Signale – Ein Weltraumabenteuer (1970)
IMDb meta-data is 1h and 30m, rated 4.4/10 by 240 generous cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: East Germany and Poland.
Tagline: Bland on bland.
Verdict: Painful.
In the middle of the Twenty-first Century a Red spaceship near Jupiter reports…alien radio contact, maybe, but then it goes dark. Another craft is dispatched with a hastily assembled crew to investigate.
That may sound promising.
What follows is…a slow, meandering trip without any sense of urgency as when the crew of the rescue vessel plays with a robot or makes home movies for fun.
Didn’t they read the script?
As the end of runtime draws near, they find the mangled remains of the first ship which was hit by the screenwriters old friend, the meteor shower, and rescue the crew who emerge from an elevator where they were stuck for just over an hour. None is comatose. None is mangled. None is on a stretcher. None is swathed in bandages. None has blast burns or collapsed lungs. None is dead, Jim.
The end.
There is no further mention of the alien contact.
***
Iron Curtain Sy Fy was always more cerebral and scientific, to be sure, than the Western counterpart of space cowboys but it was also usually more credible than this pleasure cruise. It does show its Red credentials in that everything is a team effort, from the very large group of survivors to the rescue ship. No impetuous individuals of the James Kirk ilk are to be found.
However – and this is a unique event – the captain of the rescue ship faints from the pressure of his duties. Yep. What is even more impossible to believe is that when he reappears on the bridge everyone obeys him, instead of pointing and laughing at him.
Can you picture Captain Kirk swooning from his weighty duties? Go on, just try.
Fortunately, when this captain swoons, everyone else just carries on, almost as if he were irrelevant.
Speaking of Star Trek, there is also an anticipation of Counsellor Troi here in that the medical doctor also monitors the mental health of the crew, but then doctors have always done that. Check out the Caine Mutiny.