A while back, I bought this 50-movie set, Sci-Fi Invasion, for five bucks. That adds up to ten cents per movie. Can you believe I’m almost done with this series? Only a few movies left to go. Here’s our third and final go-around with Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, in Silver Needle in the Sky. Once again, this is a couple of episodes of the 1955 TV show edited into a feature.

Here’s what happens: Heroic Rocky Jones and his crew – sidekick Winky (ugh), space girl Vena, and precocious little kid Bobby – are escorting a group of ambassadors to a space station, but they’re captured by the sinister Queen Cleolantha. She plans to hold the ambassadors for ransom, and only Rocky and his pals can stop her.

Speculative spectacle: Cleolantha shuts off the oxygen in Rocky’s ship, and Rocky gets it fixed by using, of all things, Vena’s lipstick. (Maybe it’s high-tech space lipstick.)

Sleaze factor: None, except for Vena’s ever-present short skirt, of course.

Quantum quotables: “Gallopin’ galaxies!” – little Bobby’s favorite expression.

What the felgercarb? One of the ambassadors walks around with this funky-looking headdress on. Is he an ancient Egyptian pharaoh?

Microcosmic minutiae: Rocky Jones had a short-lived run in the comics, appearing in issues 15-19 of Space Adventures, published by Charlton. In the comics, the space ranger uniforms are blue and white, but in other promotional materials, they’re red and white.

Worth ten cents? The other Rocky Jones collections on this set were goofball fun, but this one is dull. What it loses in crazy space adventure, it gains a lot of standing around and talking. If you want the Rocky Jones experience, skip this one and watch The Gypsy Moon instead.

****

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