The British crew on the first rocket to travel into space ("The Stardust") discover that in addition to advancing science, they are expected to take a vastly powerful American-made "tritonium" bomb into orbit, where it will be detonated as evidence that the U.S. has won the 'arms race', so everyone else might as well abandon their nuclear weapons programs. The inaptly named film (there are no satellites) attempts to be 'hard' science fiction with lots of talk about test flights and fuels but once the ship is in space, little attempt is made at realism (there is gravity in the rocket and the central plot-driver about the bomb and ship being magnetically/gravitationally mutually attractive is nonsense). The slim plot is pretty silly, especially the stowing-away of ostensibly pacifistic Luddite reporter Kim Hamilton (Miss Moneypenny to be, Lois Maxwell). The script and characters are banal with the exception of Merrity the bomb-designer (Donald Wolfit), who is just as stereotypical as the rest of the crew but is at least given a few interesting things to say or do. The special effects are oddly ambitious yet amateurish. Much of the 'exterior' Earthbound action takes place in front of unconvincing matte paintings, the rocket launches up a ramp (similar to 'When Worlds Collide' (1951) and 'Fireball XL5' (1962)) but doesn't seem to be going fast enough to get airborne, and once in flight, roaring flames pour out of the engines (even in the vacuum of space) and clouds of smoke float up. On the plus side, there is some great opening footage of 'state-of-the-art' aircraft, including a Folland Midge and some lingering, reverential shots of the iconic Avro Vulcan (accompanied by inspirational music). As Britain's first colour science fiction film, 'Satellite in the Sky' will be of interest to devotees of the genre and the plot (such as it is) will intrigue anyone interested in how militarisation of space was presented in '50s films, otherwise skip this limp space opera (and the equally weak 'Spaceways' (1953)) and hunt down the Quatermass films for good examples of British science-fiction cinema from the 50s.
Review of Satellite in the Sky
