MovieChat Forums > Riders to the Stars (1954) Discussion > THESE are the three best pilots they can...

THESE are the three best pilots they can find??? (Spoilers)


Much of this film -- too much -- is taken up by the extensive, intense, nationwide search they conduct to find the three best pilots in America to be launched into space to capture a meteor, all solemnly described in Herbert Marshall's narration. (An idiotic expedition, by the way, but then this is 1954.)

So -- who do they winnow it down to? (1) An aggressive, macho jerk full of himself who won't listen to anybody and thinks he can do it all, and who of course ends up disobeying orders out of arrogance and blows up in space. (2) A weak, obviously emotionally unbalanced loser who flips out because his selfish, two-timing girlfriend blows him off, then predictably cracks under pressure, becomes delusional, floats out of his recliner and shoots himself out into deep space forever. (3) Okay: they get one placid, even-tempered, sensible guy who naturally is the only one who succeeds in his mission, then bravely crash-lands and gets both the meteor and the girl.

THIS is the best they could do? One out of three? If these guys represent the three top fliers in the country then no one had better board an airliner or hire a crop duster because the pilots must certainly be psychotics! And disband the Air Force while you're at it -- safer to keep them on the ground!

Fakest rocketships I've ever seen -- they look like baking-soda-powered plastic torpedoes you'd fire from a toy sub in a bathtub.

Cool scene when the macho guy's skeleton in his cracked space helmet drifts by Richard Carlson's viewscreen, though.

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Maybe this movie provided a valuable service to NASA. They developed rigourous psychological testing of potential astronauts as depicted in the Right Stuff. Of course, no human testing is foolproof. The diapernaut of a couple of years ago slipped through.

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Yes, even Martha Hyer wasn't so gaga over William Lundigan that she'd consider fixing the training results for him. Or wearing a diaper to his centrifuge test.

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Hi Hobnob53,
What do you think of William Lundigan's pulling 12 Gs in a centrifuge?

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Hey lrcdmnhd72,

I just saw your new thread on that topic and commented there before seeing this post. Same answer, but to be serious, I have no idea what the top force is that a man could take. If it's 9Gs as you say, and I wouldn't doubt it, my guess is that this was just further scientific license on the part of Ivan Tors. After all, the film is shot through with scientific inaccuracies, something Tors normally was reasonably careful about avoiding. Do they still even test human beings on centrifuges?

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Hi Hobnob53,

As a layman's guess, I would think that pilots, astronauts, etc, would have to be centrifuged trained to determine whether or not they can handle the demanding G forces. If so, to increase their physical tolerance, much like training for a running marathon. At an air show I saw an F16, I believe going ~600mph, cut a 1500' circle, maybe pulling ~9Gs. With proper training and with a G suit, I would think that at 9 Gs, that pilot would be taking a beating.

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Yes, I'd think that was true. Of course, they'd want to train the men to a level greater than what they'd actually be expected to encounter, to make sure they can handle any eventuality. Both the film's producers and the real scientists conducting such tests would have had only an approximate idea of what to expect in a space flight. But I'd also have thought they'd build them up to such high levels gradually, not necessarily all in one test. Maybe not.

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I think you're right, Hobnob53. To me, 12Gs would be quite a lot even if acquired over a period of time, let alone right off the bat. I sometimes wish that I could be a technical advisor on some of these movies, TV shows, etc. If I didn't know the correct technical facts myself, I'd hire technical experts. I think my penchant for accuracy and details come from Jack Webb.

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Well, you sound like you know your stuff -- "right" or otherwise -- lrcdmnhd. I often find myself yelling at movies or TV shows that make inaccurate statements in the one or two areas in which I have any expertise...to no avail; they make the same mistake in the reruns!

But I'm quasi-appalled that you get your penchant for accuracy and details from Jack Webb. I kind of like Jack, but after decades of watching Dragnet, his "accuracy" about a lot of things leaves much to be desired!

Just the facts I want to believe, ma'am.

I just came from a thread on the site of Battleground where a poster wrote that he felt sorry for people who nitpick about small things in good films and thereby can't enjoy them (commenting on the proclivities of the rest of us on that thread). His actual prose was rather more condescending and nasty. But the devil is in the details, is it not?

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Hi Hobnob53,

I can't really say that I've found any real inaccuracies in many of Jack Webb's episodes. Yet on one episode where Friday and Gannon confronted a teenager who was holding a live hand grenade with the pin pulled, Friday and Gannon wrestled the grenade away from this kid. I believe it was Gannon said: "There's not much time." If you don't let go of this style of grenade, it won't go off. Just replace the pin and everything's cool, which they did.

Another thing that I've noticed in the Media entertainment is that firearms, especially semi and fully automatic styles, aren't reloaded often enough. Also,
the 9mm gunfire in some of the old JAG episodes sounds like glorified cap guns. I've fired a 9mm pistol, and it has a loud, sharp report.

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I remember that episode of Dragnet from its first season back on the air in 1967 -- saw it a couple of times over the winter, in fact.

Whatever the quality of his information on one subject or another, Webb's depiction of the LAPD as a group of robotic uniforms mechanically reeling off reams of facts and figures, and, worse, as incorruptible, dedicated men doing an excellent job without fear, favor or beatings is, to put it charitably, absurd. The 1997 film L.A. Confidential, while a bit lurid and melodramatic, offered a far more realisitc picture of the department's true modus operandi in that era and beyond than did Webb's stilted fantasies. The department was frequently corrupt and, no other way to put it, often racist. In these things it may not have been very different than other big-city PDs, but the Dragnet image was pure bunk. (L.A. Confidential even had as a subplot a program called "Badge of Honor", a blatant reference to Dragnet, which showed that the cops of the LAPD "walk on water" as Danny DeVito says at the start.)

I find Dragnet immensely entertaining (I own the 60s series), but more as a cultural artifact than as serious drama. Webb's condescending depictions of blacks on it appalls me as a white man; even as a young teen in the late 60s I thought it was cringe-worthy. You should see the 1954 theatrical film based on the 50s version of the show. It's in color and is considerably franker and more violent than it ever was on TV...plus you get a great idea of the state of civil liberties in the era!

Yes, I've noticed the same problem with guns in films as you mention. Infrequent reloading and much louder bangs than in real life (all added in post-production). Once you watch enough movies you begin to pick up on the differences in the gunshots of each studio! I can always tell, say, a Warner Bros. gunshot from a Columbia one, vs. a 20th Century Fox one. It's kind of fun.

We've gotten a bit away from Riders to the Stars, haven't we?

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And I just knew Sheriff Rosco was going to make the cut!
He was one of the first to leave.

James Best for those of you not familiar with Dukes of Hazzard tv show.
Also the guitar player in early episodes of Andy Griffith Show.

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As to the original poster's observation on crew selection, they were selecting scientists for their intelligence, education, and knowledge, not necessarily pilot skills. Flawed premise since this was clearly a pilot's mission from the start. No special science expertise needed. False premise of the intensive search for the best and brightest was simply a way to extend movie length (filler). But hey, it was a pretty well done '50s sci fi effort, flawed science aside, including the meteors that changed direction and stayed in formation. What a hoot! And about Roscoe? I knew he was toast when I first saw him. He looked agitated when he got off the bus and never got better.

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