Console
best movie i've ever seen.
Nessieldwi
Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.
Casey Duggan
It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny
Leofwine_draca
If you ever wondered why Hammer Films spent so many years churning out horror film after horror film, check out MOON ZERO TWO, a timely foray into science fiction by the British production company. Put simply, it's a dog of a film, by turns excruciatingly embarrassing and rather dull, so I'm glad Hammer stuck with the horror bracket for the most part.Publicity has it that MOON ZERO TWO was conceived as a western in outer space, but the later Sean Connery-starrer OUTLAND did that style of film-making in a much better and more convincing way. Because it's impossible to take a film like MOON ZERO TWO seriously. The nadir, for me, is the usual bar-room brawl which takes place in area with reduced gravity, so participants are flying through the air and the like. I think it was supposed to be funny, but I certainly wasn't laughing with it. And what's up with those excruciating cartoon credits, which seem to belong to a different film altogether? This movie also suffers from miscasting on a colossal scale, with half the actors feeling like they're in some kind of pantomime. Pretty Hungarian actress Catherine Schell is about the best of the bunch, although she's saddled with a boring character. She must have enjoyed the experience, because she went on to star in the similarly-themed SPACE: 1999 in the 1970s. James Olson (CRESCENDO) has to be one of the stodgiest and unlikeable leads ever seen in a Hammer film, and don't get me started on Warren Mitchell's caricature antagonist. As for Bernard Bresslaw and his attempts to be menacing as a henchman, the less said, the better. I occupied myself for the most part in watching out for Michael Ripper, Adrienne Corri, and Sam Kydd in support.If you're a model maker or a fan of model work, you'll no doubt enjoy this production because the special effects are mainly of the model variety. As an action thriller it really fails though, as many of the action sequences take place outside the base and featuring characters wandering around in their space suits in ultra slow motion. Hardly what I would term exciting viewing, MOON ZERO TWO is a misstep from a usually reliable studio.
Edgar Soberon Torchia
Better from what I have read about, this is as good as any other Hammer programmer. My complaint is that the rhythm is too slow for an adventure science-fiction comedy drama: it could have had a neat running time of 80 minutes, but the Hammer crew seemed to be enjoying so much their models and miniature lunar landscapes that a couple of panning shots seem endless, and editing only adds a bit of action during a fight in a bar. It is not more moronic than some space operas I can think of (including high profile ones, with a budget of millions, but in the end as dumb as this), and the relation to westerns can pass unnoticed by most viewers: a miner, a bar, guns...? It could also be a Chaplin comedy. Nice animation credits and an appropriate 1960s pop title song.
AaronCapenBanner
Roy Ward Baker directed this bizarre Hammer studios futuristic science fiction/western hybrid that stars James Olsen as Captain William Kemp, basically the gunfighter for hire, and Catherine Schell as Clementine Taplin, who has hired him to investigate the disappearance of her brother, a miner on the moon who was murdered by claim jumpers with a sinister agenda that only they can stop... Extremely silly and dated film has good actors performing with a straight face, which is quite an achievement in sequences involving dancing saloon cowgirls in the moon colony bar-room, for instance, complete with obligatory brawl. Astonishing animated title sequence and song are most incongruous!
Shelby G. Spires
I have nothing bad to say about this movie. Other than the fact it is (as of July 2013) an on demand DVD, meaning it has NO special features (even though the two principals, James Olson and Catherine Schell are still alive to provide an interview and commentary track, and any number of film historians would take about $50 and a shot of scotch to review it). Set in 2021, the plot concerns Olson's Capt. William H. Kemp, an aging astronaut-hero who runs a space salvage operation on the moon where he scratches out every buck for survival. He gets involved with (the stunningly lovely) Schell's Clementine Taplin, who is trying to find a lost miner brother on the far side of the moon. Throw in a no nonsense, do anything for a Lunar Dollar businessman and an asteroid made of sapphire and there is the standard action conflict. This movie has been described as a Space Western, and I see the tropes and along with what would be called homage today - six shooter, bad guy vs. good guy, aging hero, and show downs. But the same plot devices are used in Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, Ben Hur, Hornblower etc., and were long before Akira Kurosawa provided a shorthand for lazy film critics. This film is closer to "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" than "Seven Samurai." And it gets the science and technology of the moon down right, and explains it in a way that even Kubrick could have learned from on 2001 - make it simple and don't drag it out. The science is pretty bang on. That is the problem with a lot of 60s productions about space, they were slightly a notch above the bug eyed monster craze of the 50s in terms of believable science. But audiences were savy by 1969/1970 having been exposed to coverage of the real NASA lunar program and other space exploration efforts. I would say this movie owes a little to Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's "Journey to the Far Side of the Sun" and the then in production television show "UFO," in terms of realism and look. Stylistic look, with props that make sense, and good looking 60s women in future clothes. It all makes one long for the future we were promised but never realized in the late 60s. Now, where is my food in a pill and hover car?
