Riders to the Stars |
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USA • 1954 • 81m •
  • Directed by: Richard Carlson, Herbert L. Strock. • Starring: William Lundigan, Herbert Marshall, Richard Carlson, Martha Hyer, Dawn Addams, Robert Karnes, Lawrence Dobkin, George Eldredge, Dan Riss, Michael Fox, King Donovan, Kem Dibbs, James Best. • Music by: Harry Sukman.     In an attempt to discover the composition of meteors, three astronauts are sent out into space in three specially designed rockets. Their mission is to capture a meteor and bring it to Earth.
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Review:
The plot isn't entirely unpredictable. We hardly get to know anything about Robert Karnes. (Someone calls him a human robot.) So we know pretty much right away that he's going to be dead meat in this enterprise. Then there is Richard Carlson. There's more doubt about him. He was a leading man in many of these science fiction films and was never killed off. On the other hand, during training he receives a "dear John" letter from his flighty girl friend, Dawn Addams, a stunning commercial model. Often, such a letter portends a dramatic end, a one-way ticket to Elysian Fields. William Lundigan, though, we know will pull through. He's not only the son of Director Herbert Marshall but he falls for Martha Hyer and vice versa. He's also cheerful, kind, brave, thrifty, and obedient and probably helps old ladies across the street.
That's all in the first half of the movie. The pace picks up in the last half, when the three men finally find themselves way, way upstairs in pursuit of suitable meteors. The model work is rudimentary, reminiscent of the Buck Rogers serials of the 1930s, so it's avoided as much as possible. The tension of the flights doesn't last very long but it's effectively conveyed.
None of the performances are remarkable in any way. Most of the actors, those whom we recognize, are their usual reliable selves. That includes Martha Hyer. It wouldn't matter that she looked like the Texas Beauty Queen that she was -- her features arranged in a conventionally beautiful and thoroughly uninteresting manner. It's that she can't act either.
Not that the dialog helps her, or anyone else for that matter. People stand a few feet from one another and speak in what linguists call a telegraphic register or style. Hyer turns to a radio man and says crisply, "Increase gravity to ten G's," or, "Shut rockets down," or, "Slow descent!" Pronouns and articles and modifiers and imprecations are dropped for no particular reason, as if the messages were being billed by the word.
Up to a point, it all works okay. It's never boring, and it's never challenging. It even has a 1950s theme song with lyrics. And what lyrics! "Riders to the stars. That's what we are, every time we kiss." A routine entry in the genre.
Review by rmax304823 from the Internet Movie Database.
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