I was expecting something else from this film I guess. I didn't realize it was from three episodes of a TV serial cut down and put together into a film version. I was thinking this was a "movie" movie and not a serial. Oh well, live and learn I guess. This is Rocky Jones, Space Ranger! It looks like something I might have watched if I was a little kid in the 1950s but it's not something I care to watch in this day and age. I'm not saying this is an awful movie but I am saying it's just not my thing.If you have kids and like science fiction and want your child/children to watch something wholesome then this film is a good starting place.Those baseball caps they were wearing in a spaceship really got to me, but not in a good way... very silly. lol.2/10

Beyond the Moon is a TV movie edited together from several episodes of Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. It seems to be very early episodes from the series as a lot of the characters seem to be being introduced for the first time. I've now seen several of these Rocky Jones space adventures and I can't say I've liked any of them. This one is almost as interchangeable as all the others and you would be doing very well indeed to be able to differentiate them apart when looking back on the titles and trying to remember what individual movies were about.This one sees the boorish Rocky Jones, his wacky sidekick Winkie and the feisty Vena Ray go on a rescue mission to the planet Ophesia to bring back Professor Newton and the young Bobby, both of whom seem to have been put under some nefarious mind-control. It's all fairly predictable and a little tiresome. Fun to a limited extent on account of the charmingly clunky special effects. It also has a cheerful sexism that is fairly amusing to look back on. But on the whole these Rocky Jones films are hard work getting through. Some people evidently appear to enjoy them but I have to say I'm not one of them.

You need to go way back to the 1950's when special effects were not even close to today's CGI. For the time this was a ground breaking movie and then a series. The main thing I have with this show is the overt sexism that is prevalent through out. Although Sally Mansfield, who plays Vena Ray, seems to put stop to the sexism to a some extent. Going to Ophesia to rescue a professor and his grandson that have been force-ably detained after a conference there they encounter a hostile and coercive force. While they are attacked on the way there and have to get repairs they make it to Ophesia where they manage to rescue the professor and his grandson. I really enjoyed Sally's role as she is a bit sarcastic towards Rocky the chauvinist.

"Beyond the Moon" edits together the first three episodes of the 1954 space series, "Rocky Jones, Space Ranger," episodes that originally ran as a three-parter called "Beyond the Curtain of Space." It introduces the characters we'd see as series regulars in such later feature compilations from the series as "Menace from Outer Space" and "Crash of the Moons." The lovable old Professor Newton (Maurice Cass) is here and is branded a traitor for disavowing his loyalty to Earth in a famous "declaration" and staying on the renegade planet Ophesia with his young ward, Bobby (Robert Lyden). Vena Ray (Sally Mansfield) had worked as a translator for Professor Newton on Ophesia and is eager to clear his name. When Rocky Jones (Richard Crane) and his gangling, goofy young sidekick Winkie (Scotty Beckett) are assigned to travel from Earth to Ophesia, Vena insists on going along, despite Rocky's assertions that a space voyage is "no place for a girl." From a 21st century standpoint, Rocky's casual sexism in some future space age is pretty jarring but it gives Vena the chance to defend herself and assert her qualifications—she is, after all, a navigator, and she knows the Ophesian language. Rocky does come off as a male chauvinist jerk at times, telling Vena to knit him a sweater and referring to her as "our glamor girl navigator." (Well, she IS gorgeous!) When told that she knows Ophesian, his response reflects, I suppose, the then-accepted Cold War approach to nation-building: "I'd rather have an extra pair of fists. Anybody understands that language." On Ophesia, we find that Professor Newton and Bobby have been hypnotized into wanting to stay on the planet thanks to a machine used by the planet's authoritarian female ruler, Cleolanta, whose men-in-black keep a close eye on Rocky and his team while they land for the ostensible reason of making repairs. Meanwhile, we learn that there's an actual traitor in the Office of Space Affairs on Earth who is alerting Cleolanta and her men to Rocky's every intent. Rocky's immediate goal is to get Professor Newton and Bobby back to Earth, while the long-term goal, as seen in later episodes, is to get Cleolanta and Ophesia to join United Worlds, the space federation that Earth seems to lead, and open trade and formal relations with other planets. (Shades of "Star Trek!") The whole thing is actually surprisingly well-scripted and acted. Despite its space sci-fi trappings, it really is focused on character and the way people and nation-planets relate to each other in this future age when space colonies are far-flung and travel between planets is a lot easier and less time-consuming than we know it to be. I'm particularly impressed with Sally Mansfield's Vena Ray. She's incredibly cute and perky (and must have raised the temperatures of a lot of 1950s adolescents during the series' first run), but is also self-confident, self-aware, assertive and proactive. At times, she seems like the smartest one on the spaceship. She would become an integral member of the cast and is quite memorable in the later episodes I've seen.It's a very low-budget series, with special effects that are sometimes crude by today's standards, but there's a level of imagination at work that's quite impressive and a creative use of actual locations and matte shots when necessary. For instance, all scenes of the rocket base from which Rocky's craft is launched on Earth are done at a sprawling Los Angeles power plant and the actors are shot on location there. There's one well-executed matte shot of Rocky's ship blasting off from the middle of the power plant. The outdoor scenes on Ophesia are all shot using the exterior of the Griffith Observatory in Griffith Park, a stone's throw from downtown Los Angeles. The interiors tend to be strictly functional and boast a few suggestions of high technology to augment the standard 1950s office furniture we see, even in the spaceships. One curious touch seen on both Earth and Ophesia is a 1950s convertible sports car that seems to fit only two people when seen in closeup, but fits three in a pinch in one scene. I'm sure it's the exact same car used in all of its scenes on both planets.