DESTINATION INNER SPACE

US, 1966, 83 minutes, Colour.
Scott Brady, Sheree North, Gary Merrill.
Directed by Francis D. Lyon.

Destination Inner Space is a small-budget and short feature film with some veterans from films making the transition towards telemovies. The plot resembles something of Sphere, Barry Levinson’s 1998 film about underwater laboratories and mysterious probes. This film is set in such a laboratory, a mysterious object which seems to be a large, automated extraterrestrial probe. Then things become dramatic…

This is fairly standard science fiction material but indicates where this kind of film had reached by the mid-60s from the B-budgets of the 50s movies to the increasingly bigger budgets of future decades.

1. The quality of the film as a television movie adventure, its style, the audience it was made for?

2. The significance of the title, themes?

3. Science-fiction and its enjoyment value for audiences? The exploration genre, the background of scientific development and exploration. the encounter with monsters? Did this film have a conventional treatment or something more?

4. The attention to detail of the expedition. the attention to scientific background? Audience interest? Plausibility?

5. The establishing of the personnel. their characters, types? Interaction, coping with crises? Were they convincing scientists? The human style? Hero, heroine?

6. The impact of the monster? Its visual presentation, the effect?

7. The challenge of monster versus man, fear, confrontation, fight?

8. How satisfying was the resolution?

9. The value of this kind of entertainment material?