*Spoiler/plot- Moon Zero Two, 1969. The male lead character has an impressive NASA history in this film. Ever since having made his mark on history by being the first man to ever land on Mars, William H. Kemp has seen his life slowly slide downwards. He has gone from major fame and fortune to just hanging around a Western-like saloon/bar on the Moon at the saloon, he has been living on his faded past exploits in this Moon the lunar community. He's depressed how things have changed. He feels largely disgusted by how a commercial company (Space Corruption) wants to leave true space exploration behind, now to only focus on commercial space travel to make more corporation money. This X-captain Kemp decides to take up the new disagreeable job of being a space scrap metal seeker and collector. He thinks to collect them and sell them off. Returning to the Moon saloon after doing his recent round of picking up scrap parts from rusted space ships and satellites, Kemp runs into a newly arrived eccentric evil billionaire. The eccentric gives Kemp the tantalizing offer of helping him to collect a unique space asteroid made entirely of expensive sapphire materials and bring it down to the Moon. Also Kemp finds a beautiful new visitor to the Moon in the saloon, who is looking for her long missing brother doing Moon mining. Kemp tries to help her find her brother at his moon claim. *Special Stars- James Olsen, Catherine Schell, Adrienne Corri, Ori Levy, Warren Mitchel, Bernad Breeslaw.*Theme- When you loose your ethics, you loose everything. *Trivia/location/goofs- British. Watch for the many British sci-fi film production elements that will be used in other films and TV shows like 'Space 1999' and 'UFO'. The film takes place in 2021. This movie was described by the producers and director as a "western in space", complete with claim jumpers, showdown-type gunfights, a hired gunslinger and even dancing saloon girls. When Clementine discovers the skeleton of her brother in his space suit, a bone-cut suture line can clearly be seen separating the top half of the skull above the brow showing it to be a skull with a removable top (a medical class specimen). When Capt. Kemp and Miss Taplin are bulldozing a shortcut to get back to Moon City in a moon rover, you can clearly see it's really a miniature vehicle being pulled by a thin string. *Emotion- This is a watchable film for many reasons. It's unique in it's attempt to be a 'Western in Space'. It has gunfights, dance-hall girls, mining claims, bar fights, and claim jumping. It has all the essentials. But the film also has some top-notch science fiction set designs, special effects, and costumes & props & make-up. So this film is very confusing to the audience viewer. I still give it a thumbs-up. *Based On- NASA Moon landing hysteria and popular space based sci-fi film box-office successes.

Roy Ward Baker directed this bizarre Hammer studios futuristic science fiction/western hybrid that stars James Olsen as Captain William Kemp, basically the gunfighter for hire, and Catherine Schell as Clementine Taplin, who has hired him to investigate the disappearance of her brother, a miner on the moon who was murdered by claim jumpers with a sinister agenda that only they can stop... Extremely silly and dated film has good actors performing with a straight face, which is quite an achievement in sequences involving dancing saloon cowgirls in the moon colony bar-room, for instance, complete with obligatory brawl. Astonishing animated title sequence and song are most incongruous!

I rate this film a 3 (its average here) but as a 10 as a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode (it was in season 2 I think, the version I just watched), so I'm averaging it around a 6. I noticed a lot of British reviewers here who mostly love this flick. I suppose if I watched this movie in 1969 when I was 6 I would have thought it was cool. Problem is I didn't so it doesn't get any sentimental points from me. This flick is a big rip off of 2001 and UFO, and I suspect they intended to steal from both. It starts off with an extra long cartoon intro with some extra loud jazz bond type intro, it is funny to a point than really irritating, its sooo long. All the reviewers who love this flick seem to think its realistic, ummm I don't think so. I love the realistic part where they find the dead astronaut and its a skeleton, yeah that was soo realistic, did the space fly's get to his dead body? They could have used some sexy green moon women in this trash flick, because if they were trying to be realistic it was a waste of some good camp. The MST3K writers did a fantastic job skewering this flick and it was one of the better episodes I've seen, the time Joel uses the anti gravity to mimic a scene in the movie is dead on hilarious! See it as a MST3K episode and you'll be entertained. You have been warned.

If you ever get a chance to see this film, don't miss it. The whole look of this film is itchy & dated, but that's what makes watching this film so much fun! Thank god that special effects have improved greatly over the past 35+ years, but considering what they had to work with, I think they did a great job. Some of the special effects folks went on to work on numerous films such as Superman, X-Men and The Bride of Chucky. Sadly, I don't think this title was ever available on video... (going ALL the way back to the Beta days.) It WAS available as a 16mm rental back in the early 70's. Warner Bros or Seven Arts handled the US distribution, so it's most likely in Ted Turner's holdings. It would be nice to see this on TCM someday.