FANTASIA OBSCURA: Fancy a Very Proper British Space Adventure, Old Chap?
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, reaching for the stars can be a tricky business; still, stiff upper lip and all, eh wot…?
Satellite in the Sky (1956)
Distributed by: Warner Brothers
Directed by: Paul Dickson
One of the great themes of the 1950s was the “space race,” the effort to get into orbit and plant a flag on behalf of the people of Earth… through, of course, the efforts of your country, which was due all sorts of glory and honor for having gotten you up there, and was entitled to all the cred that bragging rights endowed. Technically, the prize was anyone’s to grab, though in reality the only two serious players at the game were the United States and the Soviet Union.
Though in the early days of it, before anyone had made any real progress IRL, on film, there were serious candidates from elsewhere, especially the British. Who were especially serious…
Our film opens with scenes around the fictitious British base Thunder Hill, where we watch a rocket fuel test overseen by Larry Noble (Jimmy Hanley) and Lefty Blake (Larry Keegan) finish up just as Commander Michael Hayden (Kieron Moore) arrives after test flying in what’s referred to as “his” plane, which we’ll look at more closely at later.
The reason they’re at the base is in preparation for Operation Stardust, an expedition to the outer reaches of the atmosphere, which thanks to the fuel test being a success means they can commence with the launch. They share this with the press, which includes World Press Service reporter Kim Hamilton (Lois Maxwell), whose views regarding the project are not shared with Hayden. Her arguments against the project sounding much like the arguments against the Apollo Project in the next decade, the two seem destined to be enemies, which even if we hadn’t seen enough “meet cute” moments in so many films before this we feel is not likely to last.
In fact, showing an absolute trust in her (and a horrible sense of operational security), Hayden takes Hamilton down to show her Stardust the night before the launch:
After the visit, Hayden and Noble are informed that the crew of the Stardust will be upped from four to five. In addition Hayden, Nobel, Blake, and Jimmy Wheeler (Bryan Forbes), the Stardust will now take off with American Professor Merrity (Donald Wolfit), who will oversee a late addition to the manifest. Merrity is going to be the payload specialist for the Tritonium Bomb, a device so powerful that they dare not set it off in the atmosphere, but will explode one in space to demonstrate that war with the west is now absolutely unthinkable.
Which is just one more thing atop all the other concerns. What with Noble’s wife Barbara (Thea Gregory in her last feature) feeling abandoned by her husband and leading on the flirtatious Tony (Peter Neil in his last feature), as well as Wheeler’s thwarted effort to properly propose to his girlfriend Ellen (Shirley Lawrence), it’s all rather much, you see. This is just making what should be a triumph for man’s effort to get into space such a bother, and it won’t do.
Well, despite it all, the chaps do make their way into the air, readying themselves to get on with it all…
…which of course bloody well doesn’t. The bomb they’re supposed to leave in orbit gets snagged to the hull of the Stardust, thanks to bad design of the device’s retro rockets. And to add to it all, the crew it turns out numbers six, as Kim stowed away on board a vessel that thankfully had thrust to spare and didn’t need to worry about excess weight throwing off the ship’s precise calculations.
Which brings up an interesting dichotomy in the film: The times the film makers paid serious attention to what they were doing, versus just going, “Sod it all, who gives a fig?” Having a craft trying to get into orbit without worrying about exact weight-to-thrust ratios, which would allow for a stowaway to not endanger the mission, is very much a part of the latter. (They even bring it up in the script when Kim gets admonished for her actions, telling her she should be grateful they had over-compensated for what they needed, something that probably would never happen.) The lax security that allowed her to just slip on board is also a good example of this, which no amount of in script discussion could ever justify, so this stays unmentioned. And really, naming your nuclear device after an abandoned genus of sea snails? Daft, that…
On the other hand, there are some decent sensible points brought up about, not only how to get into orbit, but why. American films about blasting off never seriously question whether the effort’s justified the way this film does, with good arguments made about whether the costs are worth it, with so much on the ground needed to get fixed. And a few minutes are actually taken by the characters to discuss the fact that as abhorrent as it is, that without a military component to the mission that the effort would never have gotten off the ground, literally.
Which brings up Hayden’s plane that he flies into the pic on, an Avro Vulcan. It can’t be an accident that the character is training for the mission, to fly a large craft into orbit to leave a nuclear device behind, on an aircraft the British designed for strategic nuclear strikes. It’s a subtle recognition of the reality of what’s behind the space race, and a very knowing subtext to give to the viewer as to both where the film makers are coming from and what they are bringing to bear.
Shot in color, with special effects by Wally Veevers, the film is gorgeous to look at, even if some of the model shots look badly dated, which might have served the film well enough even without the script’s inherent strength. You almost wish the film could have covered some things a little better and taken some of their ideas a step further than they did; for anyone who wants to imagine that this took place, you may want to run it as a double feature with 1961’s The Day the Earth Caught Fire.
The film itself, unfortunately, didn’t catch fire over in the US. And just over a year later Sputnik started sending radio signals as it circled the globe, which pushed the movie to an orbit further out from our memories. For the British, the real space race was lost soon after the film came out.
Though like the Americans with the Apollo Project, they did come back strong much later with 2001: A Space Odyssey…
NEXT TIME: If Master really loved Larry, he’d just feed Larry, and not make Larry watch this movie…
