Fifties SF serial Rocky Jones, Space Ranger got less than 40 half-hour episodes before being cancelled, apparently due to the cost of the effects. This should not be taken as an indication that the effects in this are good, but rather of an indication of how bad/minimal they were in other such such serials at the time. In what was likely an effort to wring a little more cash out of the show, all of the three-part serials were combined into 'movies'; a dozen in all. Crash of the Moons is one of the twelve, and is comprised from episodes around the middle of the serial's run.
It turns out Rocky Jones is your pretty generic two-fisted space hero, and he's surrounded by a cast that's just as generic: a comedy sidekick, an attractive young woman of unspecified role (other than 'Short Skirts, the Wearing Of'), an allegedly 'cute' and precocious youngster, and brilliant but absent-minded professor.
In this adventure, they discover that a 'gypsy moon' is going to crash into a planet. Despite roaming around the galaxy and not having you know, a sun, said moon has human-like inhabitants. These people are friends of Rocky's and amusingly, are led by the guy who played Sergeant Schultz in Hogan's Heroes. Rocky needs to evacuate them, and the inhabitants of the planet, before the kaboom.
Alas, while Schultzy and co are fully cooperative with these evacuation plans, the planet they're going to hit is led by an evil queen who naturally
- utterly refuses to cooperative; and
- secretly lusts after Rocky Jones
This is a fairly pedestrian film all up. It's like a blander version of the old Flash Gordon serials. Not terrible, but not really worth your time, either.
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