It's not just Hollywood that is interested in making a fast buck , even the British aren't immune . FIRST MAN INTO SPACE is a rather cynical excersise in remaking a superior story , namely THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT , while pretending that it's an American film by casting a couple of American actors while cutting to a sign saying " Welcome To The American State Of ... " at every opportunity . So ignore the tagline of " The first motion picture to lift the veil of the first man in history to be rocketed into the terrifying unknown of outer space " because Nigel Kneale captured this concept several years earlier . It should also be pointed out that New Mexico where much of the story is set has a lack of vast forests as seen here
The real problem however is that there's a serious lack of internal logic . By this I mean you'll be entirely puzzled as to the monster's motive for killing people . For example a couple of highway cops see a car driving erratically , so they stop the car and find a dead female driver and a man mutated into a monster who then kills the cops . Ask yourself this: How would a crazed bloodthirsty monster be able to drive a car ? Perhaps more importantly why would a driver stop to pick up a crazed blood thirsty monster in the first place ? It also becomes more puzzling that this monster is able to articulate its motives when the script demands it at the end of the film . None of this makes much sense
Of course this is a problem with a great number of horror films where in order to follow horror convention so that someone gets killed every 15 minutes people do things that are totally unrealistic and you could argue that if someone is pointing out these faults then they're taking this film far too seriously . Maybe . But there are also some horror films that compelling and thought provoking and FIRST MAN INTO SPACE isn't one of them
The real problem however is that there's a serious lack of internal logic . By this I mean you'll be entirely puzzled as to the monster's motive for killing people . For example a couple of highway cops see a car driving erratically , so they stop the car and find a dead female driver and a man mutated into a monster who then kills the cops . Ask yourself this: How would a crazed bloodthirsty monster be able to drive a car ? Perhaps more importantly why would a driver stop to pick up a crazed blood thirsty monster in the first place ? It also becomes more puzzling that this monster is able to articulate its motives when the script demands it at the end of the film . None of this makes much sense
Of course this is a problem with a great number of horror films where in order to follow horror convention so that someone gets killed every 15 minutes people do things that are totally unrealistic and you could argue that if someone is pointing out these faults then they're taking this film far too seriously . Maybe . But there are also some horror films that compelling and thought provoking and FIRST MAN INTO SPACE isn't one of them