ASSIGNMENT: OUTER SPACE (1960)

I could write a book on this heavy-handed Italian-made cliché fest. The filmmakers treated a simple space opera like it was King Lear!

First, the paper-thin plot. In the year 2116, Ray Peterson, a reporter for the Interplanetary News, is assigned to write a story aboard a space station. Tensions mount between Peterson and the station commander over the affections of Lucy, the ship's navigator. But the men set aside their differences to keep a runaway spaceship from colliding with the Earth. The ship somehow has the power to incinerate our beloved planet. (The commander explains it all, but like most of the scientific explanations in these films, it sounds like bullshit.)

When Ray boards the space station, the commander is readying his crew for a mission to Mars. When the High Command orders that Ray be allowed to go, the commander must leave a crew member behind due to weight issues. He decides the mission can do without Lucy, the navigator. However, in the very next scene, guess who's aboard the ship on its way to Mars?

The visual effects are as cheesy as one would expect. In one particularly memorable scene, a ship crash-lands on Mars and blows up. During the explosion, both a building and a Chevrolet are clearly visible in the shot.

But the worst thing about ASSIGNMENT: OUTER SPACE is its numerous failed attempts at profundity and moralizing. Here are some examples:

LUCY (to the commander): You work hard to prove that you're worthy of your position, but are you worthy of yourself?

RAY: Why is it that whenever man wants to protect himself, he hides under a dome?

AL (the ship's engineer): One of man's dreams has finally come true: an indestructible destroyer.

AL (again): A man in space changes his position, but not his character. He is what he is, wherever he is.

COMMANDER: The world of human feelings has been much less explored than the whole of the universe put together. What have we been doing all these thousands of years? We've congratulated ourselves on our progress and going faster and faster and faster, when in reality, we've only been getting further away from ourselves.

RAY: I believed, but there's no faith that can destroy the fear of death.

There is, however, one thing here that impressed me. Six years before Star Trek, ASSIGNMENT: OUTER SPACE prominently featured a black man: Al, the ship's engineer. And he's not just a token; he is essential to the storyline. In 1960, skin color must have mattered a lot less in Italy than it did in the U.S. (How's that for a profound statement?)