The Lost Missile (1958)

Talk about dedication to a project. On the first day of filming The Lost Missile (1958), director William Berke suddenly died of a heart attack. Not missing a beat, his son, Lester Wm. Berke, completed the film. However, I imagine most of the work fell upon the supervising film editor, Everett Sutherland, because much of the film is “stock footage of military forces and civil defense exercises.”

Narrated throughout by Lawrence Dobkin, The Lost Missile is like a documentary in its presentation sprinkled with little pieces of family drama. Dr. David Loring (Robert Loggia) is trying to get away from his office at the Havenbrook Atomic Laboratory to marry his assistant, Joan Wood (Ellen Parker.) She’s not very understanding when an unknown projectile zooms across the globe leaving a 5-mile swath of destruction in its wake.

Loring: You’re also a scientist.

Wood: Yes, but I’m also a woman.

Loring: You misinterpret everything I say.

Wood: I’m quitting my job. You’ll have to find a wife for both marriages!

More forgiving is Ella Freed (Marilee Earley), who’s about to have a baby and is waiting for her husband, Joe (Phillip Pine), to pick her up and take her to the hospital. He should have taken the day off. Employees are restricted from leaving and she’s going to be forced to give birth in a bomb shelter with neighbors when the governor sounds the alarm and declares martial law. He tells people not to panic, as they of course panic.

The rest of the film focuses on the missile and attempts to stop it. It’s not told in real time, but for a plot that so heavily depends on a race against time, it sure is slow-moving. Once our Cold War suspects are ruled out from having launched the missile, Freed declares that it must be interplanetary and fights against destroying it because there might be “people” aboard. Nevertheless, Loring works on a “baby bomb” to stop it.

He’s got to get it to a launch site, though, and darned if he isn’t ambushed by a gang of thugs and must go the rest of the way on foot after being exposed to deadly radiation. This should be exciting, but instead it’s kind of silly and out of place for a movie with some dark moments. A family in the missile’s path building a snowman is obliterated and Ottawa is leveled as the missile races towards New York City.

The scariest thing, though, is a throwaway line as the military and scientists speculate about the missile’s origins. They have intel that Soviet rocket designs are different from this, yet want to talk to the President about retaliation. Then when the Russian premier calls the President to deny his country launched it, the men at Havenbrook are left “praying that these are honest men.”

Spoiler! We never learn if the missile is from outer space or if one of the Earth-bound countries is lying. The point of The Lost Missile is not to provide answers, but rather to pose questions and depict how people might react during a time where children were taught to duck and cover and the United States lived in fear of the bomb. For that, it’s pretty effective.