I've mentioned in the past that one of the things that's always fun about old science fiction movies set in the future is how much the future in question is rooted to the time period in which the film was made. Another interesting entry into that genre is one from Hammer Films in late 1969: Moon Zero Two. It's got an airing on TCM tomorrow, July 9, at 3:00 PM, so I watched the previous showing from my DVR to be able to do the post on it.
The movie starts off with some trippy and animated opening credits, backed by another hilariously dated title song, although at least this time it's not as much of a misfit for the genre as with Anzio that I recently mentioned. After the credits, we're transported to Moon Zero Two, a colony on the moon, circa 2021, so well in the future from when the movie was made, but in the past now. (At least, all the synopses say 2021; I thought I heard mention of the 23rd century. On the other hand, a plaque of people who died colonizing the moon didn't have enough names on it to be 250 years in the future.) Kemp (James Olson) and Korminski are going through lunar customs, getting dinged for a communications satellite they've brought, since electronics imports are regulated. Except, as they point out, the satellite has malfunctioned, being one of the satellites that provides communications to the far side of the moon. So for the time being, there's no communication with the other side, which as you might guess is a key plot point later in the movie.
J.J. Hubbard (Warren Mitchell) is a businessman who is interested in the mining claims on the moon. He and his men have learned of a small asteroid that in their spectranalysis that the asteroid contains extremely high levels of corundum, which for those not in the know is the mineral that forms sapphires and rubies depending upon color and the other trace elements in the corundum. They'd like to get a hold of that asteroid for fairly obvious reasons, but corraling something the size of an earth-sized duplex house is difficult even in the microgravity of space. They have a plan to get someone to crash the asteroid into the moon, where they can claim it, so Hubbard offers Kemp a new ship in exchange for doing this job of questionable legality.
Meanwhile, back at the cantina bar on Zero Two, a woman named Clementine (Catherine Schell, no relation to Maximilian as far as I can tell) shows up. She and her entire family have long been interested in mining, with Dad having wandered around the earth looking for precious metals. The moon is a great place to do that, so Clementine's brother decamped to the new frontier to get a two-year claim on a plot of lunar land. That lease is almost up, but worse, Clementine hasn't heard from her brother in several days. She's worried about him, and would like somebody to ferry her to where her brother's claim is to see if he's OK.
Clementine is asking Kemp for help because he's got that spare ship he's not using, and because getting to the claim over land is prohibitively long. Now, we know that Kemp is kinda-sorta working for Hubbard, so there is a conflict there. But it's not the only way the two plot lines are going to come together, as we shall see when Kemp and Clementine finally get to her brother's claim.
Moon Zero Two was, as I said at the beginning, filmed in Britain in 1969, and the movies look at the moon is very seriously (or humorously, I supposed) stuck in 1969 despite ostensibly being set decades later. The fashions are mod gone wrong, with garishly colored hairstyles to boot. And then there's the floor show at the moonbase bar, which is really wild, with groups of ladies in tight costumes doing ridiculous dances. The production design for the moon bases has decidedly not advanced past 1970. The first primitive cell phones were still a few years away. But the look of the movie is something that's so badly dated that it's trippy and fun.
One just wishes one could say the same for the rest of Moon Zero Two. The plot doesn't seem much more fleshed out than what one could get on episodic television, while the acting is wooden at best. The special effects range from "trying hard, but don't have anything better than 1969 technology" on the good side to bad miniatures on the bad side. Moon Zero Two is a mixed bag that objectively has more misses than hits, but still should probably be seen once just to figure out how a movie could go wrong.
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