Space Men (Assignment Outer Space) Reviews

A reporter goes aboard a space station to write a routine piece, but when an out-of-control space station threatens the Earth he's forced to take an active role in its destruction. It's an Italian attempt at a serious space fiction story (no little green men), but it's undone by a slow, spotty script and effects that consist of toy spaceships in front of a black curtain with holes punched in it.

Seemed to take a long time to watcht his boring movie, even though it did have its good points. Really wooden acting and some really bad special effects just couldn't keep my attention. The one thing that got me was the main character floating from the shuttle to the space station and that got me thinking about how scary that really is.

It's not a bad story, but the plot is pretty hallow and the film drags on too long. The space scenes are pretty cool to see though, and look nice for an early 60's film. Not particular bad, but could of been better. Held my interest at least.

"Assignment Outer Space" has some good sets, and towards the end there is some genuine tension, but it also features bad acting and suffers from an incredibly low budget. The story is slow and despite the brisk running time (1hr, 19 mins) it becomes dull until the crisis of the film, a runaway space shuttle that threatens to wipe out all life on earth, comes to animate the plot. The film is a mix of pretty good predictions about space travel and some pretty funny non-science (plants converting hydrogen into oxygen?) so it's not universally "so bad it's good" nor is it genuinely good, so if you're not very discriminating, it's fun towards the end, with a couple of twists you won't see coming and some good tension as the characters get into some genuine peril otherwise it's nothing really special. (Dvd, November 28, 2012)

Most of the things they did, they didn't need to do.

Pretty bad Italian sci-fi film, the special effects are poor, but in 1963 they wouldn't have been too bad. The acting however is bad in any year. The story is only fair.