Rocky Jones, Space Ranger: The Gypsy Moon

Customer Reviews:

Watchable Sci-Fi TV from the Howdy Doody days.......2006-05-05

From the dawn of modern television comes Rocky Jones! Rocky, with his supporting cast of characters, must stop cute queen beeyotch Cleolanta from destroying the inhabited Gypsy Moon. Seems the moon, run by the guy who played Sgt. Schultz sans moustache, is about to collide with Cleo's planet Ophecious, and she ain't havin none of that, sister! Well, the moon can't be blown up, so now her planet has to be evacuted too. Definitely see where the other reviewers draw the "Lost in Space" comparisons from. Saw this as part of the Tree Line 50 Sci-Fi Film pack, and it's not too bad. The effects are cheesy, but what do you expect? CGI? There's also another Rocky Jones movie cobbled from the show with Cleolanta as the villain included with the set. Something about a moon of Jupiter shooting meteors at the Earth. OK, so what are you waiting for? A little over twenty bucks here on Amazon for 50 movies? C'mon, get to it.

Hilarious, early 1950's TV SF camp.......2006-02-28

Rocky Jones Space Ranger is back in print and fairly inexpensive too. This classic TV early 1950's space opera is filled with cheap sets, poor special effects, annoying sidekicks, and a hero who in one episode actually tells his female crewmate to "go knit a sweater" (and she actually does) when they have a disagreement! It's hilarious early TV "sci-fi" suitable for all ages, so you can treat yourself and your kids to a bit of TV history and have a good laugh together. I saw three episodes of this show a few years ago (2 of them, including this one, on Mystery Science Theater 3000) and they were all loads of fun. This DVD is a real bargain for the price, some issues with source material quality should be easy to forgive.

In this episode, Rocky and his spaceship the Orbit Jet must prevent the evil Queen Cleolanta from destroying the Gypsy Moon and all of its inhabitants before their worlds collide, then Rocky must force her to evacuate her own world before the catastrophic collision. John Banner (Sgt. Schultz on Hogan's Heroes) has a substantial part as the jolly and affable leader of the people who live on the Gypsy Moon, Kwotanda, and he willingly works with Rocky Jones to evacuate his own people before their world is destroyed.

If you've never seen the show, it's really something. Rocky Jones is a square-jawed fisticuffs wielding spaceship pilot with REALLY goofy sidekicks, including Winky, a young man who acts like a kid, and Bobby, a little kid that acts all grown-up. Then there's VERY short-skirted Vena, his bright female crewmate that gets treated like, well, like women were mostly treated in the US in 1950's TV. Then there's elderly and brilliant Professor Newton, who in spite of being a genius, makes just enough miscalculations to get them into real trouble.

Rocky Jones is a vision of the far future firmly rooted in the early 1950's. They don't make them like this anymore! If you liked Lost In Space, this is sort of an earlier version of that, possibly even goofier, so you might well like this too.

Fifties sci-fi.......2005-08-09

I was a big fan of the "Rocky Jones - Space Ranger" serials as a kid. I watched them religiously on Saturday mornings. They were the epitome of campy sci-fi. They had cheesy special efects, and the "science" was mostly wrong, but who cares. They were and are a lot of fun, and the moral is "Be a good person and one day you'll be a space ranger."

Disappointing.......2005-06-01

A wonderful series in its heyday.
A travesty in its transfer to dvd. I thought i was back in the 50's having to adjust my rabbit ears antennae.
Truly pathetic in the transfer.
I'm sure the other Rocky Jones dvd's will be just as horrid.

Disappointing DVD of a Classic SF Series.......2004-12-29

Oldies.com has been releasing the Rocky Jones series (classic SF from the 50s) on DVD--admittedly, only in the compilation versions rather than the TV episodes they originally were, but still, they've been releasing them.

This particular serial is one of the more entertaining ones, but to look at it, absolutely no quality control was performed. The video looks as though it was transferred directly from VHS (including frequent interference patterns when the picture brightens during the many explosions), the sound quality is uneven, and it's just a disappointment.

Here's hoping other Rocky Jones releases will be better-done; this one was disappointing in the extreme.

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