Spaceways (1953)

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Absolutely Fantastic

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Made in 1953, this is more of a cold war spy yarn than a real movie of science. Howard Duff is part of the space program, designing rockets that will crack the atmosphere. He is in a terrible marriage and his selfish wife can't stand that he makes so little money as an engineer. He has fallen in love with a beautiful technician but can't act on it. When a rocket goes haywire, he is accused of putting his wife and her lover, once a friend of his, in the final capsule. There is no way to check for the bodies and Duff is going to be brought up on murder charges by an obsessed spy chaser. This leads to a pretty ridiculous conclusion which pushes the limits of juris prudence. Duff also acts in a silly, irrational way, risking his life to prove his innocence. It has good moments along the way but fizzles in the final analysis.

On a top secret base in the English countryside the British space programme is in full swing and it's not just the space programme that is swinging because Mrs Vanessa Mitchell is having an affair with Dr Phillip Crenshaw . This couple disappears and since security at the base is water tight suspicion falls that there's been foul play . Dr Smith is brought in to investigate and immediately suspects Vanessa's husband of double murder and of stashing the bodies on a rocketship that has just been launched in to space Some three months after Hammer launched its first science fiction film FOUR SIDED TRIANGLE came its second SPACEWAYS and with a title like that you're instantly expecting a science fiction thriller . Your expectations will quickly crash land because just like FOUR SIDED TRIANGLE any science fiction element is used merely as a plot device and this film is much more in the way of a murder mystery B movie . The fact that it was released a mere three months after Terence Fisher's should give you an idea of the quality that it's fairly cheap and cheerless , made without any star names and is presumably shown before a bigger budget feature film One thing it might have to interest science fiction fans is that it seems to have a few connections to Nigel Kneale's BBC QUATERMASS as well as sharing major differences . All this is coincidental since this came out the same month as THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT was broadcast but it's noticeable . Despite being considered Hammer's best in house director Fisher doesn't seem suited to science fiction and one wonders how the fortunes of the studio might have fared if he was chosen to direct the film version of THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT instead of Val Guest ? I have no hesitation in thinking Guest was a better SF director

Many people don't realise that Hammer had been producing films as far back as 1935, when their first ever film – The Public Life Of Henry The Ninth - hit the screens. The director who really made the difference for Hammer was Terence Fisher,whose incredible work on the original Frankenstein, Dracula and Mummy films helped the studio become the name to watch in the field of horror. He had already made a few films for them before his horror entries found such favour, and Spaceways (1953) is one such example of Fisher's early output for the company.At the top-secret and ultra-secure base of Deanfield, British scientists are carrying out test rocket flights in an on-going attempt to send a man into space. Helping them with their work is an American, Dr. Stephen Mitchell (Howard Duff). Mitchell's wife Vanessa (Cecile Chavreau) is going crazy stuck on the base, and enters a love affair with fellow scientist Dr. Philip Crenshaw (Andrew Osborn). Then, mysteriously, the illicit lovers go missing around the same time that another rocket is launched into space. Government security agent Dr. Smith (Alan Wheatley) suspects that Dr. Mitchell has murdered his wife and her secret lover, then stashed their bodies aboard the rocket which is now in space orbiting the Earth. Since the rocket isn't scheduled to return for several years, it's a case of "no corpses, no crime". As suspicions mount about his guilt, Dr. Mitchell offers to undertake the first manned mission into space to recover the rocket and prove his innocence. Mathematician Dr. Lisa Frank (Eva Bartok) – who is madly in love with Mitchell – volunteers to join him on this dangerous flight into the unknown.The film's poster promises a Jules Verne-style space adventure with exciting zero-gravity action and cosmic vehicles and sets. Alas, as it turns out the film is a decidedly earthbound affair, concerned above all else with the deteriorating relationship of Duff and Chavreau, the budding romance between Duff and Bartok, and the cynical suspicions of Wheatley. The film has used up 66 of its 74 minutes before Duff and Bartok even get off the ground, which gives an indication of how little rocket-ship action it actually contains. Since the film came out eight years before the first actual manned space mission, much of the space- flight science in the script is quaint and amusing. Nevertheless, it is not a total loss. Duff gives a decent enough performance within the constraints of the role, while Wheatley as the suspicious government agent is quite wonderful. Bartok has little to do other than supply eye candy, though she does finally get to be more pro-active in the proceedings as the film enters its closing ten minutes Fisher directs it all competently enough, though there's no obvious sign of the great things he would go on to achieve later. It's all very efficient without ever quite setting the pulse racing. Spaceways is one of those films that Hammer completists may harbour some burning desire to watch, but other viewers will find it little more than a dated curiosity item. Great theatrical poster plus a smashing performance from Wheatley… but apart from that, its wider appeal is very limited.

The title and the poster tend to set the viewer up for a large disappointment with this one, a less-than-gripping film from director Terence Fisher, laudable mostly for the fact that it was made so early in the 1950s. The story is based on a radio play by Charles Eric Maine, with a plot that smacks just a little of an Alfred Hitchcock movie.Howard Duff plays an American scientist involved with the British space program (they actually had one of those, once). His wife is having an affair with another scientist (Andrew Osborn) who is also a spy. When both wife and lover disappear, an investigator (Alan Wheatley) suspects Duff of murdering them and disposing of the bodies by placing them in a new satellite which is sent into orbit!There's only one way Duff can clear himself: blast off in a rocket, retrieve the satellite, and bring it back for inspection. He takes Eva Bartok (heroine of 'The Crimson Pirate') with him.I won't divulge the ending, but it is a twist. The film's slow pace lessens the tension, and the special effects consist largely of stock footage and a few scenes cribbed from 'Rocketship X-M'. Definitely a case of the poster being far better than the movie -- but what a poster!