What a waste of my time!!!

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

This independent cheapie released by 20th Century Fox had a potential to be a lot better than it was. Clearly also the plot was ripped off from that other 20th Century Fox film Panic In The Streets.Try as I might I could not get passed the fact that the military would let Dr. Paul Frees take home cultures of this fungus taken from outer space. It's a fungus that is rust colored and it is apparently what gives Mars its color. Which begs the question what in that world does it feed on. After a fight with his ex-wife who is visiting him on custodial issues Paul Frees is killed when that red fungus gets loose. Bill Williams and Robert Ellis representing security for the space program are on a desperate hunt for Lyn Thomas the ex-wife who they know was the last person to see Frees alive as she is unknowingly carrying the stuff.From that god awful premise the film does in fact become exciting and the climax on board a Honolulu bound flight over the ocean is very well staged.If this had been produced at a major studio like Fox and given a decent budget this might well have become a science fiction classic.

An American space probe is sent in to space and it brings back an unwanted life form which the scientist who discovers it dubs " blood rust " . After being infected by it the scientist dies and investigators discover his assistant might be a carrier for the blood rust Reading the synopsis for SPACE MASTER X-7 II was entirely convinced this was going to be an American B movie version of THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT with a spaceship returning to Earth containing rubbery fungus monsters which was a popular theme in 50s science fiction when humanity were sending probes in to space . . There are blobby monsters of sorts but in some ways this movie resembles a precursor to THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN with scientists fighting an alien menace in much the same way as they'd fight an evolving Earth bound mutating virus . It is produced in a documentary style detective type story but you're never able to consistently buy in to this style or scenario . As I said it's definite B movie pulp SF no matter what pretensions the film has and this is reflected in the rather cheap production values and not very good cast as they try and make the fantastic seem plausible and everything about seems dated

Just happened to come across this "gem" on FOX Movie channel, expecting another 50s SciFi/Cold War blend. I missed the first few minutes (the bit with the ex-wife in the lab) but now (after reading the summary and other reviews) her panic makes sense.Great surprise to see Moe Howard. I didn't see Paul Frees in the flesh (while he had it...), but did recognize his voice at Union Station. As an L.A. native, I'm always looking for scenes with 50s L.A. landmarks. (I didn't recognize the airport as the nascent LAX, though). The scene with Moe at the police station, using the plastic layovers to recreate the face was terrific, straight out of a DRAGNET-style episode.Sure, by 2010 standards it's hokey. The Special Effects are weak, the storyline is lame, and the ending a bit too contrived. But there are hundreds of movies being shown on the dozens of movie channels that are much worse than this genuine diamond. Hopefully more of you will catch it next time 'round.

When I was kid, I used to sometimes see stills or brief mentions of this film in science fiction movie books or in the pages of "monster" magazines. But for some strange reason this film never turned up on TV, even though other science fiction offerings made by Fox from the same period often did. No one I knew had seen it except for older people who saw it when it was first released in 1958 to theaters. Having seen it recently on video, I can tell you that SPACE MASTER X 7 is no "lost" classic, but its a not bad low budget drive in feature with a slightly unusual menace and director Edward Byrnes deserves credit for trying hard to make a serious (sometimes he tries to hard) adult science fiction thriller. Done in a semi-documentary style, Byrnes sometimes slows down the films pace but overall its not a bad job.One area of interest to film buffs is the films casting. We have Paul ("man of a thousands voices") Frees in a surprisingly large on screen role as a "heel" scientist who accidently unleashes the "blood rust". Of course the person often mentioned in this film is Moe Howard of the Three Stooges, in a rare character part as a cab driver who helps the feds track down a woman who was exposed to the deadly alien fungus. This film was made when the stooges career was in limbo; between the time Columbia dropped the stooges because it was no longer interested in making shorts, and the time before they boys returned to the screen for feature films. Director Byrnes began his film career directing 3 Stooges shorts, and was good friends with the boys, so it was he who probably got Moe a part in the picture.