12 to the Moon

An international team embarks on an expedition to the moon in an uncommonly spacious rocketship. There they encounter a faceless alien intelligence who concludes that the human race is too immature and dangerous and must be destroyed.

For the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode see here.


 * America Saves the Day: Averted. The American captain is nominally the hero, but the German guy, the Soviet guy, the Polish/Israeli guy, and the Japanese woman are actually all far more critical to escaping the clutches of the moon aliens.
 * The Atoner: Heinrich, not a Nazi himself, but wracked by guilt because his father was.
 * Dirty Communists: Completely averted. Orloff, identified explicitly as being from the Soviet Union, angrily condemns French Jerk Martel's suggestion to let North America be frozen by moon aliens. He then attempts to beat down Martel in order to stop him, despite having second-degree burns all over his hands.
 * French Jerk: Martel is this trope Beyond the Impossible. Even the Soviet character was portrayed as having basic honor and dignity, and this was a movie made more or less at the height of the Red Scare.
 * Heroic Sacrifice
 * Loads and Loads of Characters
 * Odd Friendship: David and Heinrich.
 * Nice Jewish Boy/Badass Israeli: David.
 * New Meat: Rod, the nineteen-year-old Teen Genius in mathematics.
 * Not Even Bothering with the Accent: David again, who is introduced as born in Poland and currently living in Israel, apparently mastered the art of speaking with the most perfectly flat American Midwestern accent ever.
 * Twelve-Token Band
 * Twofer Token Minority: Hideko, female and Asian.