The Doomsday Machine (1972 film)

Infobox Film
name = The Doomsday Machine


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director = Harry Hope, Lee Sholem
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released = 1972
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country = United States and Hong Kong
language = English
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imdb_id = 0061592

"The Doomsday Machine" is a 1972 American and Hong Kong Sci-Fi film [ [http://www.hkcinemagic.com/en/movie.asp?id=9458 HKcinemamagic.com] ] .

Plot

The film begins with spies breaking into a heavily guarded facility, making their way to a room housing the titular Doomsday Machine, where they film footage of it and leave. The scene breaks to a press conference in a room on a military base, where a man in military uniform briefs reporters on Project Astra, a manned space flight to Venus that is due to take off within hours. Outside a nearby building, the seven male astronauts are shocked to discover that their mission has been taken over by the military, and that three of their number have been replaced last minute with female counterparts. After a successful launch, the four male crew members start to discuss how they will handle the long voyage to Venus with women on board, and the crew members begin flirting with each other. The jovial mood is spoiled when the crew discover that the Earth has been completely destroyed. The crew members eventually realize that as the sole survivors of humanity, they must find a planet on which to settle and repopulate. They also realize that the military must have known about the impending doom, and that this was the reason they were forced to bring women along.

A destination is chosen, but it is determined that they are too heavy to reach their new home with the limited amount of fuel they have. After jettisoning all unneeded items, they would still need to leave behind four people. They decide to let the computer choose the lucky three. The computer chooses one of the women and two of the men. One of the men, enraged that he wasn't chosen, chases one of the women into an airlock and attempts to rape her. The woman accidentally hits the decompress button, and they both die and are sucked out into space. The remaining man and woman not chosen by the computer exit the ship in spacesuits and attempt to make a repair to the ship's exterior before the ship starts its long journey.

While making the repairs, they spot an abandoned Russian space capsule adrift nearby and float over to it. Once inside, they find the corpse of its former pilot and establish communications. They are able to make contact with an entity on Venus that speaks for the whole planet, but they also lose communications with their former crew. The voice from Venus tells them that they cannot land there, that Venus has witnessed the destructiveness of the Earthlings and wants no part of it. The voice tells them that it will help them reach another world where they can find help, and in the final scene of the movie, the Russian capsule is propelled into deep space by a green light.

Notes

Most of the movie was filmed in 1967, but it was not completed until five years later when money became available. The final scenes were thus filmed with different actors. This can be observed when the space helmets of the two aboard the Russian capsule suddenly become opaque, obscuring their faces, and their voices change significantly. It also explains why the other ship is said to "no longer exist" even though nothing was observed happening to it.

References