Perry Rhodan

MISSION STARDUST-1967-Major Perry Rhodan (Lang Jeffries) and his crew are all part of the super secret Stardust Project which is headed to the moon to mine a new type of precious metal. Along with him are Capt. Bull (Luis Davila), Capt. Flipper (Daniel Martin) and Dr. Monoli (Joachim Hansen). A guy named Arkin (Pinkus Braun) wants the metal too. When they land a strange interference knocks out communication with Earth. Then their land Rover is destroyed. A weird robot with teeth and eyes takes them to meet Crest (John Karlsen), an old guy with a lisp and Thora (Essy Persson), the arrogant commander from the planet Arkon. 

While Perry tries to melt the ice princess, Manoli discovers that Crest has leukemia and wants to take him to an Earth doctor for treatment. They travel secretly to Mombasa but run into trouble with the army. The silly aliens think Mercury is a precious metal while diamonds are used like nails. After the army fails to capture the ship, Rhodan and Faber go looking for Dr. Haggard (Stefano Sibaldi) who they find after beating up some thugs. They take Hagar and his two assistants to help Crest. Meanwhile Arkin's gang infiltrates an army sector and captures Rhodan. It turns out Flipper is actually working for Arkin and Hagar and his nurses are imposers. The robots vaporize most of the bad guys except Arkin who sneaks on to the alien ship and is later set adrift in space. 

This Italian-West German co-production by director Primo Zeglio is more like espionage than space opera but also influenced by TV's Star Trek although the Perry Rhodan series of books (around 126 at this writing) started in 1961 . Terrible sfx. Star Jeffries was born in Canada and in the early '60's was married to Rhoda Fleming. Essy Persson had been in the sexploitation blockbuster I, A WOMAN in 1965 and was later in CRY OF THE BANSHEE (1970) with Vincent Price.

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