The Rocky Jones Space Ranger Collection (Passport)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C     Extras: B     Episodes: B-

 

 

Rocky Jones, Space Ranger was a space opera TV series for children that arrived in 1954 and lasted 39 episodes.  Passport has found 16 of them and put them together in The Rocky Jones Space Ranger Collection on 5 DVDs.  The longtime actor Richard Crane played the title character, called on when interplanetary crisis loomed.  He was already a lead on Gang Busters when he took this show on too.  Ten feature films of Rocky Jones were even cut from these shows, but the 16 original episodes here are, all in three parts except for title #5:

 

1)     Silver Needle In The Sky aka Duel In Space

2)     Bobby’s Comet aka Menace from Outer Space

3)     The Forbidden Moon (three parts)

4)     Blast Off!

5)     Kip’s Private War

6)     Rocky’s Odyssey aka Gypsy Moon

 

 

Hollingsworth Moore directed all 16 shows here and all 39 in the series.  One of the highlights of the show besides unexpected camp and the amusingly dated situations, technology and dialogue are the launch sequences.  They involve the “exciting” revving up of the ship, which is a sound effect that begins very slowly, then takes a few minutes to speed up.  Finally, without an enumerated countdown, they are off!

 

That is amusing and fun, as is the show, so you might want to catch it if you have never seen it and this set offers a better sampling than just the usual single cheap DVD with no extras.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image on the episodes, bonus Flash Gordon TV show from the early 1950s and feature film Missile To The Moon (1958) are all average, though Missile To The Moon has the best print and looks the best.  If only its print were clearer, it would have rated higher, but was nicely shot under the low budget circumstances by cinematographer Meredith M. Nicholson, who followed with the camp classic Frankenstein’s Daughter (also 1958, reviewed elsewhere on this site) and theatrical film The Amazing Transparent Man (1960) before becoming a top cinematographer on filmed TV hits like My Three Sons, The Fugitive, Get Smart, Batman, The Invaders, M*A*S*H and Get Christie Love.  The Century Of Sci-Fi: Sci-Fi Heroes segment originated in analog NTSC video and has various picture quality throughout.  All are Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono of varying average quality throughout.

 

Extras include that Sci-Fi Heroes segment that mixes a new voice over and footage with Christopher Lee footage, though the whole program is on DVD, reviewed elsewhere on this site.  The Subworld Revenge is the episode of Flash Gordon offered, but it is an awful print not unlike that found on Passport’s Flash Gordon Collection, also on this site.  We have seen much better copies, like the pilot show in the discontinued Radio Spirits DVD that also offered the radio drama version with Gale Gordon as Flash.   That leaves the amusing, old, cheesy Missile To The Moon, an independently produced 1958 space tale about a crew (four men, one woman) that jets to another planet and finds men starved female aliens, a few of which look more like cross-dressers.  No crying game here, but it is amusing and only 78 minutes is not too bad.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo