JohnHowardReid Copyright 1 August 1950 by George Pal Productions. Released in the USA through Eagle-Lion: August 1950. New York opening at the Mayfair: 27 June 1950. U.K. release through Eagle-Lion Classics (a division of General Film Distributors): 25 September 1950. Australian release through British Empire Films: 15 June 1951. 8,468 feet, 94 minutes. SYNOPSIS: Patriotic U.S. businessmen send a rocket to the moon.NOTES: Negative cost: $586,000. Initial domestic rentals gross: $5.5 million. Although the movie actually came in at 3rd position (after Samson and Delilah and King Solomon's Mines) and took more money at US/Canadian ticket windows than Annie Get Your Gun ($4.7 million), Destination Moon does not figure at all on the contemporary lists of box-office winners for the simple reason that it was not released by a major distributor. No-one ever expected an independent exchange to achieve such a huge box-office success, let alone to defeat heavily publicized offerings like Annie Get Your Gun. Lee Zavitz carried off 1950's prestigious Hollywood award for Special Effects (defeating Samson and Delilah). On the other hand, Fegté and Sawley were nominated for Art Direction (color), but lost out to Samson and Delilah! Movie debut of Dick Wesson.COMMENT: I looked again at this movie especially for this review. I did so with some misgivings, but actually the film stands up rather well. The lunar sets and backdrops still impress, Pichel's direction offers occasional insights and what's more important you don't leave your armchair feeling short-changed. The moon is what we pay for, and the moon is what we get and there are more than enough segments of suspense along the way (such as the drifting in space scene and the discarded suit at the climax) to compensate for the screenplay's rather odd political stance (the Truman administration gets quite a drubbing) and somewhat one-dimensional characters. Wesson, Archer and Powers (in that order) have the best parts and all manage to keep interest alive. Lionel Lindon's Technicolor photography is a stand-out, of course, as are the justly award-nominated sets.

Claudio Carvalho The rocket engineer Dr. Charles Cargraves (Warner Anderson) blows-up a rocket during the tests and loses the government funding. Together with his friends General Thayer (Tom Powers) and Jim Barnes (John Archer), they raise funds from American industrialists to build a rocket using atomic engine in the desert to reach the moon. However the public opinion is against the project afraid of radiation leakage in the spot and they decide to anticipate the launch of the spaceship without tests. The radar and radio operator Joe Sweeney (Dick Wesson) is invited and teams-up with them and the rocket is called Luna. During the descent on the moon, they use too much fuel to safely land. After the exploration of the lunar soil, Charles realizes that they need to reduce the weight of the rocket to launch back to Earth based on the remaining fuel. They remove all the essential equipment but Charles concludes that someone must be left behind. Will they return to Earth?"Destination Moon" is a surprising good sci-fi from 1950. The story uses technological concepts to explain the situations and is very well developed. The use of the Woody Woodpecker is very funny and the special effects are impressive for a 1950 film. The conclusion "This Is the End of the Beginning" is visionary. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): Not available on Blu-Ray or DVD.

Martin Teller I'm not a big Heinlein fan, partially because of his politics... and his conservative viewpoints do factor into the film, although thankfully only in the first act. Like THE WOMAN IN THE MOON, this is a speculative look at what it would be like to travel to our satellite. This is a far more realism-based film than Lang's, however, with the advantage of an additional 20 years of knowledge. And it does seem to get a lot of the science right. Unfortunately, it could use a little more imagination, and ends up pretty dull and too concerned with scientific explanation (including a Woody Woodpecker cartoon illustrating the basics of space flight). There are a couple of intriguing/exciting scenarios but even those are undercut by Dick Wesson, playing a "Joe Six Pack" character who comes along as a last minute replacement for one of the crew. Wesson's dumb Brooklynese comments are real groaners. This movie ought to have been a lot more fun.

sddavis63 The problem I have with a lot of the early science fiction stories is that they were more often than not heavy on the fiction and light on the science. I have to give credit, therefore, to "Destination Moon." It completely reverses that. It's actually quite heavy on science and the fiction element is pretty light - at least in the sense that it treats the story very seriously. The title sums it up perfectly. A group of scientists and industrialists team up to build a rocket to travel to the moon. As it turned out those who made this movie weren't accurate prognosticators - the method of space travel portrayed (atomic powered engines) turned out not to be what eventually propelled humans to the moon - but the thoughtfulness was there, and I appreciated it. I liked the fact that the effort didn't involve the U.S. Government - in fact, the government wasn't completely supportive. It was all American (and in the context of the very early years of the Cold War the point was made that "we have to get there first or else we're in trouble") but still, it was private citizens doing this. I appreciated that. For 1950, I thought most of the effects were pretty good; the movie rarely seemed dated at all. It had a fresh look and feel pretty much the whole way through, with perhaps only the animated scenes (which were long distance views of the "astronauts" outside the rocket while in flight) looking a bit primitive. Even the Woody Woodpecker cartoon seemed appropriately placed.This isn't especially dramatic. There are a few attempts to introduce drama and excitement, but for the most part I didn't feel any real tension until the very end, when it did seem as though someone was going to have to be left behind on the moon's surface. Aside from that, it was the technical quality and the serious nature of the movie that really appealed to me. The cast (largely unknown, at least to me) was decent enough. Until seeing this, I would probably have dated "Forbidden Planet" as perhaps the earliest truly "serious" sci-fi movie made that I had seen. This was made 6 years earlier, though, and so now takes that prize. Well done, indeed! (7/10)