Countdown (1967)

Desperate to reach the moon first, NASA sends a man and shelter separately, one-way. He must find it to survive; he can't return until Apollo is ready.

Director:

Robert Altman

Writers:

Loring Mandel (screenplay), Hank Searls (novel)

Stars:

James Caan, Joanna Moore, Robert Duvall

Cast

Complete credited cast:
James Caan	...	Lee Stegler
Joanna Moore	...	Mickey Stegler
Robert Duvall	...	Chiz
Barbara Baxley	...	Jean
Charles Aidman	...	Gus
Steve Ihnat	...	Ross Duellan
Michael Murphy	...	Rick
Ted Knight	...	Walter Larson
Stephen Coit	...	Ehrman
John Rayner	...	Dunc
Charles Irving	...	Seidel
Bobby Riha	...	Stevie Stegler (as Bobby Riha Jr.)

Storyline

The Apollo 3 crew are training when it is discovered that the Russians plan a moon landing. The Americans enact a makeshift plan to land a man on the moon first, using an older style Gemini spacecraft. Lee is chosen as the astronaut instead of Chiz, who was trained for the mission, because Lee has no military connection. Lee has three weeks to train before take-off, and will have to stay on the moon in a shelter for about a year, until an Apollo is ready to pick him up. However the Russians take off two days earlier than expected.

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Plot Keywords:

moon | moon landing | astronaut | training | nasa | 

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Taglines:

The motion picture that puts a man on the moon ... and you will follow him every terrifying second of the way ...

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Genres:

Sci-Fi | Thriller

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Certificate:

Unrated

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

February 1968 (USA)

Also Known As:

Askel avaruuteen

Filming Locations:

Cocoa Beach, Florida, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Warner Brothers/Seven Arts

Technical Specs

Runtime:

101 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This film centers on a flight to the Moon in a Gemini spacecraft modified for a lunar landing. In fact, there were several proposals in the mid-1960s to use modified Gemini craft for lunar orbital and even lunar landings, in lieu of or complementing the Apollo flights. They were rejected for various technical, budgetary, and political reasons.

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Goofs

When explaining the medical telemetry to Mickey Stegler, the doctor says one plot is respiration and another is breathing, even though both words mean the same thing. Also, several of the plots have completely different shapes from what they should.

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Connections

Referenced in The Directors: The Films of Robert Altman (2001)

User Reviews

Luna on the Cheap aka "Rent, don't Buy"

This film is not particularly noteworthy in itself, but as a benchmark in the development of science-fiction on the big screen. It marks one of the last gasps of the low-budget, hardware-driven (Rockets and Rayguns, if you like) school of sci-fi and falls well short of its contemporary "Marooned", much less merit any comparison with "2001" and other later high concept films. Altman's direction is sufficient to keep the picture moving along and the overlapping dialogue is a refreshingly sophisticated stuff. The ego clashes of the two pilot candidates for the moon flight seems a bit stilted (Duvall seems at home in the role, but Caan's not up to it), the anti-Soviet rhetoric is a bit grating at times and the female roles are essentially throw-aways. When it's time to put together a retrospective on the sci-fi genre (as has been done for war films) this one might get 15 seconds during the moonshot segment; it hardly deserves more. This film's biggest problem was (apparently) budget -- it's rare to see a film depict the props and procedures of its own era so poorly.