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EMM# : 9446
Added: 2020-07-25
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First Man Into Space
(1959)
First motion picture to lift the veil, forsee the future in a spectacular drama of the first man in history to be rocketed into the terrifying unknown of outer space!
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Rating: 5.5
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Navy test pilot Lieut. Dan Prescott, in experimental rocket plane Y-13, disobeys orders and becomes the first man to fly outside the ionosphere. Unable to turn, he ejects...and is plastered with metallic meteor dust. The pilot compartment lands with no trace of the pilot... but first cattle, then people, are found with their throats cut as if with an axe, by something that seems to have a craving for blood... Written by Rod Crawford
Plot Synopsis:
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Commander Charles "Chuck" Prescott [Marshall Thompson] is not so sure that his brother,Lieutenant Dan Prescott [Bill Edwards], is the correct choice for piloting the Y-13 intoouter space. Although Captain Ben Richards [Robert Ayres] of the Air Force Space Commandsays that Dan is the best pilot they have, he bucked the rules when flyingY-12, went into the ionosphere, had problems landing his ship, and thenpromptly ran to see his girlfriend, Tia Francesca [Marla Landi], before bothering toeven make out his report. Still, Capt Richards wants Dan to pilot theY-13, after he has been throughly checked out and briefed by Doctor Paulvon Essen [Carl Jaffe].
Y-13 takes off with Dan at the controls. He climbs and climbs. At600,000 feet, when he is supposed to level off and begin his descent, hecontinues to climb, even firing his emergency boost. He climbs to1,320,000 feet (250 miles) and suddenly loses control of the ship andpasses through some meteorite dust, so he is forced to catapult.
The next that is heard about Y-13 is a report to the New Mexico StatePolice that some Mexican farmer saw a parachute attached to some sort ofplane land near his farm on Route 17 about 10 miles south of Alvarado.Chief Wilson [Bill Nagy] has the presence to notify the military in case it hassomething to do with their recent rocket firing. Wilson meets withCommander Chuck and shows him the wreckage. No way could the pilot havesurvived the crash. Tests on the recovered aircraft show that theautomatic escape mechanism as well as the breaking chute operatedperfectly. Tests also reveal some sort of unknown encrustation on thehull, unusual because not x-rays nor infrared photography nor ultravioletwill pass through it.
Later that night, a wheezing creature breaks into the New MexicoState Blood Bank in Alameda and drinks up a lot of the blood. The nextday, the headline in the Santa Fe Daily News reads "Terror Roams State"and tells of brutal and inhuman slaughtering of cows on a farm right nextdoor to where the Y-13 fell. Both the cows and the blood bank nurse showsimilar wounds -- jagged tears across the throat. When Chuck and ChiefWilson examine the body of the nurse, Chuck notices some shiny specksaround the wound as well as on the blood bank door. They see the samespecks on the necks of the dead cattle. They also find a piece of whatlooks like a "high-altitude oxygen lead" lying under the dead cow's body.The oxygen lead appears to be the one from Y-13.
Chuck is beginning to suspect that the killings may have something todo with the crashed spaceship and requests that Wilson send samples of theshiny specks to Dr von Essen at Aviation Medicine. The next day, Chuckstops at Aviation Medicine where Tia, who just happens to work there, hasthe test results sent down to them while they break for coffee. Theresults show that the shiny specks are particles of meteorite dust "thatshow no signs of structural damage such as would be expected from passagethrough atmosphere." Later, Dr von Essen demonstrates for Chuck theresults of metallurgical tests on the encrustation. Oddly, wherever theencrustation occurs on the hull of Y-13, the metal is intact, but inplaces not encrusted, the metal has transformed into a brittle substance,like crumbling carbon, that can easily be reduced to a powder. Chucktheorizes that the encrustation may be some sort of "cosmic protection",like the primeval creatures that crawled out of the sea and grew skin toprotect themselves from the sun.
Meanwhile, Capt Richards is paid a visit by Senor Ramon DeGareara [Roger Delgado],consul for Mexico at Santa Fe. DeGareara tells them that the tail sectionof Y-13 fell from the sky into a new bullring in San Pedro. It scared thebull, which jumped from the ring and almost killed His Excellency, theMinister for Social Services. After taking care of formalities andarranging compensation for damages, a crew is sent to San Pedro to salvagethe rest of Y-13.
Three more killings are reported, and Chuck is beginning to put thepieces together. He suspects that the same encrustation that formed toprotect the hull of Y-13 also coated everything inside the cockpit,including Dan, and that the creature doing the killing is Dan himself,killing because he needs blood for some reason. Chuck further theorizesthat, when the canopy burst, Dan's blood absorbed a high content ofnitrogen while the protective encrustation quickly formed on his body,allowing him to survive in the rarified atmosphere of space. In addition,Dan's metabolism could have altered to a state that starved his body andbrain of oxygen so that he now needs to replace that oxygen by drinkingblood. That's Chuck's guess anyway.
When Dan's encrusted helmut is found in a car with his latest victim,Chuck's theory is proven right. But how are they to go about stopping him,since bullets cannot penetrate the crust? Capt Richards and Chief Wilsonput in a call to Washington while Chuck and Tia stay behind to chat aboutthe wisdom of sending a person into space. Suddenly, Tia screams. Thehulking, wheezing, encrusted creature that is now Dan enters the room bycrashing through a sliding window.
Chuck realizes by the wheezing that Dan is finding it difficult tobreathe. He instructs Tia to get Dr von Essen to open a high-altitudechamber and then goes after his brother, who is running, wheezing andgrunting, down the hall. Chuck taps into the P.A. system and warnseveryone in the building to stay out of the corridors. Chuck theninstructs Dr von Essen to get on the P.A. and relay to Dan, who appears tohave intelligence under the encrustation, the directions to thehigh-altitude chamber. Dan follows the directions while Chuck followsbehind him.
Into the chamber Dan goes, but Chuck realizes that Dan won't be ableto operate the controls with his encrusted fingers, so he hops into thechamber with Dan. While Dan lumbers around, taking potshots at Chuck, thechamber technician quickly increases the simulated altitude to 38,000feet, enabling Dan to feel more comfortable. While Chuck breathes oxygenthrough a mask, Dan sits down and tries to describe what happened.Unfortunately, he has no memory of the events. All he can remember isdarkness, feeling suffocated, and trying to stay alive until he could findDr von Essen. As Tia takes metabolism and blood pressure readings on Dan,he apologizes to Tia for the way things ended. I just had to be the firstman into space, he says, then keels over dead.`Capt Richards and Dr von Essen open the door into the high-altitudechamber and let Chuck out. While they concern themselves with the risks ofspace travel ("There will always be men willing to take the risk"), Chuckwalks down the hall with Tia following him. [Original Synopsis by bj_kuehl]0
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