film. It actually is better than many of the later ripoff versions which tried to be too contrived in modernism, by that I mean that the later films wanted to establish that SOME humans were superior enough to overcome this obstacle, which is flat out silly. If you have no direction and no vector, you are totally helpless to change your situation. This film goes under the old school of Credibility premise instead of the 1970s contrived "Man is God" premise.

Colorful but dull science fiction tale of an astronaut, John Agar, leading a team of explorers to Uranus, where a brain-like creature fights them by making their thoughts reality, which, as you may guess, involves them thinking about sultry ladies of their past. There's an interesting idea for a film buried here somewhere, but this is strictly children's sci-fi fare. Nothing great or even anything I'd even call good, but there were enough camp elements to keep me entertained.

The immature teenage hiding inside of me can't resist--this is a movie about astronauts traveling to Uranus (snicker, snicker)! In the film, they pronounce it "Ur-an-us"....yeah, sure! As for the film, I was expecting it to be a lot worse than it was. My reason--it starred John Agar. While he was not a terrible actor, his career was spent appearing in any film provided the check cleared! The movie itself is a very mixed bag. I'll be giving it two separate scores--one for technical merit and one for artistry and originality--sort of like figure skating.

Technically speaking, this movie was a pile of doo-doo. The special effects were among the worst I've ever seen for a 50s-60s sci-fi film. In particular, the rocket special effects were simply awful--consisting of a fuzzy rocket ship that appears to be cardboard flying across a terrible painting of space and later when it lands it is a child's plastic toy! It really is worse than the UFO special effects from PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (these were pie plates suspended from wires). Also, many of the monsters were cheap and crappy--and about as bad as you'll find in the genre. I'd give this aspect of the film a 1 and not a smidgen more!

It's really sad, then, that the story itself is so good--as it's burdened with such ineptness. The story gets interesting just before the rocket lands on Uranus. A strong mental force takes over the ship and probes the astronauts' minds. Then, when they actually land, the planet looks much like Earth--as this force can make the planet appear just like home--including providing people who are from home as well. Interestingly, the only people these men seemed to think of were hot babes in lingerie--proving these guys were pretty smart! The problem is that what exactly the force intends is uncertain. And, as the film progresses, the force seems malevolent--or at least having fun toying with them. The men are faced with a dilemma--how do you fight something this powerful and that can control what you see?! Apart from a rather flat and anticlimactic ending, I'd give this an 8--it was very original and very exciting.

Overall, I think a 4 is a reasonable compromise. This film was intelligent and worth seeing--even if the special effects were abominable. This is one movie that could really, really stand a remake!!

As other reviewers have noted, what we have here is a great basic concept (and to think that the film predates "Solaris" by more than ten years!), trapped in a grade-Z production (appalling color-processing, cheap special effects, overuse of stock footage, etc.). The film would still make a pretty good "Twilight Zone" episode, but a well-made remake would be most welcome. (**)