Total Sci-Fi’s Guide to the Incredibly Strange and Obscure in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Movies

The Facts

Written by Leonard Katzman
Directed by Leonard Katzman
Produced by Leonard Katzman, Leon Selznick, Burt Topper Music: Marlin Skyles
Cast: Francine York, James Brown, Baynes Barron, Russ Bender
Running time: 81 minutes
Also Known As: Space Monster, First Woman into Space, Flight Beyond the Sun, Voyage into the Sun

The Plot

In the far-future year 2000, starship Home One sets out to explore the galaxy, only to shoot off course into a weird world of monsters…

The Lowdown

Although the ‘boldly going where no man has gone before’ premise of Space Probe Taurus might suggest Star Trek, the film is actually much more like those low-budget space exploration films of the 1950s such as Rocketship X-M and The Angry Red Planet.

A mixed crew hit every cliché available, from being in it just for the money to implausibly falling in love. Even the discovery of a mysterious alien vessel out in the unexplored reaches of space recalls 1958’s It! The Terror From Beyond Space – which was also a big influence on Ridley Scott’s Alien. Just like Alien, there are exotic lifeforms aboard this otherwise derelict ship, but unlike Alien they are laughably silly rather than pant-wettingly scary.


The film then turns into The Empire Strikes Back as the crew of Hope One have to dodge their way through a deadly asteroid field (Space Probe Taurus being the kind of pulp nonsense that inspired films like those of Lucas and Scott in the first place)!

Eventually, the crew find what they’ve been looking for — an Earth-like planet they can colonise. Rather than land, they manage to crash their ship into the ocean, resulting in them being terrorised by giant crab-like monsters! (Well, they’re actually just normal crabs, but the cast all act as if they’re big scary space crabs). Once they’ve defeated a perfectly innocent local gill-man, the crew then decide that this planet is suitable for human habitation. Mission accomplished!

Although the movie plays like a pre-space programme 1950s rocket drama, it does echo some mid-1960s political concerns. There’s a clear Cold War theme in the fact that the space programme is a military endeavor, while the search for a new home for humanity has an unexplained urgency about it. The shoot-first-ask-questions later approach to alien encounters is very 1960s, too.

However, the male character’s inherent sexism is straight out of the 1950s. Poor old Francine York plays the token female as best she can, pointing out she is a scientist and the equal of the rest of the male members of the crew — but to no avail. She then gives in and romances the captain. That’s progress for you.


Cult Cast

Francine York appeared frequently on TV in the 1950s and 1960s, including episodes of My Favorite Martian, The Untouchables, Lost in Space and Batman. However, she’s best known for B-movies like Mutiny in Outer Space (1965), Curse of the Swamp Creature (1966), The Time Travelers (1976) and Marilyn Alive and Behind Bars (1992) in which she played Marilyn Monroe. She starred alongside Star Trek’s James Doohan in short-lived Canadian SF TV show Jason of Star Command in 1979, playing Queen Medusa. She started out as a model and is still working – her latest work is Ted V. Mikels’ Astro Zombies: M3 Cloned (2010).

James Brown came from TV Westerns in the 1950s and early 1960s, before making Space Probe Taurus with Katzman. He featured in the late Boris Karloff chiller Targets (1968), directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Katzman, however, was loyal to the actor, casting him as detective Harry McSween in the long-running soap Dallas. He died in 1992, aged 72.

Director’s Cut

Leonard Katzman was the nephew of low-budget king Sam Katzman. He gave up a potential baseball career to become a writer, director and producer for television. He was the producer of three long-running successful US TV series: Gunsmoke (1955-75), Dallas (1978-91) and Walker, Texas Ranger (1993-2001). He also produced the SF TV series Logan’s Run (1977-78), The Fantastic Journey (1977) and The Wild, Wild West (1965-66). He died in 1996, aged 69.


WTF? Moment

The first space monster encounter comes 20 minutes in, when the team explore the seemingly derelict space ship. The Ferengi-lookalike alien menaces our human heroes by sticking his tongue in and out at them. The humans understated response is “Uh-oh, we’ve got company!” — before shooting the alien dead with a trusty space .45.

Behind-the-Scenes

The big-brained aliens encountered by the crew of Hope One were recycled from The Wizard of Mars, starring John Carradine, released earlier that same year. Apparently the maker of the masks had not been paid, so he recovered some of his costs by keeping them and reselling them to Katzman for Space Probe Taurus. The gill-man costume came from AIP’s own archives, having been created for the 1965 film War Gods of the Deep.

Talent Talk

“I was shocked that Leonard Katzman went on to do big things, because he was scared to death when he directed this movie. He couldn’t handle it, so Burt Topper took over for him. During the 1960s everything had to be creatures or monsters. It was originally titled First Woman in Space. Sam Arkoff, the head of AIP, came down to the set and said that the distributors wanted a scarier title. I used to get hysterical when I’d see it listed in TV Guide as ‘Space Monster Francine York’ with no comma!” — Francine York, Filmfax #80-81


Availability

Space Probe Taurus is not available on VHS or DVD in the UK or the US. Best bet is to keep an eye open on the satellite TV schedules.

Online Resources

The Official Francine York Web-Site
[ www.francineyork.com/index.htm]

Bad Movie Report on Space Probe Taurus
[www.stomptokyo.com/badmoviereport/reviews/S/spacemonster.html]

Remake

J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek movie and the big screen version of Lost in Space have the space exploration movie claimed already.

The Bottom Line

A weird retro film that seems 10 years out of its own time zone — this 1950s throwback came out in the mid-1960s, around the same time as such intelligent SF titles as Star Trek, Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

By Brian J. Robb