WAR OF THE SATELLITES: Interplanetary Intrigue On A Budget

Roger Corman is often thought of as a busi­ness­man first and a film­maker sec­ond.  Indeed, his name is syn­ony­mous with the b-movie in the eyes of many cinephiles.  That assump­tion does him a dis­ser­vice, though.  Corman was actu­ally a very skilled and savvy crafts­man with a unique gift for mak­ing a lot out of a lit­tle.  Even the less inter­est­ing entries in his fil­mog­ra­phy show a sense of crafts­man­ship that you didn’t always see in low-budget cin­ema of that era.

A good dis­play of Corman’s crafts­man­ship applied to mediocre mate­r­ial can be found in War Of The Satellites.  Like a lot of vin­tage b-movie fare, this 1958 pro­duc­tion took its plot­line from the head­lines and exploited pub­lic fears about the then-current satel­lite race between the U.S. and Russia.  The story begins with the U.S. try­ing to send manned satel­lites into space, only for them to be destroyed by some unfore­seen force before get very far.  Dr. Van Ponder (Richard Devon), the head of the project, gets per­mis­sion to make one last attempt and decides to pilot the mis­sion him­self, with faith­ful aids Sybil (Susan Cabot) and Dave (Dick Miller) along for sup­port him.

Unfortunately, the heroes do not know that aliens are plot­ting to keep Earth dwellers on their own planet by any means nec­es­sary.  They sneak down to earth, secretly killing Dr. Van Ponder and cre­at­ing a dupli­cate ver­sion of him to derail the mis­sion.  When that doesn’t work, they plot to have their Van Ponder clone destroy the satel­lite after its launch to dis­cour­age the inhab­i­tants of Earth into end­ing their space quest.  Dave fig­ures out some­thing is wrong with Van Ponder before the mis­sion but is forced to go up into space to con­front him.

As far as 1950’s sci-fi pro­gram­mers go, War Of The Satellites is mid­dling stuff.  This is mainly due to the script: despite decent char­ac­ter­i­za­tions and dia­logue, the sto­ry­line is a bit mud­dled.  Also, the setup is more inter­est­ing than the space-set sec­ond half: the early por­tions of the film include some thought­ful dia­logue about whether or not Earthlings have the right to travel in outer space as well as some nice small-scale sus­pense scenes as the Van Ponder clone strug­gles to elude detec­tion.  Once the ship is up in space, the film set­tles for stock cat-and-mouse sce­nar­ios that bypass the inter­est­ing mate­r­ial touched on in the first half and a rushed finale that is fur­ther ham­pered by the film’s lim­ited resources.

That said, War Of The Satellites still works as a pro­gram­mer despite its story’s short­com­ings and this is mainly due to Corman’s direc­tion.  He diverts the view­ers atten­tion from any story prob­lems by main­tain­ing a snappy pace that cov­ers a lot of mate­r­ial in its tidy 65 minute run­ning time.  The film also boasts a nice level of tech­ni­cal pol­ish:  cin­e­matog­ra­pher Floyd Crosby gives the film a noirish black-and-white look while Daniel Haller sup­plies some intrigu­ingly styl­ized space­ship sets on a bud­get.  Both Crosby and Haller would go on to make impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions to Corman’s work dur­ing his influ­en­tial and cel­e­brated cycle of Edgar Allan Poe adap­ta­tions so it is inter­est­ing to see their early work as a unit.  The spe­cial effects are mostly pass­able but a few minia­ture shots are sur­pris­ingly good.

Most impor­tantly, Corman keeps the talk-driven nar­ra­tive com­pelling by get­ting good per­for­mances from a solid b-movie cast: Devon makes a pretty decent alien-driven bad­die, Cabot ful­fills the eye-candy com­po­nent of the film with poise and Miller offers a very cred­i­ble turn in a rare lead­ing role.  Those view­ers who grew up watch­ing Miller as a wise­crack­ing com­edy pres­ence in New World fare will find it a pleas­ant sur­prise to see him tackle a mood­ier, more seri­ous sort of char­ac­ter with flair.

In sum­ma­tion, War Of The Satellites is a minor entry in the Corman fil­mog­ra­phy but it gives the viewer an oppor­tu­nity to focus on how his sense of craft could ele­vate mid­dling mate­r­ial.  Thus, seri­ous devo­tees of his work will want to give it a look.

Sci-Fi Classics [Triple Feature] Attack of the Crab Monsters: A group of sci­en­tists are trapped on a remote island inhab­ited by atom­i­cally mutated giant crabs. War of the Satellites: An “unknown force” declares war against Earth when the United Nations dis­obeys warn­ings to cease and desist in its attempts at assem­bling the first satel­lite in the atmos­phere. Not of this Earth: A humanoid alien from outer space is sent to earth to bring back human blood to his home planet for trans­fu­sion purposes.

Film Trailer — War of the Satellites (1958).divx
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