Drive-In Sci-Fi: Flight To Mars (1951)

US military sends out a manned spaceship to Mars. The crew is a group of scientists and a reporter, to document it all, because you know, scientists cant keep a journal themselves. The movie being short as it is - 70 minutes invests heavily into giving at least some backstory to the characters - a good sign. They all have the differences with each other but it does not seem anything dangerous, not like the last flight in a spaceship movie i revieved, where everyone was at eachother throats - 12 to the moon (1960).
They eventualy lift off, and while there are some minor technical problems, they fix it off-screen and fly normally. its just hat the moon is interfering with the signal so radio contact to earth is lost. Instead of using trivial problems like meteorites and so on the movie decides to go deeper into phylosophy of each of the crew. It raises some intresting points about universe, quite futuristic for its time, which gives a nice plus for this movie. It looks like this was written by a true Science fiction fan and not the one that makes spaceships as fast cash-in.
They reach Mars in 7th day, which is unrealistic even by modern rockets standarts. But we can forgive them that, since there isnt that much to show on the way anyway. Eventually they run into trouble. Their landinggear shorts out and is broken beyond repair. They have a choice of go back to earth, or crashland to mars and prety much be dead. They decide to crashland and gather data, their survival is secondary. Not a great messadge. Infact not even oen of them says no, so yeah quite a crazy crew.
They crash-land into the mountain and it cause a ask-avalanche covering the ship. Altrough they refer to it as "snow". But it doesnt cover them completely. So they leave the ship and find what looks like chimneys, regulary spaced. Definatelly a sign of civilization. They soon meet a humanoid creatures that learnt english by the space broadcasts humans send. They greet them peacefully and the humans respond alike. They however dont have the technology to send signals, so they cant talk to humans via this. They chimneys are infact lifts, they live underground. their cities are s futuristic you got flying cars and so on, but they stll cant send signals to space? Well they claim they dont know wat "atomic power" is. But they let them rest in sort of hotels and so on. They ponder how they can get back to earth. They need help of the local goverment for it. The goverment agrees to help but they want to discuss what they are willing to do. Diplomacy as usual, this is actually playing out strangely logically. The coundil decides they will instaed kill them so they wouldnt return from earth with conquering force. But they let them repair the ship first, so they can conquer earth themselves. hipocracy for the win.
They are trying to fix the rocket, but the atomic engine is bust so they are trying to invent a new atomic energy from local minerals. Well they got the best local scientists to help, but still they are inveinting atomic energy all over again. However they manage to do it and the locals find out about it. The earthmen also find out about the secret plan and the hide-and-seek games begin. Eventually the locals are tired of it and try to seize the rocket, but they ake a punching exit and run to liftoff. They suceed.

Story: 8/10. very well done story. all characters were interesting.
Acting: 4/10. not that great, some times you just see peopel standing there like made of cardboard.
Sound: 3/10. as is typically, the killed for the movie.
Sci factor: 8/10. they didnt explain muc of it, but msot of it is fine. the "atomic power" however sounded silly.
Lasting Appeal: 8/10. One of the better flight to x movies.
Overall rating: 7/10