The spaceship Stardust is launched from Earth to the Moon. Although the launch is well known the mission is secret. The crew is looking for deposits of a new metal that has a density greater than cobalt or lithium. The element is supposed to be more powerful than Uranium or any other source of energy known to man. This metal is extremely valuable. Back on Earth a criminal master mind named Arkin (Pinkas Braun) is aware of the metal and that the Stardust is on its way to the Moon to look for it. One of the ship’s crew is in the employ of Arkin and is keeping tabs on the mission and will report to Arkin what they find.
Before the Stardust can land on the moon its controls are taken over by an unknown force. The ship lands on the dark side of the Moon out of contact with Earth. Major Perry Rhodan (Lang Jeffries) and Captain Mike Bull (Luis Davila) take a moon buggy to the area where the interference came from to check it out. The disturbance came from the Earth side of the Moon so Perry thinks he may be able to contact the Earth from there. Captain Flipper (Daniel Martin) stays with the ship.
At the point where the disturbance came from Perry and Mike find an alien ship. An energy beam from the alien craft destroys the antenna of the moon buggy so contact with Earth is out of the question. The alien ship is from a race called Arkonides and it is commanded by an extraterrestrial named Crest (John Karlsen) and a beautiful alien Captain called Thora (Essy Persson) that come from a dying race. The only other occupants of the ship are a crew of robots. The aliens are from an advanced civilization but their spaceship is broken down and in need of repair. In addition Commander Crest is very ill.
Perry has his ship’s doctor, Dr. Manoli (Joachim Hansen) examine Crest. Manoli reveals that Crest has Leukemia. He knows of a researcher on Earth, Dr. Frank Haggard (Stefano Sibaldi) that has a cure. The Arkonides have a smaller ship that can take them to Earth and find Dr. Haggard. Once they reach Earth, and Africa, they are confronted by an Army run by General Roon (John Bartha) that wants to destroy them. Add to that there is a traitor among them working for the evil Arkin that wants to take over the alien ship and its weapons.
“Mission Stardust” AKA “4.3.2.1. Morte” AKA “Perry Rhodan - SOS From Outer Space” was released in 1967 and was directed by Primo Zeglio. It is an Italian and West German co-production science fiction film based on the German space opera “Perry Rhodan” novel franchise. There are over 3000 Rhodan stories in the franchise, most of them in German. The stories were written by Walter Ernsting, K. H. Scheer and Kurt Mahr.
Fans of the Perry Rhodan series may be a little disappointed in the film. Most experts say that the film doesn’t follow the actual Rhodan structure and mythology. Since I’ve never read any of the Perry Rhodan books I wasn’t hampered by any comparisons. I just looked at it as a science fiction story. I found it typical of sixties style sci-fi for the most part in the beginning. Half way through it ended up looking like two different films spliced together since the first part of the film dealt with events on the moon and the second part with events in Africa.
I didn’t have a problem with the bi-polar aspect of the plot. The movie is nicely fanciful. Full of silly sixties special effects and space fashion. The new fancy metal turns out to be a MacGuffin replace by a sexy alien. The dubbing didn’t bother me either, I have seen so much worse. In addition the soundtrack was actually kinda cool. In all I found it an interesting and enjoyable little space film.