Best movie of this year hands down!

How sad is this?

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Menace from Outer Space is yet another TV movie made by editing three episodes of the Rocky Jones, Space Ranger TV series together. This show was quite obviously aimed at a family audience, mainly at children. In this entry a couple of missiles strike earth from a moon of Jupiter hitherto thought to not have any inhabitants, Rocky Jones and his crew are sent off to investigate.As with other entries in this series, the film is full of rubbish characters and terrible dialogue. Which wouldn't really matter but for the fact it's all awfully tedious and hard work to sit through. If I am being charitable I would have to say that it is a very early example of a TV movie and so its extreme clunkiness is perhaps to be expected and could be regarded as historically interesting as an example of early TV sci-fi. And it also has to be admitted that it was meant for kids, so can hardly be blamed for not appealing to this adult sixty years later. But, you know what? Even taking all of this into account I still thought this was diabolical stuff. Slagging it off does feel a little like kicking a puppy, albeit a pretty annoying puppy.

Similar to the earlier patch job known as "Crash of Moons", Space Ranger Rocky Jones (Richard Crane) assembles his gang here once again to avert a threat to Earth, though not as ominous as the one in the earlier film. Most of the action as it were, takes place on Fornax, a moon of Jupiter. The mystery of the film seems to be how Professor Newton (Maurice Cass) believes that the environment on Fornax might be hostile to humans, when eight years earlier an Earth rogue named Cardos exiled himself to the moon to escape his criminal past. There he's been ingratiating himself with Zoravac (Walter Coy), the ruler of Fornax.What gives the film some of it's dubious fun is the extensive use of pseudo scientific jargon. Making a return appearance are the viseograph and the astrophone, but perhaps most impressive was the mechanical canary used to test the atmosphere on Fornax; too bad they didn't come up with a more colorful handle for it.This time around, Rocky's young ward Bobby (Robert Lyden) is given a playmate, the daughter of Zoravac named Volaca. As expected, the pair wind up in places they don't belong, but manage to help Rocky and Winky (Scotty Beckett) save the day and the millennium. Once again, Winky has the film's most memorable line - "Well rattle my rocket reflexes".Though uncredited in the film, bad guy Cardos is portrayed by Nestor Paiva. You might recognize him as the Amazon boat captain Lucas from a couple of the "Creature of the Black Lagoon" movies.Like it's predecessor "Crash of Moons", this film is a fun diversion, even if just to get a view of how far we've come in both space technology and film making. I got a bit of a chuckle out of the mention of an interplanetary agency called the 'Office of Space Affairs'. Had it still been around for the launch of the Star Ship Enterprise, they might have been kept real busy investigating Captain Kirk.

I had one helping of this group in the "Crash of the Moons." This one continues when a couple of missiles strike earth and Rocky and the gang go to find out where they are coming from. They end up on a moon of Jupiter which is perfect for their survival. They are lucky to land because they have run out of gas. At least their gas gauge says so. This time they start with uniforms of more the rebel variety of the Civil War. But later don baseball caps. It's a long, convoluted effort to try to recreate a fuel source (there's no Texaco anywhere near). Like those dilithium crystals, there is a fuel source available to them. Unfortunately, holed up on the planet is a murderous turncoat who has the ear of the leader of the planet. He enlists some other rebellious types that appear in the early part of the movie (which is actually a series of TV shows). Rocky Jones never seems to have much trouble staving off the bad guys. He gets an assist from a little space girl who helps his little space guy. The young woman, who never seems to do anything, gets involved in the fashion on the Jupiter moon. Eventually, everything works out. Rocky and Winky (who screws up a lot, but sure is a swell fella), manage to keep things safe for the space alliance or whatever. If anything can show you how far we've come when it comes to film and television, get a load of this.

Not a film for those seeking gripping, Hollywood style entertainment, in fact, not a film at all. Menace from Outer Space is an agglomeration of the first three episodes of the Rocky Jones, Space Ranger series starring "B" movie veteran Richard Crane. "Menace" appears to have been created for re-packaging and re-licensing of film length features and is quite similar to its companion feature, "Crash of Moons." "Rocky Jones," and the feature length films assembled from the serial shows, is a wonderful example of early television coming to grips with its role as an entertainer of children. Unfortunately, many of these early efforts come across as childish, and "Menace" is no exception.While it's fascinating to see movie serial themes and dramatic situations reformatted for the small screen, the dialogue and acting is excruciating. Perhaps most difficult to bear is the director's obvious fascination with posing all of the actors for good TV images. Rather than a film, this piece comes across as a series of poses, interspersed with contrived dialogue. True believers only!