Moon Zero Two is a 1969 British science fiction film from Hammer Films, directed by Roy Ward Baker, and starring James Olson, Catherine Schell, Warren Mitchell, and Adrienne Corri.
The film takes place on the Moon in the year 2021. A former-astronaut-turned-salvager, Bill Kemp, helps a millionaire space industrialist capture a 6000-tonne sapphire asteroid, while also helping a woman find her brother, a missing miner/prospector.
Moon Zero Two was filmed at the ABPC Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, England. The screenplay was by Michael Carreras from an original story by Gavin Lyall, Frank Hardman, and Martin Davison. In the U.S., the film was billed as a space Western with the phrase 'The first moon "western"...' The film was a commercial failure at the box office and received negative reviews from film critics.
Plot
In May 2021, the Moon is in the process of being colonized, and this new frontier is attracting a diverse human population to lunar settlements like Moon City, Farside 5, and others.
Two denizens of this rough-and-tumble lunar society are the notorious millionaire J.J. Hubbard and former-astronaut-turned-satellite-salvager Bill Kemp, the first man to set foot on Mars. He left Space Corporation because he wants to explore space, while his former employer only wants to operate commercial passenger flights to and from Mars and Venus.
When Hubbard hears about a small 6000-tonne asteroid made of pure "ceramic" sapphire that is in a low lunar orbit, he hires Kemp to capture it with Kemp's old Moon 02 space ferry. Kemp is to transport it down to the surface of the lunar farside, even though doing so would be against Space Corporation law. Kemp, however, has little choice because he learns from Hubbard that his flight license will soon be revoked due to protests from Space Corporation. Hubbard also reveals that he plans to use the giant sapphire for building much improved rocket engine thermal insulators, profiting from the need for even more powerful rockets to colonize Mercury and the moons of Jupiter.
A young woman named Clementine arrives looking for her brother, a miner/prospector, working a distant patch of moonscape at Spectacle Crater on the lunar farside. Unfortunately, the trip from Moon City on the nearside takes six days by a wheeled lunar vehicle. Since Kemp can go there much more quickly using his Moon 02, she convinces him to help her learn if her brother is still alive. The terrain around his camp is not suitable, so Kemp and Clementine land and travel the remaining distance with a transport buggy. The two discover that Clementine's brother is dead, and that he was murdered for his discovery of a large vein of nickel, that would make him a rich man. They are shot at by some of Hubbard's men, who have followed them to the camp; Kemp takes them out one-by-one.
Hubbard is unhappy that Kemp left to assist Clementine, because Hubbard is the one responsible for her brother's death. He needs the claim to be abandoned so he can take control of it and use it as an isolated landing site for the sapphire asteroid. Hubbard blackmails Kemp into completing the asteroid job by threatening his and Clementine's lives. Kemp is later forced to kill the industrialist and some of his men in a shoot out. He also strands Hubbard's remaining men on the large sapphire, just before the attached retro-rocket fires, sending it toward the lunar surface. With Clementine being her brother's next of kin, she now has legal ownership of the nickel vein and the nearby "crashed" sapphire asteroid, making her a very wealthy woman.
Cast
Production
Moon Zero Two was written by Michael Carreras, based on a story by Martin Davison, Frank Hardman and Gavin Lyall. It was directed by Roy Ward Baker. The score was done by Philip Martell and American jazz musician Don Ellis, his first film score. The title song was performed by Julie Driscoll. Spencer Reeve was the film editor and Carl Toms was costume designer. Special visual effects for the film were created by a team headed by visual effects artist Les Bowie, who worked on numerous Hammer productions and other British-made science fiction features.