'12 TO THE MOON'.....ONE SMALL SHLEP FOR MANKIND.....

12 To The Moon (1960)  We can't fault this movie too much for its painfully low budget. After all, how many space adventures feature no less than a dozen crew members making up a virtual United Nations trek to the moon. 

             Yes, this crowd's representing every major nation on the globe and they've even brought along their cold war distrust of the Russian guy, who, true to form acts like a typical 1950's-60's movie communist - a blustering, punchable asshat.

             Also along for the ride - the lingering rage left over from the defeat of World War 2 Nazis. (The Israeli crew member's works along side the German, not knowing his crewmate's the son of a notorious war criminal who killed the Israeli's family.  Ooops....)

            After dodging some wobbly paper-mache meteors, our gang finally squish their booted tootsies down on the lunar soil. And they're not alone. 

             Invisible aliens have also parked themselves moonside and they're as cliched as the Russian in that like most 50's and 60's aliens, they're imperious, high handed and generally pissed off. They fire off a lot gibberish teletypes at our bunch of moon-nauts that only the Chinese woman crew member can decipher. 

              The aliens primary message translates to  - get off our moon, we were here first, but leave those two cute cats you brought with you for medical experiments.  (Judging from the way the poor kitties yowl when the aliens spirit them away, we doubt they planned to adopt them as rescues.....)

              After being kicked off the moon for trespassing on alien turf, our plucky heroes face more problems as they come back to Earth. The loony lunar-ites, still pissed off, put the entire earth in a deep freeze......and work even faster than Idina Menzel singing "Let It Go"  in 'Frozen'.

             But fear not. What's left our dozen doofuses come up with a plan - dropping an A-bomb into a volcano to defrost the big blue ball before everybody on it literally chills the hell out.  (Oh yeah, we forgot to mention a boy-girl team on the crew fell into alien hands while on their way to find a nook to screw around in. Another guy slipped into quicksand.) 

             The bomb's dropped into the volcano - depicted by a shot of explosions on the sun's surface, as if audiences  couldn't tell the difference between an earth volcano and the sun. The aliens, finding humanity from no doubt watching the young human couple do the hubba-hubba, turn nice guys at the very last minute.

              All is saved......except the dignity of everyone involved in this film. And presumably on their next trip back to the moon, they can affix real glass to their space helmets instead of that....uh.... invisible, electromagnetic shield.  We didn't kid you about this movie's low budget. 1 star (*).