Space Master X-7

This independent cheapie released by 20th Century Fox had a potential to be a lot better than it was. Clearly also the plot was ripped off from that other 20th Century Fox film Panic In The Streets.

Try as I might I could not get passed the fact that the military would let Dr. Paul Frees take home cultures of this fungus taken from outer space. It's a fungus that is rust colored and it is apparently what gives Mars its color. Which begs the question what in that world does it feed on.

After a fight with his ex-wife who is visiting him on custodial issues Paul Frees is killed when that red fungus gets loose. Bill Williams and Robert Ellis representing security for the space program are on a desperate hunt for Lyn Thomas the ex-wife who they know was the last person to see Frees alive as she is unknowingly carrying the stuff.

From that god awful premise the film does in fact become exciting and the climax on board a Honolulu bound flight over the ocean is very well staged.

If this had been produced at a major studio like Fox and given a decent budget this might well have become a science fiction classic.

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.

I can't give this film more than five stars, because it's just a standard, low-budget 50s horror flick featuring the usual gimmicks:

1. Phony narrator claiming this is a "true story" 2. Manmade spacecraft returning to earth with deadly virus/creature 3. Desperate attempt to control spreading of virus 4. Scientist who dies attempting #3

And really, it's not outstanding in its genre, because it has a clunky ending and it tends to veer from true SF to being a chase picture. Most of the middle of the picture has nothing to do with the evil spores from outer space.

BUT...where have you ever seen Paul Frees on camera before? I didn't see his name in the credits, but when Prof. Pommer started talking, I shouted, "That's Paul Frees!" Here's a man with hundreds of credits (and many uncredited roles) but they've almost always been for his voice. Even in this pic, he also "appears" as the announcer voice in the bus station. Space Master X-7 gives him a good reel or more almost by himself, as a scientist attempting to figure out what the virus is. He's not matinée idol material, but the film shows that he could act with more than his lungs.

AND...a couple of scenes with Moe Howard, down on his luck between the demise of Columbia's short film division, and the amazing comeback of the Stooges in the early 60s. When I saw the names Bernds and Maurer in the credits, I almost wondered if the film was going to be a parody, since they're the pair that did most of the Stooges' 60s features. Maurer kindly gave his father-in-law Moe a decent part as a cabby who helps police find the missing (spore-infected) woman.

It was fun to find this film on TV, since it had disappeared for decades. For fans of SF schlock, it's a must. But definitely for fans of Moe and Paul (Boris Badenov) Frees!

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.

As a 12 year old, this was the most mind blowing movie of my childhood. Much more scary than the "A" movie, The Fly (great movie), released with it. I would always think that the mold would get into the house and eat me away (something like Necrotizing Fasciitis). Even though this movie is in B&W, the movie, for me, was much scarier than the BLOB. This is one of the two most psyche scaring movies of my childhood...the other being GOG. Honorable mention for this segment would go to the Crawling Eye, Invasion of the Saucermen, and War of the Satellites. My dad was a sci-fi nut as much as me and the two of us would see every new release as soon as they came out. These movies are very much part of my upbringing/childhood. I would love to get a copy of Blood Rust/SpaceMaster X7.