This is by far the scariest movie . . .

Rating: 10/10 (29 October 2018)

. . . that Universal's "House of Horror" has ever made (and I've seen most of them, from the silent HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME and PHANTOM OF THE OPERA right through weeks of DRACVLA, FRANKENSTEIN, MUMMY, WOLF MAN, INVISIBLE MAN, and CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON flicks). Every moment of FIRST MAN is fraught with Terror, from the opening scene of "Neil's" X-15 bouncing into Outer Space to the closing pathos of he and his wife unable to articulate a thought in the vast emptiness of their moon-visitor Quarantine Room. ("Ripley" enjoys a picnic during ALIEN compared to Mrs. Armstrong's suffering throughout FIRST MOON.) The ominous hollow clanking and grinding noises of U.S. rocket ships both BEFORE and after launch sound like the TITANIC breaking in half, and the fact that something always goes wrong--often with deadly results--every time an American astronaut goes to work no doubt prompted Real Life SIRENS OF TITAN author Kurt Vonnegut to demand that the U.S. Space Program cease and desist (in a clip from a TV interview) included during FIRST MAN. As Colonel Kurtz would say, "The Horror! The Horror!!"