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Strange to see someone other than Gerry Anderson doing 2001 inspired moonbase sf in between UFO and Space 1999.
Many similarities with Anderson's stuff of course, including the girls' hairdos. Les Bowie's sfx hold up well on the whole and it's great to see a film where Bernard Bresslaw and Warren Mitchell are partnered and it's not a comedy! Although there is plenty of unintentional humour. Great theme songhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNLJ4toWIAU, though apart from when it's used instrumentally as part of the incidentals, the score is excruciating at times even though I realise they're trying to use something to substitute the lack of sound in space.
Oddly though they have an arbitrary attitude to weightlessness despite mentioning it. A fight breaks out in the bar during which the gravity is switched off and the dancing girls carry on (nowt to do with Bresslaw)! The cast also pleasingly includes Adrienne Cory and Catherine Schell, both of whom look suitably snazzy in their moon outfits.
Great fun, I saw this back when released in my local flea pit in a double bill wit Mission Mars. I'd be about 8 years old, and was bored with the lack of monsters, but I did find it amusing that star James Olsen had the same name as Superman's best friend! It also turned up one Saturday morning in the 70s on tv, so this dvd viewing was only the third time in my 54 years I've seen this film.
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I've always been a sucker for that ridiculous title song, one of my guiltiest pleasures. (By the way, the animated main title sequence is best viewed in the MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATRE 3000 version, with Joel and the bots rocking out to the song in silouette.)
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I reckon I'd snap up a soundtrack album too, and maybe in the process of listening to that I'd warm to the score. It's happened before. But the song was one of my guilty pleasures for some years. As a kid my fledgling liking for film music existed by recording LOTS of film and tv themes via the microphone of my cassette recorder pointed at the telly, and this was one of them from that Saturday morning broadcast I mentioned.
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I'm sure this is the film that Catherine Schell refers to when she recounts that, years ago, she saw some sort of spoof in a book where they use a still from her appearance in the film. A speech bubble was added so that she is saying:
"I know who I had to fuck to get on this film, but who do I have to fuck to get off it??"
She said she was really quite proud of that 
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I seem to remember being told that an album of this music had been prepared some years ago but nothing seemed to come of it. I'd buy it!
(Haven't seen the film for many years, but have ordered the DVD...)
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Watched this tonight.
Much more enjoyable than Doppelganger (aka Journey to the Far Side of The Sun), in my opinion 
And I would definitely buy a CD of Don Ellis's score if one ever appeared...
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Incidentally I saw an interview a while back with Martin Davison, one of the co-writers. He confirmed that he wrote the lyrics to the song, while Ellis wrote the music. He was a bit rueful that he was never credited, and guesses that perhaps it was because he wasn't a member of PRS.
He also said that both he and Ellis were disappointed that in the film, the song ended up being 20% faster and 50% louder than either of them had intended and that it made the lyrics hard to understand!
He also said that Ellis had a lot of fun with the score, telling him of a plan to use a trombone to approximate the sound effect of a door opening. And so on
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Incidentally I saw an interview a while back with Martin Davison, one of the co-writers. He confirmed that he wrote the lyrics to the song, while Ellis wrote the music. He was a bit rueful that he was never credited, and guesses that perhaps it was because he wasn't a member of PRS.
He also said that both he and Ellis were disappointed that in the film, the song ended up being 20% faster and 50% louder than either of them had intended and that it made the lyrics hard to understand!
He also said that Ellis had a lot of fun with the score, telling him of a plan to use a trombone to approximate the sound effect of a door opening. And so on
Yes, I definitely got that one of the things the music was doing at times was standing in for sound fx. An intelligent thing to do, but then they seemed all over the place with weightlessness. I'm sure there was a brawl during a weightless moment, but the Go-Jos bless 'em were still dancing!
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Yes, I definitely got that one of the things the music was doing at times was standing in for sound fx. An intelligent thing to do, but then they seemed all over the place with weightlessness. I'm sure there was a brawl during a weightless moment, but the Go-Jos bless 'em were still dancing!
They certainly were. And then they all fell to the floor 
Completely entertaining film - far more than I expected. The music in the opening shot where Olson is taking a moonwalk could have come direct from Ellis's score to The French Connection and there are similar effects throughout, but much of the score has a jazzy accessibility that would make a good soundtrack release.
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Glad I found this old thread to piggy-back on. There are more, but this is the most recent.
Working my way through all the Hammer films which had eluded me, and a few nights ago I stumbled upon MOON ZERO TWO. I'll copy some of your thoughts but will give you due credit, and I may even add one or two of my own...
This is not a good film, and it's only marginally entertaining, but it has its attractions. Such as seeing how it came in the wake of 2001 (this one is set in March 2021, so it all happened ten months ago) and how it seems to exist in the same universe (ha!) as Gerry Anderson's UFO (I'm not sure if MOON ZERO TWO even pre-dates UFO). Coloured wigs, girls with long legs, thigh boots... exactly like 2021 was in fact.
Of particular interest is Don Ellis' score. I've always LOVED that song since ever I heard it on one of the early GDI Hammer themes collection. It sounds like it could have come out of HAIR. Paul Pickles mentioned that the music is "excrutiating at times". Heath (where art thou? We misseth you) notes the trademark Ellis "echo trumpet". Simon Morris says that some bits could be right out of THE FRENCH CONNECTION.
Well you're all correct. And this is me. After the wonderfully of-its-time opening song (with a woefully unfunny animated credits sequence) we're on the moon and beyond. Those dancing girls (what were they called... the BloJoes?) appear for more than one number, and the songs are crackers (in both senses of the word), and very noticeably by Ellis. I was kind of reminded of a poor man's BARBARELLA at times. Marvelous loungy use of the Hammond organ and that bent-pitch Ellis trumpet for the eerieness and emptiness of space. But when it fires on all cylinders (ha!) it could be from any of his big band albums. A lot of it is entirely inappropriate, although having said that I can't think of an appropriate way of having this film scored. It certainly benefits from being "unconventional". But yes, those big Batman "POWs" are somewhat wearing.
Hey, those BloJoes dance to something which sounds a LOT like the car-tailing music in THE FRENCH CONNECTION. The other big band bits, and the Batman "POWs" are more like the (equally inappropriate) Batman blasts in THE FRENCH CONNECTION II. And then there's a really wild trumpet solo which reminded me very much of the escalating madness towards the end of ROSEMARY'S BABY, when Mia Farrow is being pursued through the old building by the Satanists. Did Don Ellis play trumpet on that?
Oh wait, I think I've got the La-La Land release of that. Hang on a minute... Oh look - "Trumpet: Donald Ellis". So there. I don't think the music really works at all, and if the soundtrack were to be released I would hesitate about buying it because there are probably better representations of similar material in Ellis' own jazz albums, of which I have heard few. However, if this soundtrack does see the light of day, despite hesitating to buy it, I'd probably buy it because it's nuts enough.
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I meant to put this on the other side of the board. I blame Schiffy and his list of favourite foods.
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I would love to see this score released on CD.
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Like so many of the earlier Warner Archive titles, I would love to see a Blu-ray release of this.
I second that!
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