Mission Stardust (1967)

The spherical Bellatrixian warships drop into strategic positions. From the bridge of the Chrysoar, Fleet Admiral Antiope appears on viewscreens across the Terranean Union with a simple demand.

'Hand over the criminal Nebuleena, or it's war!'

 The young Terranean President's reply is quick and definitive. 

'You were seen capturing her ship, we thought you had her. We'd gladly hand her over if we knew where she was.'

You jerk! thinks Nebuleena, standing on the bridge behind Antiope disguised in an Amazon uniform. I thought we had something, President Spiro.

Half an hour later, the sabotaged Chrysoar is spinning like a top, the water supply to Antiope's bath has been rerouted through the galley's tank of Skyllan eels, and Nebuleena is blasting out of the Chrysoar's hanger in the Silver Swift. Nebuleena smiles at the thought of Fleet Admiral Antiope lowering herself into a foaming bath full of Skyllan elvers. She activates the stardrive, and the Silver Swift vanishes.

In folded space, time and space mingle, and a journey of light years can be achieved in hours. There are signals here, too, leaked into space centuries ago and frozen in time; echoes of an Earth long lost to memory, but accessible to a spaceship's scanners. Let's see what Nebuleena finds in the abyss...

Premise

Opening with groovy music and psychedelic colours, Mission Stardust is based on the insanely popular Perry Rhodan novels by German writers K. H. Scheer and Walter Ernsting.

The rocketship Stardust blasts off for the Moon, with a secret mission to retrieve a mystery metal, more dense than cobalt or lithium. (This is meaningless; cobalt is not especially dense, and lithium is extremely low in density. Perhaps it's the density of the scientist who thought this was worthy of launching a rocket they should concern themselves with.) Under the command of Major Perry Rhodan, the crew consists of Captain Mike Bull, Captain Flipper and Doctor Manoli, chiselled heroes, one and all. On the approach to its landing site, their rocket seems to gain a mind of its own and chooses a different location. In a Moon buggy that looks like some kind of hospital urinal bottle on wheels, Rhodan and Bull seek the source of the interference that possessed the Stardust. The moon buggy is sabotaged somehow and, when they leave it, vanishes! Now on foot, and with the nearest bus route nearly 240,000 miles away, they trek across a rather fetching lunar landscape until sighting a four legged, spherical alien spaceship.

A man in a spacesuit with an unsettling rubber face emerges from the spaceship, walking as though afflicted by premature rigor mortis. Bull pulls out his gun, but a zap from the alien's face causes him to drop it, and the gun goes the same way as the moon buggy. The man invites the men on board, and they have little choice but to accept. Once inside, there are the usual random spheres, circles and ovals of 1960s alien design. The man removes his space helmet on request, and his rubber mask is revealed to be part of the helmet, behind which are the electrical mechanical workings of a robot. Only his eyes, teeth and gums are perplexingly human-like, giving him a distinct mechanical zombie vide.

'Our friend's only a robot,' exclaims Major Rhodan, rather dismissively.

Ushered into another room by the robot, the travellers meet two humanoid aliens; Crest and Commander Thora. They insist they're no threat, they merely remotely hijacked their rocketship, disintegrated their urine bottle moon buggy, and disarmed them as precautions; all perfectly peaceful actions.

Commander Thora wears a dark figure hugging body suit, with the only prominent details being the lighter coloured circular cups over her breasts. There's no way to ignore this detail; it's just too weird. She's clearly devoted to Crest, who's a genius on their world. Crest, explains they're from Arkon, 34 million light years away (putting their world well outside the Milky Way, for those who want real world clarity). The beautiful Thora is brazenly scornful of humans, accusing them of having an 'aggressive attitude typical of primitive races,' and referring to human languages as the 'babble of savages'. She certainly has a way with English words. Perhaps she's putting on a front because she's self conscious of the front of her outfit.

The Arkonides have been stranded for a few months, having crashed, with their repair robots out of action, and the nearest call out spaceship mechanics all booked up until after Christmas. Unfortunately, Crest is ill,  which is apparently a novel experience to the Arkonides, who conquered disease centuries ago. Why being on the Moon should undo this achievement, we might only wonder.

The Stardust is transported to the alien ship remotely, bringing Doctor Manoli, who might be able to help the Arkonides. Sure enough, the inferior human doctor diagnoses leukaemia. Doctor Manoli brings with him a few insults of his own about the Arkonides' ancient, and therefore 'degenerate' genetics, prompting indignation from Commander Thora, who, by now, I suspect grew up in Arkon's far right hemisphere. Crest agrees with Manoli, however, saying their race is genetically 'used up' after 8000 years, proving the superior alien intelligence of Crest knows no more about evolution than does the human doctor. But Manoli does know of a Doctor Haggard, in Africa, who has a potential cure for leukaemia.

Major Rhodan quizzes Thora as she slips into something less ridiculous, and establishes the Arkonides are searching for a younger race to swap chromosomes with, so Rhodan forces a kiss from her, because it's 1967, and women's liberation is still in diapers.

The spaceship gives birth to a cute miniature version of itself, the emergency ship which is only just capable of a measly light speed, and they head for the Serengeti to find Doctor Haggard.

Africa is unwelcoming to alien spacecraft, and a military jeep heads their way. Thora erects an invisible force field, impenetrable to jeeps, guns and the faces of inquisitive army officers. She then levitates the jeep with a gravity neutraliser, and the gunfire of the soldiers pushes the now weightless vehicle away. Further attempts to assault the aliens provoke the irascible Thora to demonstrate her power with some landscape remodelling in the mountains.

Rhodan and Bull go to Mumbasa to seek Doctor Haggard, with some alien defensive gadgets, which come in handy when bartering with Arkonide diamonds garners the wrong kind of attention.

Pursued from Mumbasa with Doctor Haggard and his nurses, Rhodan slows down their pursuers but is captured by the crime lord, Larkin. By the time Rhodan escapes the clutches of the villain, Larkin's real plan is put into operation. Captain Flipper is a traitor in Larkin's employ, and Doctor Haggard and his team are phonies, the real Haggard being in Larkin's possession. Commander Thora is kidnapped, as Larkin attempts to gain control of the advanced technology of the aliens.

It's now up to Rhodan, Bull, Manoli and Crest to rescue Thora and the real Doctor Haggard, and get Crest the treatment he needs.

Throughout, Commander Thora is the most aggressive and petty character in the movie, convincingly portrayed as one of those people so sure of their superiority they assume anything they do must be definitionally justified, while accusing others of always acting on irrational motivations. You really get the impression Crest is a little weary of reining her in, and worries what she might be getting up to when he's not watching, like she's a naughty cat who keeps knocking things off the kitchen side, but also she's in charge of an interstellar warship. Nonetheless, one word from him and she behaves. Although she's unlikeable at first, or perhaps even humorously belligerent, one comes to appreciate her loyalty, and that her respect can, to a degree, be earned.

The only versions of Mission Stardust I can find streaming are grainy with poor sound quality. I wonder if there are remasters out there somewhere.

Cast and Crew

Primo Zeglio was an Italian director and writer, known for a number of films, mostly in the historical and crime genres. He made only one other movie after Mission Stardust, after which he dedicated his time to painting and engraving. I can't say the direction here was inspired. It was adequate to tell the story, and only just. I suspect budgetary restraints were at least partly responsible for that.

Okay, come with me on this, and make notes. Wikipedia gives the story credit to Karl Heinz Vogelmann. IMDb does not include Mission Stardust under that or any alternative title among Karl Heinz Vogelmann's credits, and gives him only one writing credit. All his other work was as a still photographer, and in that capacity he worked on some impressive movies, such as Das Boot (1981), The NeverEnding Story (1984), and cult science fiction classic Enemy Mine (1985).

IMDb does list Kurt Vogelmann as story writer, and credits him as writer for only one other movie, and those are his only IMDb credits. It's a bit sparse on the details of Kurt Vogelmann, except that he sometimes was credited as K. H. Vogelmann, as he was for Mission Stardust, and sometimes as K.  Vogelmann, as he was for his only other credit, A 001: operazione Giamaica (1965). So, if Kurt Vogelmann was only ever credited under different names, where does the name 'Kurt' come from? And, is he actually the same person as Karl Heinz Vogelmann, even though they have separate IMDb pages? Other websites about Karl Heinz Vogelmann refer to his work as a writer on the two movies credited to Kurt Vogelmann by IMDb, so, as things stand, I'm assuming the two Vogelmanns (Vogelmenn? No, definitely not) are one and the same.

As for the story he wrote; it's good. I mostly enjoyed it. I like the combination of science fiction and espionage and crime. But there's a whole segment in which Rhodan and Bull are trying to buy a jeep from hoodlums who decide they'd rather just rob them, which basically halts the plot like a jeep hitting an Arkonide force field. It was unnecessary.

In the lead as Major Perry Rhodan is Canadian Lang Jeffries. His career involved many European espionage films, with some European sword and sandals thrown in there. Considering the character of Rhodan has so many books written about him (they're still writing Perry Rhodan books), you'd expect a charismatic performance. Unfortunately, Jeffries feels more like a bag of meat thrown into a hero-shaped space. I doubt that's his fault.

And, another bag of meat was thrown into a sidekick-shaped space. As Captain Bull we have Argentine actor Luis Dávila. Few of the characters in this movie stand out as particularly notable, and I don't think that's because of the actors. Dávila had a thriving career, including, again, many European films.

Crest is portrayed with restrained dignity by John Karlsen, a New Zealand actor who also worked on many Italian movies.

Swedish actress Essy Persson shines as slightly demented Commander Thora. A more beautiful alien you couldn't wish to meet. The contrast between her and Crest is played excellently. Persson is probably best known for saucy little number, I, a Woman (1965), but genre fans may recognise her from Vincent Price starring horror Cry of the Banshee (1970).

Swiss actor Pinkas Braun was perfectly sinister as crime lord Larkin. Braun was a respected actor with great presence on stage and screen. He acted as a villain in many crime thrillers and was ideal for the role of Larkin.

I love the opening theme music to Mission Stardust, by composer Marcello Giombini. Giombini was prolific in all the classic Italian film genres; spaghetti westerns, horrors, giallo, and peplum. For the opening song of this movie, "Seli", he employed the haunting vocals of Edda Dell'Orso, who also worked with Ennio Morricone on some of the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns.

Design

To me, Mission Stardust stands out for its look. The rocketship, Stardust, although annoyingly cylindrical rather than cigar-shaped, is still great. It looks convincing when it deploys its landing gear. Even the moon buggy, shaped as it is like a urine bottle, is pretty cool. But the Arkonide spaceship is the high point. Roughly spherical, with glass domes and legs that fold up against its sides while in flight, it's a classic of retro-sci-fi design. I speak as though there's only one of these because, as far as I can tell, the smaller emergency craft that exits the mothership is the same model as the mothership.

While Persson's initial outfit is dumb, her shiny flight suit looks stylish and practical. The Arkonide battle dress and guns Rhodan and Bull don to rescue Thora are pure pulp sci-fi joy.

Of course, the zombie-like robots could have been better, as could the humans' spacesuits, with their shiny silver overalls and white helmets that looked as though they belonged to different outfits. But, I'm nit-picking. I also love the rocky lunar vistas.

Conclusion

I feel I hear a lot more bad than good said about Mission Stardust. Personally, I try to see the value in things, and ignore the flaws. I find this a fun movie, with some cool spaceships and sets, a beautiful but fierce alien girl, and a plot that occasionally loses its way, but is worth sticking with. When the special effects look ropey, and they often do, it does detract from the cool elements of the film. The irrelevant tangent into Mumbasa's underworld really hurts the movie. Just having Rhodan and Bull go to buy a jeep with some diamonds, then be in a jeep next we see them, would have been fine. Not every event has to be made into an adventure.

Nebuleena's Thoughts

'Why did the Arkonides clearly have substantial medical facilities on board their spaceships if they'd had no disease for centuries and couldn't even diagnose themselves?'


All screenshots of Mission Stardust taken by me for purposes of review. If you dispute the fair use of these images, contact me at ptbyrdie@gmail.com.