It Came From Netflix: First Man into Space (1959)

The First Man into Space (1959) is but one of a rather overlooked little sci-fi niche, the Astronaut Who Returns to Earth as a Monster. 

In some of these, the astronaut is physically or psychologically possessed / subsumed by an alien lifeform (The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), The Crawling Hand (1963), Species II (1998), The Astronaut’s Wife (1999) [with Johnny Depp as the astronaut and Charlize Theron his threatened wife, remember?  No?]).  Other times, he’s altered by cosmic radiation (this, Monster A Go-Go (1965) [until the retarded ‘twist’ ending, that is], The Incredible Melting Man (1977).*

This one’s steady and nicely underplayed, as you’d expect from a Brit production (the ‘American’ setting is a tad unconvincing), although modern viewers might find it a little stodgy and dull, at least until the ‘monster’ comes into play over the last third of the picture.  Still, at 77 minutes it’s a decent timewaster for sci-fi buffs.  The black and white photography is suitably atmospheric, and the ‘monster’ is satisfactorily gruesome in appearance.

Two brothers in the USAF are part of experiments into reaching the stratosphere via jet plane.  Charles is the stuffed shirt control freak on the ground (played by Marshall Thompson, who appeared to better effect in the same producer’s The Fiend Without a Face).  Younger sibling Dan is the cocky and exaggeratedly insubordinate test pilot who longs to be, well, The First Man in Space.  After an early test, after which the press calls him “The Highest Man Alive”, Dan’s mania in this regard only increases.*

Needless to say, Dan later again disobeys orders in his quest for glory, and flies much higher than he’s meant to.  During this, he flies through a cloud of meteor dust, which permeates his cabin.  Later, the plane is found semi-intact on the ground, but Dan is nowhere to be seen.  Moreover, the plane is encrusted with a nearly impermeable coating of said dust.

You don’t exactly have to be Nostradamus to figure out where it goes from here.  Coated with a thick layer of dust, and suffering from (of course) a condition that requires HUMAN BLOOD if he is to live, the horribly disfigured Dan now roams the countryside doing in various bystanders.  Meanwhile, Charles and Dan’s gf grow a little closer in the crisis, because that’s how relationships work in old movies.

The answer to the big question is; Yes, the monster is fairly cool.  With his rocky coating, he most resembles the titular character in The Curse of the Faceless Man.  Of course, that film is even more obscure that this one, so most won’t find that a very edifying remark.  (Although that film is available on DVD, too.)

Again, this is no one’s idea of an action flick, but once it gets going it delivers the goods fairly well.  Oddly, the film is available from Criterion (!), who occasionally dabbles in b-movies (The Blob, Fiend Without a Face).  This film is found on the four-movie Monsters and Madmen set, covering four films made by the same company. 

As you’d expect, the features (this, Corridors of Blood, The Atomic Submarine and The Haunted Strangler) get a nice treatment.  Affable genre historian Tom Weaver conducts a commentary conversation with the two brothers who made the films (each brother doing two commentaries), and brings his knowledge to bear to good effect.

Speaking of the producers’ other films, there are stylistic similarities in First Man to Fiend Without a Face, notably scenes of men in a darkened room lit whose faces are atmospherically lit from beneath.  The film obviously cribs from the earlier The Quatermass Xperiment (as is admitted in the commentary), while the unmentioned The Incredible Melting Man is basically an outright remake of this one.  Even the appearance of First Man’s ‘monster’, his face ravaged by the coating of meteor dust and with but one eye exposed, looks  much like the melting face of the dissolving astronaut in that later film.  And, of course, both seek to temporarily assuage their condition by absorbing human blood.