Search - First Man into Space on DVD

Content Advisory: Suitable for Children Movie Release: 1959 DVD Release: 06/17/1998 Format: DVD - Black and White Audio Tracks: English SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 18 mins Studio: Image Entertainment Members Wishing: 5 Genres: Science Fiction, Thriller, Sci-Fi Horror

Filmed not long after the launch of Russia's Sputnik satellite, First Man Into Space benefited from a surface realism made possible by enhanced public knowledge of space-travel jargon and paraphernalia. Dashing astronaut Lt. Dan Prescott (Bill Edwards) disappears from view when his experimental spacecraft vanishes in a mysterious cloud. The space capsule returns to Earth, covered in a bizarre extraterrestrial coating. Shortly thereafter, a hulking, half-human creature raids a blood bank, killing the nurse on duty and gulping down the supplies. More bizarre, unexplained events occur before Prescott's older brother Cmdr. C.E. Prescott (Marshall Thompson) concludes that the monster is actually his missing brother, transformed by his experiences in space into a mutant, vampiric beast. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Marshall Thompson - Cmdr. C.E. Prescott
Marla Landi - Tia Francesca
Bill Edwards - Lt. Dan Prescott
Robert Ayres - Capt. Ben Richards
Bill Nagy - Wilson

The first ten minutes of Robert Day's The First Man into Space, like the rest of the movie, looks sensational on this DVD. It's worth emphasizing that first ten minutes -- as well as a rocket launch at 19 minutes and a second flight depicted at 25 minutes in -- because they're some of the best sequences of their kind, and make this disc worthwhile even for non-science fiction fans. This was one of the earlier DVD releases (from 1998), and the film-to-video transfer has held up extremely well. The contrasts are fairly deep and the source print is very clean; even the score by the late Scottish composer Buxton Orr is given a good mastering job along with the rest of the soundtrack. The 78-minute movie has been given an extremely generous 15 chapters that include the original trailer. Owing to its vintage -- this disc dates from before the period in which people knew what to do about menus -- the trailer has been programmed sequentially after the end of the movie. The menu must be accessed manually, and the film begins automatically on start-up. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide