Moon Zero Two (1969) (film review).
With literal cartoon opening credits, you do have to wonder if this film is meant to be taken seriously. Although released under the Warner Bros Archive in 2011, it is, in fact, a Hammer film. The Moon Zero Two of the film title is actually a salvage ferry spacecraft that resembles the original Moon Module and is overdue for an overhaul. The date is 9 May 2021—looks like we missed this moon event by three years. Back in 1969, that must have seemed a long way off.
Space Captain Bill Kemp (played by James Olsen) meets Clem Taplin (played by Catherine Schell) to look for her brother, Wally, on the far side of the Moon, where he has a mining claim. We also get a tour of Moon City as Kemp shows Clem around, briefing us viewers on this ‘future.’
Kemp is hired by the very rich J.J. Hubbard (played by Warren Mitchell) to go to an asteroid containing 6,000 tons of sapphire and crash it on the Moon. This is totally illegal, but Kemp will get a new spacecraft as a reward upon completion. Hubbard sees the sapphires as more valuable for shielding than for their gem worth. Kemp has Karminski (played by Ori Levy) as his engineer and two of Hubbard’s men: tech Whitsun (played by Dudley Foster) and heavy Harry (played by Bernard Breslaw). The plan is to use rockets to blast the asteroid into the right orbit to ‘accidentally’ crash on the Moon. This will be done in two trips.
Between trips, Clem hires Kemp to take her to the far side of the Moon to see what happened to her brother, who radioed her saying he had made a successful claim. Kemp’s spaceship can get there in 20 minutes compared to the days it would take for ground vehicles. From here, it’s all spoilers.
Reading up on this film, and this is the first time I’ve seen it, there’s a lot of commentary that props and such were taken from other shows. The only one from UFO was one of the purple wigs with a different paint job—not much, really.
The conception of the Moon back in 1969, or probably 1968 when this film was made, before Apollo 11’s landing, was that it was either very dusty or quite craggy. Here, it’s more the latter, which must have made things easier to film.
I’m a bit uneasy about guns being fired on the Moon. It might be possible, but with one-sixth gravity, they wouldn’t have much range in or out of a vacuum. Would we really allow guns to be taken into space?
In many respects, Moon Zero Two is just a western in space, typical of the time, and even in 1981 with Outland. It might be jazzed up with a futuristic saloon and space effects on a budget, but it’s really no more than that. For British viewers, it’s fun spotting period actors as well as a number of Hammer luminaries popping up. I do wonder about the sense of an expensive comedy animated opening credit sequence in contrast to the otherwise straightforward film, but the same could be said of the jazz-oriented musical score. I can understand that they probably didn’t want a classical composer piece, but I doubt this film would ever be compared to 2001. If you watch it, enjoy it for what it is, but don’t have high expectations.
GF Willmetts
August 2024
(pub: Warner Bros Archive, 2011. 100 minute film. Price: varies. ASIN: B005OT807M)
cast: James Olsen, Catherine Schell, Warren Mitchell, Adrienne Corri, Ori Levy, Dudley Foster, Bernard Breslaw and many more.
