Review of First Man into Space (1959) by Doug G — 03 Jan 2012

I saw this film by accident when I was 8 years old. It was part of a double bill with Disney's "Darby O'Gill and the Little People." Clearly, somebody in "scheduling" goofed, thinking "Darby," with its animated banshee sequence, somehow constituted a horror film, and therefore "First Man" was an appropriate accompanying feature. The result was a theater full of small children frightened into hysteria by the blood-drinking space mutant that returns from space after the first manned flight goes awry.

I was so terrified by that mutated monster that I could not sleep, would not go into a darkened room alone, and overall suffered a Grade A childhood trauma that lasted for weeks.

So from the perspective of a wide-eyed, suburban eight-year-old, this movie was highly successful. It was Scary!

On the other hand, by the time I saw the film again decades later on VHS, it had somehow lost its ability to instill terror. In fact, it seemed downright cheesy, embarrassingly so. How could this B movie with sophomoric special effects have seemed so frightening back in 1959? This remains one of the great mysteries of my life. I guess I can chalk it up as one of those "you had to be there" things.

Objectively, from a grownup perspective, this movie is pretty darned bad. But since it scared the bejibbers out of me at age eight, I figure those film makers must have done *something* right.