Space Master X-7

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!

Like the previous commenter I also saw this as a child, and in the spirit of his well written comments, I will add it was at the old Nile Theater in South Minneapolis. I was about 10. I had nightmares about this film for many days after, and to this day 50 years later, I still remember the title! Definitely not for the discerning adult, but my sci-fi grandson would love it! Solid 8 rating for the memories and thrills. However, it is only marginally acted. The special effects are good, and the airplane scene mentioned is thrilling. The oozing through the vent duct in the lab will remind you you are not safe even in your own home. I'd sure like to see this again!

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.

Better than it had a right to be! The premise was good, the screenplay was good, even the acting and direction were good. When I was in grammar school, the film was re-released about 1960 and several of my schoolmates kept referring to the "blood rust", some calling it "blood lust" and telling me about the film, I was jealous! I figured it was some sort of zany shocker but never *sighs* got to see it on the big screen. 2009 rolls around and The Fox Movie Channel runs it and at long last I get to see it......Quite good! I have to admit that I was disappointed only because it was such a literate and well handled film and not something akin to a Corman flick. Paul Frees, one of the most overused voices in H'wood gives an amazingly solid performance as an obsessed scientist. I also like the stock music tracks used as well...I picked up several composers in the mix, not the least was Victor Lazslo. Too slick for it's own good! As a child I would have been bored, but not now.....

I figure I saw this gem when I was about 11, back when I lived in Queens NY.

My memories are similar to the other notations on this flic, except that I was too young to form an opinion about its artistic merits. My real memory was the term blood rust, and the memory of a scene where detectives were finding it in a boxcar. (Ok, its possible I mixed that one up with a scene from "Them". I remembered it as the b part running with This Island Earth, but it may well have been playing with the Fly, as others indicated. The long and this short of it was that this one bugged me, as I could until recently find no movies referenced to "blood Rust". None of the printed compendiums of Sci-Fi movies helped. A recent call for help on another web site finally gave me the Space Master title, which did the trick! A 45 year mystery solved!

Now I need to find a copy!