Stop me if I’m going too fast. Actually, I don’t think anyone even reads these, but here goes another review in the series.
I just finished watching Project Moonbase. Since it was so short, there were two more Commando Cody episodes first.
In the continuing episodes, Commando Cody falls off the cliff but activates his rocket pack just in time to fly back to his lab. He then returns to the Cafe where the henchmen hang out in hopes to find someone else that knows of them. He follows a lead to a car repair shop, where he finds their camouflaged truck. The bad guys, once again, appear on cue and start another fistfight. Commando Cody gets the lunch money beat out of him (as usual), but for some reason when the henchmen get away with their truck they neglect to just bust a cap in Cody and finish it. Anyway, they get away, put their atomic ray gun turret in back, and head out to make trouble. Cody follows them and has his assistant in a plane with some bombs to drop on their truck when he finds them. They shoot at Cody, but can’t hit him. When the assistant arrives, Cody does another wing-top landing on his plane and climbs in the passenger seat and starts dropping bombs. He doesn’t hit the truck, but, feeling threatened, they open up the back and try to blast him with their atomic ray gun. The first shot misses, so Cody and his assistant don’t instantly die. By the time they’re set up for a second shot, Cody and his assistant bail out of the plane just before it’s blown to atomic-ray-guy-blowing pieces. The bad guys get away again.
Commando Cody then mounts another expedition to the moon, where he attempts to steal some Lunarium so us humans can build our own ray guns with it. He takes out a Moon Man Sentry, disrobes him (back in his rocket), and forces him to eat dinner while Cody wears the sentry’s disguise and sneaks in for the steal. Since the Lunarium is so heavy, his assistant comes wearing the jet backpack/helmet that Cody normally wears. They sneak in, steal a crate of the mineral, but can’t carry it very far, so they steal a Moon Man vehicle to drive it back to the rocket. Unfortunately they are pursued by the previous owner (I think they have LoJack on the moon already) and his might atomic ray gun. Cody is chased behind an outcropping with certainly no hope for survival!
Oh, did I mention that when they fly to the moon, there are clouds in space? How about when Cody flies on the Moon? Yeah, there are clouds there, too.
Anyway, on to Project Moonbase, a show co-written by Robert Heinlein. Now, I don’t want to tip anything off to you, but this movie was filmed in 10 days. Okay, yeah, it sucked.
Supposedly this was going to be the pilot for a new TV series, but the director added some stuff without consulting Heinlein and released it as a movie instead, which upset Heinlein. NO! *gasp* Hollywood never does that. Doh!
Well, Project Moonbase is about how in the not-too-distant 1970s we have a space station, and are launching ships to visit the moon. An enemy agent impersonating a scientist sneaks on board with the intent to destroy the space station, but he never gets the chance. Instead, he screws up the flight trajectory and they end up having to do an emergency landing on the dark side of the moon. Since they have no line-of-sight, they can’t radio for help, so the hero talks the impostor out on a moonwalk to plant a relay beacon on a nearby hill. The impostor falls to his death—don’t ask me how, he just does. Our hero makes it back with almost no air left and rides the trapeze lift back in to the safe belly of the rocket.
Since this is the first moon landing (it was pre-1969, shut up), the Powers That Be decide to make it a moon base. Also, since it would be inappropriate for a man and a woman to live together on the moon, they are married and promoted. That was the end of the movie. It sucked. I can’t help but wonder which parts weren’t Heinlein’s…