Despite the title, for most of it's running time 'Riders to the Stars' is less science fiction than a sober Cold War air force drama in colour detailing the recruitment and training of a team of white American males chosen by computer for the virtual suicide mission of going into space in order to capture a meteorite.
There's an absurd romantic title song and a perfunctory romance between Martha Hyer and William Lundigan to sugar the pill, and as Dr. Jane Flynn Hyer delivers a token speech about the wonder of space travel. But the film makes no bones about the military rather than scientific imperative behind all this trouble and expense; and that Uncle Sam has to establish a foothold in space before the usual unspecified Unfriendly Foreign Power gets there first ("a space platform operated by a dictatorship would make slaves of all free people").
First-time director Richard Carlson was left free to concentrate on the talk by placing the visual side of the film in the more than capable hands of veteran Hollywood cameraman Stanley Cortez, who heightens the already baleful mood with plenty of Gothic lighting. When the film finally takes off into space, colour is extremely effectively used in the rather improbably spacious cabins of the three ships that go up; which goes some way towards compensating for the unimpressive model rockets which in no way resemble the V-2s seen in the previous stock footage.
There's an absurd romantic title song and a perfunctory romance between Martha Hyer and William Lundigan to sugar the pill, and as Dr. Jane Flynn Hyer delivers a token speech about the wonder of space travel. But the film makes no bones about the military rather than scientific imperative behind all this trouble and expense; and that Uncle Sam has to establish a foothold in space before the usual unspecified Unfriendly Foreign Power gets there first ("a space platform operated by a dictatorship would make slaves of all free people").
First-time director Richard Carlson was left free to concentrate on the talk by placing the visual side of the film in the more than capable hands of veteran Hollywood cameraman Stanley Cortez, who heightens the already baleful mood with plenty of Gothic lighting. When the film finally takes off into space, colour is extremely effectively used in the rather improbably spacious cabins of the three ships that go up; which goes some way towards compensating for the unimpressive model rockets which in no way resemble the V-2s seen in the previous stock footage.