Raymond Winfield

I can personally sum up this film in one word ... Awful. Full of one man wallowing in personal thoughts, his belief in his hero dad dashed early on, along with several crew members killed by some angry primates hell bent on revenge for being experimented on millions of miles from Earth, why? A ridiculous attempt to gain entry on a space craft about to leave Mars for Neptune by swimming in an underground lake, and with the main engines already running hauls himself on the craft, sets off an intruder alarm, killa the crew who challenge his unorthodox mode of entry and makes it all the way to Neptune in his own. Discovers dad, now presumably mad, goes for a space walk and loses dad. THEN .... any pretence of reality appears. Having set a time bomb to destroy the craft he had found his father on, he takes a sheet of space craft panel and rides out the nuclear explosion and reaches home seemingly with little guidance, successfully, to be met by rescuers on Earth. Full of scientific inaccuracy and even more acts of incredible luck, like the unplanned descent towards the Neptunian surface after uncoupling a tether attached to his father, all the laws of equal and opposite reaction seemingly not applying in the locality WOW! To sum up all I wish to say is that's several hours I will never get back!

Just another inexplicable plot line that finally more or less explains itself in the last few minutes. Having said that, at least it did, kind of, which is more than some do, albeit crudely and without a spark in which the viewer is able to work it out themselves and feel pleased with themselves. In this nonsense the answer is told to us by the voice over of the dead childs mother. Quite who these aliens were who resolved the mystery disappearance of the child is not revealed, but while they were here they could have intimated what happened to Shergar and Lord Lucan!

The cine photography had never been beaten since and probably never will. The rich colours and stunning scenery of the Dawn of Man is breathtaking. The images of the spacecraft especially the orbiting space station, enough to make NASA green with envy and the inspirational cut from the bone wielding ape to the orbital space craft a masterpiece. The moon scene with the monolith uncovered seemed so realistic and the speeding trip (through a wormhole maybe) was fantastic even if the viewer couldn't explain it at the time the film was released, and the final set where the stranded astronaut meets up with ?God? a real thought provoker. The only thing I recollect from the book that seemed to be missing was at the very end when the Star Child is seen looking out at the Earth. I seem to recall the book ending with all the Earths missiles being launched at the image, but maybe my old memory has confused me.