Production
Radar Men from the Moon was budgeted at $172,840 although the final negative cost was $185,702 (a $12,862, or 7.4%, overspend). It was the most expensive Republic serial of 1952. It was filmed between 17 October and 6 November 1951 under the working title Planet Men from Mars. The serial's production number was 1932.
However the numbers may look, in practice the budget was so tight that there was no stunt double for lead actor George Wallace. His nose was broken while filming a fight with Clayton Moore. The actor was also suspended (by lying on a board with the rocket suit's jacket closed around it) in front of a rear projection screen for some flying shots. Wallace performed his own take-offs by jumping onto a springboard that would send him over the camera.
The serial is heavily padded with footage from King of the Rocket Men, to which this was a pseudo-sequel. A repainted Juggernaut from Undersea Kingdom is also used. Radar Men from the Moon shows space to be brightly lit and the characters walking on the moon in normal gravity without a suit. The exterior of Commando Cody's office is really the Republic Pictures office.
Two helmets were used for the Commando Cody costume, with a lighter version for use in the stunt scenes. The visors of the helmets would always get stuck.
Read more about this topic: Radar Men From The Moon
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“The growing of food and the growing of children are both vital to the family’s survival.... Who would dare make the judgment that holding your youngest baby on your lap is less important than weeding a few more yards in the maize field? Yet this is the judgment our society makes constantly. Production of autos, canned soup, advertising copy is important. Housework—cleaning, feeding, and caring—is unimportant.”
—Debbie Taylor (20th century)
“Constant revolutionizing of production ... distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)