| Moon Zero Two | |
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Moon Zero Two film poster |
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| Directed by | Roy Ward Baker |
| Produced by | Michael Carreras |
| Written by | Michael Carreras Martin Davison Frank Hardman Gavin Lyall |
| Starring | James Olson Catherine Schell Warren Mitchell Adrienne Corri |
| Music by | Don Ellis |
| Cinematography | Paul Beeson |
| Editing by | Spencer Reeve |
| Studio | Hammer Films |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros.-Seven Arts |
| Release date(s) | 20 October 1969 |
| Running time | 100 min |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Moon Zero Two is a science fiction film produced by Hammer Films and released in 1969. It was billed as a 'space western' and followed shortly after the release of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968. The film did very poorly at the box-office, but has become a minor cult classic due to its having been featured on an early episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Moon Zero Two was filmed at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, England. The screenplay was by Michael Carreras from an original story by Gavin Lyall, Frank Hardman and Martin Davison. It was produced by Michael Carreras, directed by Roy Ward Baker, was filmed in Technicolor and was 100 minutes in duration.
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In the year 2021 the moon is in the process of being colonized, and this new frontier is attracting a diverse group of people to settlements such as Moon City, Farside 5 and others.
Two such denizens of this rough and tumble lunar society are the notorious millionaire J. J. Hubbard and former-astronaut-turned-satellite-salvager Bill Kemp. The first man to set foot on Mars, Kemp has now left the Space Corporation because he wants to do space exploration whereas his former employer only wants to do commercial passenger flights to Mars and Venus (the first manned mission to Mercury has not yet been made since there is no compelling financial interest). When Hubbard hears of a small 6000-tonne asteroid made of pure sapphire that is orbiting close to the moon, he hires Kemp to capture it using Kemp's old "Moon 02" space ferry and bring it down to the lunar farside although it would be against the law. However, Kemp has little choice since he has learned that his flight license soon will be revoked due to protests from the Corporation. Hubbard also reveals that he plans to use the sapphire as a rocket engine thermal insulator; he would build more powerful rockets capable of finally colonizing also Mercury and moons of Jupiter—for profit.
Meanwhile a young woman arrives looking for her brother, a miner working a distant patch of moonscape at Spectacle Crater on the lunar farside. Unfortunately, the trip from Moon City on the nearside would take six days by lunar buggy. Since Kemp could go there in 20 minutes using Moon 02, she convinces him to try to learn whether her brother is still alive. In doing so, Kemp learns more than he would like about some of Hubbard's schemes.
Special visual effects for the film were created by a team of leading British effects technicians, several of whom had recently worked together on 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was headed by veteran visual effects artist Les Bowie, who worked on numerous Hammer productions and several notable British-made science-fiction features including First Men in the Moon (1964) and Star Wars; one of his last screen credits before his death in 1979 was as a member of the Oscar-winning effects team for Superman (1978). Other notable (uncredited) members of the effects team were Nick Allder, Colin Chilvers, Wally Veevers, Terry Schubert and Brian Johnson,[1] all of whom went on to distinguished careers in the special effects field.
The "Moon 02" Spacecraft is described in the film as being 'quite old', and is clearly derived from essentially NASA Apollo-era vintage. All the more "Modern" technology on the moon is much more free-spirited and 'mod' in design, and looks like a Worlds Fair diorama, rather than anything NASA ever discussed building; among the set decorations are several of the famous "Ball" chairs created in 1966 by Finnish designer Eero Aarnio. Late in production, a dialogue reference to Neil Armstrong becoming the first man on the moon was inserted, though the 'monument' show is quite generic, and has nothing recognizably NASA-ish about it. (the film was released three months after the landing).
The film has stylistic similarities to the Gerry Anderson TV series UFO and Space: 1999: in the film, women wear stylish colored wigs while on the moon—a style also retained in UFO for its Moonbase sequences, while the uniforms worn by the pilots and civilians are similar in style to that worn in Space: 1999, another Moon-based series. Catherine Schell even went on to star in the second series of Space: 1999.
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