SPACEFLIGHT IC-1 (1965)
Article 1929 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-26-2006
Posting Date: 7-23-2006
Directed by Bernard Knowles
Featuring Bill Williams, Norma West, John Cairney

When a woman commits suicide as a result of a meeting with the dictatorial commander of an interstellar colonization vehicle, her husband, the ship’s doctor, inadvertently takes part in a mutiny.

This is one of those movie I quite admire. It’s a real attempt at a science fiction drama, one in which the characters are allowed to be real people in the way they react to the various situations they encounter; even the dictatorial commander is played with a strong sense of humanity. It avoids the usual cliches of space travel; there isn’t an encounter with a meteor cluster to be found, and it actually tells a fairly complex story in a very short running time of 65 minutes. However, it’s so intent on not stooping to melodrama that it never really comes alive; despite the interesting story and characters, there’s a dullish cast to the proceedings. I also dislike the beginning, but then, I’ve never liked movies where a narrator introduces the characters to you rather than allowing you to meet them on their own; it’s a bit like going to a party and immediately being introduced to twenty people you’ve never met and then be expected to remember them all as you encounter them again. They also have a potentially interesting character in the man who has been converted into a cyborg, if an immobile one. Unfortunately, they never give this character anything significant to do during the proceedings. In short, it’s a movie I like more for what it attempted than for how well it pulled it off.