Rocketship X-M
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Rocketship X-M (1950) was the second of the American science fiction feature films of the space adventure genre begun in the post-war era, in 1950. Because expensive special effects and production value delayed the release of Destination Moon, this black and white film was quickly shot so as to be able to make it to the cinemas first. Unlike the film it beat, however, this one makes a point in its plot, that of being anti-nuclear.
It was directed by Kurt Neumann and features Lloyd Bridges and Osa Massen. The film is also known as Expedition Moon, and originally as Rocketship XM-1.
Curious particulars of this film include the trajectory that is prescribed for going to the moon. From standing on its pad, the rocket goes straight up. Once it escapes the atmosphere, it then makes a ninety-degree turn. Simultaneously with the turn, the cabin rotates within the rocket hull around a lateral axis so that the "floor" is always "down". Hence, after the rotation, is oriented as in an airplane. The structure of this rocket is hollow, having a ladder in the middle surrounded by slender tanks of various fictitious chemicals. It is by selecting from these chemicals in various proportions that different levels of thrust are stated as being attainable from the engine. (The rocket from Destination Moon was stated as being nuclear.) And there's actually a scene in which a female junior scientist calculates (using a pad and pencil!) the wrong mixture and is berated for this by the head scientist on the expedition.
Plot
Four men and a woman blast into space on mankind's first expedition to the Moon. Unfortunately, due to a malfunction of their rocketship they end up landing on Mars, where they find evidence of a once-powerful civilization, as evidenced by an art-deco wall-hanging of a face, and a backdrop of a building shaped rather like a dynamo.
The explorers wear US army-surplus clothing, with gas-masks to represent oxygen augmentation. In the first release of the film, these scenes were shot with color tinting, but the originals were lost. In the 1980s, some fans got some body-doubles to dress up the same way so that replacement, matching, shots could be taken using similar film stock at the same sites in Death Valley that were used to represent Mars in the original.
They meet a descendant of the builders of the civilization: a blind and mute woman, who is pursued by other descendants: cave-men.
The expedition is not able to transmit its findings to the Earth from Mars. On the way back, something goes wrong, and the last members of the expedition are stated to have crashed into the Earth and died.
Rocketship X-M was one of many B-movies mocked as episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000.