Space Station X-7 is overrun by a previously unknown but deadly alien fungus that originated in ice caves on the Moon and was inadvertently brought back by astronauts returning with lunar samples. In order to save the space station from destruction, members of the crew are forced to mutiny against X-7's commander, who is not in his right mind because of "space raptures".
Maj. Gordon Towers and Capt. Dan Webber are returning to Space Station X-7 after collecting geological samples and ice from newly-discovered ice caves on the Moon. Upon arrival, Dan collapses and is taken to the infirmary by Dr. Hoffman and Gordon is reunited with his girlfriend, Dr. Faith Montaine, a civilian biochemist.
Hoffman has difficulty diagnosing Dan, ruling out "space raptures" because they cause hallucinations and not the high fever that Dan is running. Faith notices that a small welt on Dan's leg is growing rapidly into a large fungus. She says that the spores causing the fungus must have come from the Moon's ice caves. They put Dan into isolation.
Meanwhile, the commander of X-7, Col. Frank Cromwell, is behaving oddly. As a swarm of meteors approaches the space station, Cromwell is unable to give the order to take evasive action until prodded to do so by X-7's communications officer, Lt. Connie Engstrom.
Dan dies, his body horribly disfigured by the fungus. But when Cromwell looks at the body in the isolation chamber, he calmly says, "There's nothing unusual in there" and refuses to report to Gen. Knowland at Earth Control Center that the fungus has killed Dan. He insists that Dan's demise was caused by "pressure shock" and warns Gordon, Faith, and Hoffman to say nothing about the fungus because it might panic X-7's crew. Hoffman says that Cromwell is "on the verge of space raptures" and very sick.
Gordon decides that the situation is serious enough to remove Cromwell from command. But Gordon fails in his attempt, which Cromwell says is "mutiny". Cromwell orders Connie to send a message to Knowland about the mutiny and to say in it that Gordon held the crew at gunpoint until he was overpowered. Connie seemingly agrees, but Cromwell does not know that she has surreptitiously recorded the order. She transmits it to Knowland, who is immediately aware that something is amiss because weapons were outlawed in space in 1970, more than 20 years earlier. Connie also reports that the entire space station is being overrun by the fungus. Knowland tries to reply to X-7 but gets no response. He says that X-7 may have to be destroyed to prevent the fungus from reaching Earth.
Hoffman contracts the fungal infection and is very ill. However, he is able to tell Faith and Gordon that the fungus can be killed by cold. Knowing this, Gordon and the others make a second attempt to take control of X-7. Besides the danger from the fungus, Cromwell, now fully in the grips of space raptures, is trying to destroy X-7. They confine Cromwell to his quarters, but he escapes and sabotages the communications system, cutting off all contact between X-7 and the Earth. He is then recaptured.
Gordon knows that the only hope of saving X-7 is to lower its interior temperature to below zero degrees. The fungus inside X-7 dies, but it is now growing on the outside of the space station. No one can understand why the fungus is spreading on X-7's exterior until one of Knowland's staff officers says that it must be due to the "high temperatures generated by the unshielded blazing sun" beating down on X-7. This gives Knowland the idea of launching a rocket that will explode and form a huge cloud of ice crystals for X-7 to pass through.
Knowland's idea works and the fungus on the exterior of X-7 is killed. Gordon uses the repaired communications system to request a relief ship. Knowland tells him that it will arrive at X-7 in three hours and concludes his message by saying, "Don't lose your faith". Faith and Gordon look at each other and smile now that the crisis is over.
Although it was filmed in the US, British film critic Phil Hardy lists it in The Overlook Film Encyclopedia: Science Fiction as an Italian-American co-production. Mutiny in Outer Space is "one of a pair" of such co-productions "directed in 1965 by Grimaldi (the other being The Human Duplicators)."[5]
Release
Mutiny in Outer Space was theatrically released in the US as the bottom half of a double feature with The Human Duplicators.[6] It was released on March 3, 1965 and premiered in Los Angeles on May 12, 1965[7] and opened in the UK and Mexico at unspecified dates that year, in West Germany on November 11, 1966, and at an unspecified date in Italy.[8][9] The film was titled Motin en la Nave Espacial in Mexico; SS-X-7 Panik im All in West Germany; and Ammutinamento nello spazio (also known as Gli Ammutinati dello spazio) in Italy.
Mutiny in Outer Space is also included in Shiver & Shudder Show, a 2002 video released in the US by Something Weird Video. It features segments from 47 science fiction and horror films from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.[11]
Reception
Writing on May 12, 1965, "Whit," a reviewer for Variety, said that Mutiny in Outer Space "stacks up as a suitable minor entry". But he went on to praise "Grimaldi's direction of the Arthur C. Pierce script" and said that the film was "deftly lensed" by cinematographer Archie R. Dalzell and that "George White's editing is a plus".[12]
Modern American film scholar Gary Westfahl praises the film for making "important points about the dangerous effects of prolonged life in space". However, he writes, it better "recalls more fanciful films", such as The Green Slime, than it does the more documentary-like 1950s films Project Moon Base and Conquest of Space. He says that Mutiny in Outer Space is reminiscent of "Specimen: Unknown," a February 1964 episode of the TV series The Outer Limits, which he also placed in his "fanciful" category.[13][14]
Like Westphal, Bryan Senn, an American film critic, sees both good and bad in Mutiny in Outer Space. He writes that "Richard Garland gives a good performance as the stressed-out space skipper" and refers kindly to the rest of the cast as "overworked [and] presumably underpaid". On the other hand, Senn calls the film a "mishmash" that suffers from "shoddy black-and-white production values and substandard special effects" and says that "scenes aboard the X-7 are shot in gloomy darkness, adding to the film's unmistakable look of cheapness".[2]
An anonymous reviewer in TV Guide sees the film as more-or-less of a historical failure, writing that "By the time of the film's release, space travel was less mysterious than it had been in the genre's heyday 10 years before. Thus this routine fare, with standard production values and acting, was simply too late to stir up much interest".[15]
However, more recently, Mutiny in Outer Space was revived specifically for Women's History Month. The film was chosen for its unusually high number of women cast as astronauts aboard X-7 and as military personnel on Earth. It was shown on March 17, 2017 as part of a 16mm film series at The Newman Center in Plattsburgh, NY.[16]
Jeffrey Alan Hoffman is an American former NASA astronaut and currently a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT.
Good Boy! is a 2003 American science fiction comedy film directed by John Hoffman, based on the book Dogs from Outer Space by Zeke Richardson; Hoffman and Richardson collaborated on the screen story, while Hoffman wrote the screenplay. The film stars Liam Aiken as Owen Baker, as well as the voices of Matthew Broderick, Delta Burke, Donald Faison, Brittany Murphy, Carl Reiner, Vanessa Redgrave, and Cheech Marin as the abundant dog characters in the film.
Harry Revel was a British-born American composer, mostly of musical theatre, working with various lyricists, notably Mack Gordon. He is also seen as a pioneer of "space age pop".
James Neil Hamilton was an American stage, film and television actor, best remembered for his role as Commissioner Gordon on the Batman TV series of the 1960s, having first played a character by that name in 1928's Three Week-Ends. During his motion picture career, which spanned more than a half century, Hamilton performed in over 260 productions in the silent and sound eras.
John Stocker is a Canadian voice actor. His career in voice acting began in the 1970s.
Many works of fiction have featured UFOs. In most cases, as the fictional story progresses, the Earth is being invaded by hostile alien forces from outer space, usually from Mars, as depicted in early science fiction, or the people are being destroyed by alien forces, as depicted in the film Independence Day. Some fictional UFO encounters may be based on real UFO reports, such as Night Skies. Night Skies is based on the 1997 Phoenix UFO Incident.
Space Center Houston is a science museum that serves as the official visitor center of NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. It was designated a Smithsonian Affiliate museum in 2014. The organization is owned by NASA, and operated under a contract by the nonprofit Manned Spaceflight Education Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization. The Johnson Space Center is the home of Mission Control and astronaut training.
Way...Way Out is a 1966 American comedy science fiction film directed by Gordon Douglas and starring Jerry Lewis. It was distributed by 20th Century Fox and produced by Malcolm Stuart. The film, released on October 26, 1966, was both a critical and commercial flop, recouping less than half of its production budget. It is also Lewis' first movie for Fox.
Samuel J. Hoffman was a notable thereminist.
The Unknown Terror is a 1957 widescreen American horror science fiction film directed by Charles Marquis Warren and starring John Howard, Mala Powers, Paul Richards and May Wynn. It was produced by Robert Stabler. The narrative follows a group of explorers who, while searching for a missing man, come across the "Cave of the Dead", filled with parasitic fungi and inhabited by foamy, fungus-covered monster men. The film was released theatrically in the US in August 1957 on a double bill with Back from the Dead.
The Human Duplicators is a 1965 American science fiction film by Woolner Brothers Pictures Inc. Produced and directed by Hugo Grimaldi and Arthur C. Pierce, the film stars George Nader, Barbara Nichols, George Macready and Dolores Faith. It was shown in the US on a double feature with Mutiny in Outer Space.
Rose Constance Gilchrist was an American stage, film, and television actress. Among her screen credits are roles in the Hollywood productions Cry 'Havoc' (1943), A Letter to Three Wives (1949), Little Women (1949), Tripoli (1950), Houdini (1953), Some Came Running (1958), and Auntie Mame (1958).
Arthur C. Pierce was an American screenwriter and director specialising in low budget science fiction films.
Astronauts and other spaceflight participants have observed their religions while in space; sometimes publicly, sometimes privately. Religious adherence in outer space poses unique challenges and opportunities for practitioners. Space travelers have reported profound changes in the way they view their faith related to the overview effect, while some secular groups have criticized the use of government spacecraft for religious activities by astronauts.
Curse of Simba, is a black-and-white 1965 British-American supernatural horror film directed by Lindsay Shonteff and starring Bryant Haliday and Dennis Price. The screenplay was by Brian Clemens and it was produced by Kenneth Rive.
12 to the Moon is a 1960 independently made American black-and-white science fiction film, produced and written by Fred Gebhardt, directed by David Bradley and starring Ken Clark, Michi Kobi, Tom Conway and Anna-Lisa. The film was distributed in the U.S. by Columbia Pictures as a double feature with either Battle in Outer Space or 13 Ghosts, depending on the local film market.
Jean Engstrom was an American actress active in regional theater, movies, and television in the 1950s and 1960s.
Castle of Evil is a 1966 American color horror film produced by Earle Lyon, directed by Francis D. Lyon and written by Charles A. Wallace. It stars Scott Brady, Virginia Mayo, David Brian, Lisa Gaye, Hugh Marlowe and William Thourlby. The film was released by World Entertainment Corp. in November 1966 as the first movie on a double bill with the black-and-white British science fiction film Blood Beast from Outer Space (1965). Castle of Evil tells the story of a dead scientist who, with the help of his long-time housekeeper and a robot, seeks revenge from beyond the grave on the person who murdered him.
Charles Richard Garland Jr. was an American film, stage and television actor, who portrayed Constable Clay Horton in the popular CBS television series Lassie from 1954 to 1956.
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