Moon Zero Two (1969) The glory days of the mighty British horror factory Hammer Films were fast coming to a close, so we can understand why they took a bold, expensive gamble on science fiction, a genre they'd yet to try.
And after this stillborn, lifeless debacle, they never tried again.
The idea, we think, was to do a tongue-in-cheek transplant of a typical American western into a futuristic (2021!) vision of the moon as a corporate-run mining facility. Shootouts, bar room brawls, good guys, bad guys, claim jumpers, blah, blah, yada, yada.....
.....with a satirical edge to it.
Okay, that does sound kind of fun, right?
But the only people who read the memo and took that idea seriously were the animators who crafted the frantic, Loony Toon-ish main titles........which promise a nutty, anything goes, farcical romp, like a 'Carry On' movie in space.....
The Hammer filmmaking team clearly never laid eyes on those opening credits. Hammer producer Michael Carreras, sometimes dabbled as a screenwriter of some of his films, including this one....to their everlasting detriment. And crafting a wild west satire set on the moon fell a million light years beyond his skill set.
If you stay awake long enough, you can spot a few sporadic stabs at what this film was attempting, but badly......saloon chorus girls re-imagined as spandexed Las Vegas 'Barbarella' babes, the traditional bar brawl done in zero gravity slo-mo, quick-draw bad guys, and a wisecracking renegade hero and his trusty sidekick.
But it's directed by Roy Ward Baker as if he spent the entire shoot in a deep coma, and Carreras's script, with the exception of one or two lines, is devoid of any of the winking humor the opening animation so loudly announced.
Lacking forward momentum, the movie just lies there and dies there, literally dead on arrival. It plays like a table read where they forced the bored, hungover actors to wear the costumes.
To stop for a moment of brief kindness, we will say, given the film's slightly bigger than usual Hammer budget, the special effects are decently competent. Not Stanley Kubrick-state-of-the-art-2001 quality but nothing here to make the film appear more embarrassing than it already is......
As if 'Moon Zero Two' didn't have enough woes, the cast offers little of no help. As the cocky, devil-may-care space pilot hero, James Olson is balding, bland and looks like he's counting the minutes till the film's over.....imagine Han Solo on heavy sedatives. His damsel in distress, Catherine Schell employs her limited repertoire of supermodel blank stares.
We'd advise even the most hardcore sci-fi completists to not waste time watching this one.....you'll only wish you spent the time running 'Spaceballs' again. There's only one part of the film's title that accurately sums it up.......
Zero (0).
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