Spaceways, 1953 - Hammer's 4K collector's edition review.

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00][music] Welcome back to Dark Corners physical media reviews.

[00:00:12]Spaceways is the latest in Hammer's series of collector's edition releases.

[00:00:16]And like Stolen Face and the four-sided triangle, it's directed by Terrence Fischer and is a romantic drama with a sci-fi angle.

[00:00:30]In this case, set around the British space program. Though the plot is centered on a love rectangle between Dr. Steve Mitchell, played by obligatory American star Howard Duff.

[00:00:42]>> How do you do, sir?

[00:00:43]>> How do you do?

[00:00:44]>> We were fortunate enough to borrow him from the United States government, >> his discontented wife, Vanessa.

[00:00:50]>> No, thank you. I loathe every minute of it.

[00:00:52]>> Mathematician, Lisa.

[00:00:53]>> This is Dr. Frank, who's in charge of our mathematical work, >> who is in love with Steve, and Steve's colleague, Dr. Krenshaw, who is having an affair with Lisa.

[00:01:02]>> Any minute now, I'm going to get a splitting headache and I'm going home. I hope your headache will be pretty bad, too.

[00:01:08]>> Yes, I already feel it coming on.

[00:01:11]>> Science fiction takes very much of a backseat here to the extent that this futuristic rocket is very obviously not the one that takes off.

[00:01:25]which I think is a V2.

[00:01:28]The film gets off to a sluggish start.

[00:01:31]It's all very believable, but not very dramatic.

[00:01:35]>> Within 2 or 3 years, we should be able to send up not only an instrument carrier, but a series of rockets containing the men and materials to build the first space station.

[00:01:47]>> But then >> I can't locate Dr. Craw.

[00:01:50]>> Vanessa is gone, too. And the timing is suspicious.

[00:01:54]>> Two people have disappeared and something went wrong with the rocket.

[00:01:57]>> It's great that something happened, but this is half an hour in and the two most interesting people are gone. Steve and Lisa are worthy, dedicated, and utterly tedious.

[00:02:10]>> A guy with a onetrack mind, nothing but rockets on his head, meets a beautiful woman with something entirely different in hers. An investigator is brought into the high security base and has ideas of his own about the disappearance.

[00:02:27]>> Murder. [music] >> It's a good murder plot.

[00:02:33]>> They're up there in space circling the earth.

[00:02:39]>> But the film fails to take advantage of it. Partly because Steve is clearly too boring to have committed the crime of which he is accused. Going around accusing other people of murder must be pretty tiring.

[00:02:52]>> There's only one way to prove his innocence.

[00:02:54]>> Now, who better to go than an accused murderer who was also a scientist, >> more or less fulfilling its science fiction mandate, but sadly still unable to raise any thrills along the way.

[00:03:15]That's a nice cover image. Uh, and the poster on the back. I do think this is one of the I think I always find myself saying either this is one of the better ones or one of the worst ones, but I think that's one of the better ones. Uh, just a little bit of the press package there. This the um the case for the discs themselves. Two disc set uh 4K and Blu-ray. This I think is one of the ones of these they've done that really does work. These have been a sort of sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. This one I really like. Uh despite the fact that that looks vaguely as if he's just been in a car crash and is still clutching the steering wheel.

[00:03:52]As always, Hammer has put together a solid collection. There's actually more on the discs than is advertised on their website. Writer editor David Flint delivers an informative commentary on the US theatrical release. Less focused on a scene by scene breakdown, but looking at the actors and this era of Hammer. And there's a more upbeat track from Heidi Honeyut and TV and film critic Sarah Morgan on the UK theatrical release. Following their interests in producer Robert Lipert and littleknown cast members like Marianne Stone, an actress you may never have heard of but have definitely seen with nearly 300 credits. Two Nations divided by a common genre is the pick of the other extras with Wayne Kinsey and Ted A. Boas discovering the different approaches the UK and US took to sci-fi. Man of mystery Alan Wheatley in Spaceways is shot in the cinema museum. Well worth a visit. I used to volunteer there. Gavin Collinsson and Richard Hollis discuss Wheatley's career which includes the BBC's first adaptation of Sherlock Holmes. Sadly, all episodes are lost, so it won't be featuring in our Patreon and YouTube membership exclusive series, 50 Weeks of Sherlock Holmes. In Sidebar Spaceways, film critic and writer Tim Lucas discusses spaceways and sci-fi films of the period with artist and film historian Steven R. Bisset. Great chat, but recorded over Zoom, which doesn't make for the best visuals. Neil Sinard and Melanie Williams chat about the careers of Howard Duff and Eva Bartok.

[00:05:20]Interesting retrospective of the two actors. And as usual, there's an image gallery featuring the film's score. a little touch that makes this feature so much more watchable than the silent slideshows slapped onto other discs.

[00:05:33]Perhaps unsurprisingly for what is a littleknown 70-year-old movie, what is missing is any archival material from the Hammer vaults, which does leave the extras limited to talking heads, although this is rectified by the enclosed booklet. The Hammer sci files joining uh stolen face and four-sided triangle. Not sure how many more of those there will be to come to be honest. Depends what they release.

[00:05:57]Always interesting stuff. I don't again Space Wavways does is the one that's just a little bit of a let down. The film itself I'm not sure there's so much that's interesting. There is interesting stuff here that's for sure. But maybe it feels a little bit more groping for stuff. There's a good overview by by Wayne Kinsey here. Heidi Honeyut looking at uh well so social, sexual and political tropes at play in spaceways which is definitely interesting. This is quite interesting. This is um for a while Hammer really did do well out of adapting radio series and this is sort of a breakdown of those because there's obviously the big ones that we think about and then a whole bunch that we don't and of course TV as well they adapted and that's a sort of it's it's interesting to have this there's so many of them. It is a very long article. My favorite article in here and there is an interesting one there about Terrence Fisher science fiction films made for other companies as well because some of them are as good as um Earth Dies Screaming. But we also have Island of Terror and Night of the Big Heat's not so great. Is it a space film or a crime mystery? Uh no. No, it's not. It's a romantic drama. Where's the one? Yes.

[00:07:07]Now, this this again, you always learn something new. And in this case, I learned that Howard Duff, the star of uh Spaceways, uh was later married to um Ida Lupino, which I did not know. Uh Idol Lupino was an film noir star and the most pro practically the only uh female director working in the studio system uh by the sort of like late 40s, early 50s, I think she was working making films like Hitchhiker, I think is the Hitchhiker is the famous one. was a real struggle. And she also, one of the reasons I always I always like talking about it is that she comes from an incredible showbiz family and we think of her now, but her father Stanner Lupino was involved in the film industry and uh she had theatrical ancestors going back and back and back. And uh I don't think he's mentioned in here, but Lupino Lane is a wonderful silent film comedian who is well worth looking up.

[00:08:02]And he was her uncle. Uh he's he's his his his bit was doing the splits. If you want to sit, Lupino Lane could just drop into the splits and come straight back up again. Remarkable. It's not much of a skill, I suppose, but he will do that in every single film that he's in. So, remarkable family. And I didn't know that there was a hammer connection. And this that article that I sort of skimmed over while I was talking about Lupino Lane there examines this sort of weird back and forth between Lupino and Duff and the and Hammer and that there are these sort of relatively vague connections, but it's still interesting. Of the preh horror films Hammer has so far released in these excellent packages, this is the first one that's left me genuinely disappointed.

[00:08:46]>> I would rather to die with him than live without him. Not because it doesn't deliver on science fiction, but because it doesn't deliver on anything. It is predictable as drama and mystery. It has few memorable characters and doesn't use those that it has. It's another handsome package, but those special features are doing a lot of heavy lifting on this one.

[00:09:08]>> I insist.

[00:09:10]>> Thanks for watching. Please like and subscribe. Anyone enjoy this one more than me? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments below.