Spaceflight IC-1 (1965)

Great Film overall

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The premise of the story is good but the execution is just awful - sets, acting, script. It comes across like a TV soap opera and quite low tech given the time when it was made. I could see this as a series given they were only 1 year into the mission. Except for the people in hibernation event that leads to the death of Mead, the remaining plot points could used in a western.Interesting, the guy with head in the glass had such a minor role. He was not allowed to talk to Earth -- why? In most sci fi movies these characters are the go to experts or the evil one but the majority of the action was not in the operation room. It was devoid of the usual meteor shower or other external threat found in many movies and focused on the personal conflicts.

Low-rent at every conceivable level, this overheated British space opera has a turgid script, laughable "special effects", ham acting--except by lead Bill Williams, a reliable American character actor who usually plays a good guy but here does a good turn as the ship's tyrannical captain--flat and dull photography and isn't worth spending your time on. The story of a crew being sent on a 25-year journey to a habitable planet because Earth is on its last legs had possibilities, but hack director Bernard Knowles shoots everything in the most boring, unimaginative ways possible, without anything even remotely resembling thought, flair, or any kind of style whatsoever. Even low-budget veterans like Edward L. Cahn or Sam Newfield would have given some pizazz to this suffocatingly dull, plodding cheapo. Don't bother with it.

Spaceflight IC-1 (1965)* 1/2 (out of 4) Sometimes if you don't have the correct budget for your screenplay then it's best to just put the project on hold until you can raise more money. This British science-fiction has a pretty good story but sadly very little to nothing is done with it. Earth is pretty much on its dying legs when a group of people are sent in a spaceship to find another planet. The only catch is that it's going to take twenty-five years to get there and within the first year the crew grow tired of the rather mean captain so a mutiny takes place. Okay, this story might have worked had it been written better but there's also the problem with the sets. These sets aren't quite on the same level as PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE but not for a single second do you really feel like you're in outer space and the lack of anything technical on this ship tells you that this journey wasn't going to last very long. Also, you have to wonder why these people were picked to go find this new planet and especially since they're all rather boring. The screenplay has a good idea but sadly the writers do very little with it. The majority of the time the people are just sitting around being asked whose side they're on, if they'd take part in a mutiny and whether or not the ship should be turned around. None of this is all that entertaining and it doesn't help that the performances are on the weak side. SPACEFLIGHT IC-1 could certainly be remade and I think the basic story is interesting enough to where a talented director and writer could do something more with it. Pay attention to the first funeral sequence where the words spoken are the lyrics from The Byrds' "Turn, Turn, Turn." How this happened and what the story to this is something I'd like to hear more about.

Consider this is the same year that Star Trek began on NBC-TV. We may laugh at the funny SFX on TOS, but compared to this film (and several others made about the same time), it was downright modern.Also, consider four years later, Kubrick would make 2001: A Space Odyssey, which to this stay still looks fairly fresh. Check out the 1960s-era reel-to-reel tape recorder the "Educator" uses to record her lessons for the children. At least the Star Trek folks tried to simulate a technology 200 years in the future.The story-line is about par for the "sturm-und-drang" type of space opera of this time, but it is rather unrealistic to expect us to believe that this crew would be so misfit and unable to get along with one another. Considering the amount of rigorous psychological testing the early Mercury astronauts underwent just to orbit the earth, it's rather bizarre.