Mutiny in Outer Space

Plot

Maj. Gordon Towers and Capt. Dan Webber return to Space Station X-7 with geological samples and ice from newly-discovered ice caves on the Moon. Dan collapses upon arrival and is taken to the infirmary by Dr. Hoffman, while Gordon reunites with his girlfriend, civilian biochemist Dr. Faith Montaine. Hoffman rules out space raptures because Dan has a high fever, not hallucinations.

Faith notices a small welt on Dan's leg growing rapidly into a large fungus and concludes the spores came from the Moon's ice caves. Dan is placed in isolation. Dan dies, his body horribly disfigured by the fungus. Cromwell looks at the body and calmly says, "There's nothing unusual in there," refusing to report the fungus to Gen. Knowland at Earth Control Center.

He claims Dan died of pressure shock and warns Gordon, Faith, and Hoffman to say nothing. Hoffman says Cromwell is on the verge of space raptures. Gordon decides to remove Cromwell from command but fails, and Cromwell calls it mutiny. Cromwell orders Connie to send a message about the mutiny, but she surreptitiously records the order and transmits it to Knowland, who realizes something is amiss because weapons were outlawed in space in 1970.

Connie also reports the fungus is overrunning the station. Knowland says X-7 may have to be destroyed to prevent the fungus from reaching Earth.

Production

Mutiny in Outer Space was filmed in six days at Producers Studio in Hollywood, beginning on March 18, 1964, on a budget of approximately $90,000. The production companies were Hugo Grimaldi Film Productions and Woolner Brothers Pictures. Working titles included Space Station X and Invasion from the Moon. Although filmed in the US, British film critic Phil Hardy lists it in The Overlook Film Encyclopedia: Science Fiction as an Italian-American co-production, one of a pair of such co-productions directed in 1965 by Grimaldi.

Release

The film was theatrically released in the US as the bottom half of a double feature with The Human Duplicators on March 3, 1965, premiering in Los Angeles on May 12, 1965. It opened in the UK and Mexico at unspecified dates that year, in West Germany on November 11, 1966, and at an unspecified date in Italy.

Mexican title was Motin en la Nave Espacial; West German title was SS-X-7 Panik im All; Italian titles were Ammutinamento nello spazio and Gli Ammutinati dello spazio. US distribution was by Woolner Brothers Pictures; UK distribution by Regal Films International. In 1966, Allied Artists took over US theatrical distribution, and Goldeck-Filmverleih distributed it in West Germany.

Reception

A Variety reviewer writing on May 12, 1965, under the name "Whit," said Mutiny in Outer Space "stacks up as a suitable minor entry," praising Grimaldi's direction of the Arthur C. Pierce script and noting the cinematography by Archie R. Dalzell and editing by George White as pluses. Modern American film scholar Gary Westfahl praises the film for making "important points about the dangerous effects of prolonged life in space" but writes it better recalls fanciful films like The Green Slime than documentary-like 1950s films.

He compares it to the February 1964 Outer Limits episode "Specimen: Unknown." American film critic Bryan Senn sees both good and bad: he calls Richard Garland's performance as the stressed-out space skipper good and refers kindly to the rest of the cast as overworked and presumably underpaid, but calls the film a mishmash suffering from shoddy black-and-white production values and substandard special effects, with scenes aboard the X-7 shot in gloomy darkness adding to its cheap look.

An anonymous TV Guide reviewer writes that by the time of the film's release, space travel was less mysterious than in the genre's heyday, so this routine fare with standard production values and acting was too late to stir much interest. The film was revived for Women's History Month and shown on March 17, 2017, as part of a 16 mm film series at The Newman Center in Plattsburgh, NY, chosen for its unusually high number of women cast as astronauts and military personnel.

Did You Know?

• Mutiny in Outer Space is included in Shiver & Shudder Show, a 2002 video released in the US by Something Weird Video featuring segments from 47 science fiction and horror films.
• VZ-Handelsgeschellschaft released the film on DVD in Germany in 2013.
• International Film Distributors in Canada hold the all-media distribution rights.