PROJECT MOON BASE

Ross Ford and Donna Martell

PROJECT MOON BASE (1953). Director: Richard Talmadge.

A foreign agent named Roundtree (Herb Jacobs) engineers the substitution of a prominent scientist, Dr Wernher (Larry Johns), for a duplicate whose mission is to destroy the U.S. space station. (From there the Americans hope to eventually build a base on the moon.) During the switch, Roundtree pretends to be a bellboy! Colonel Briteis (Donna Martell) is to pilot a ship to the moon but there is a slight contretemps when she learns her co-pilot is to be her former boyfriend, the handsome Major Moore (Ross Ford of Reform School Girl). "Wernher" comes along with the bickering couple -- who are secretly in love, of course -- but gives the game away when he doesn't know the name of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team -- he must be a spy! 

the space station

Very little happens even after this revelation, as the phony scientist is easily subdued and not very threatening in any case. There's a lot of talk and minimal, if decent, special effects work. Project Moon Base was the pilot for a television program that was released to theaters instead, where people had to pay to see something that wouldn't have been worth watching for free. Hayden Rorke, who plays the project head, later wound up on I Dream of Jeannie, and indeed he plays General Greene as if he were in a sitcom. Barbara Morrison also plays reporter Polly Prattles (!) as if this were a sitcom. James Craven of innumerable cliffhanger serials has a small role. The only really interesting thing about the movie, which was co-scripted (and disavowed) by Robert Heinlein, is that both the chief moon pilot and American president are women. 

Verdict: Pretty bad. *1/2.