JOURNEY TO THE SEVENTH PLANET (1961) **1/2 After growing up on films like this, it must have been a terrible disappointment for real astronauts to find space devoid of powerful psychic forces, giant tarantulas, centaur rats, subterranean volcanic elements and girls named Ingrid. Or is it? Anyway, during the JFK era they sure had high hopes for what 2001 would bring: peace, one-world government, explorative missions to Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; and a "great hunger" "for knowledge." Instead we found ourselves- Anyway the sets are spectacular great, the technique presaging the best psychedelic and psychotic bits of the decade to come not the least because they're already way overdone, the producution values resolutely and appropriately irrigation ditch, the plot not a bad variation on the standard Sci-Fi line about an all-powerful Uranusarian mind feeding on our desires and enslaving us with our fears, but it's all tragically linked by drab actors ruining every minute. I mean, five doofy white guys, one of whom has the most fake Germanic accent in Hollywood history-and that's saying something, set out onto Uranus seeking their fortune with apparent ignorance of the scientific method ("I'll find out" yells the Germanic one as he puts his hand into the freeze zone, before grimacing mightily, and after munching the first Uranian apple he finds without even washing it), and are promptly greeted by bimbos. Talk about nearly limitless possibilities and great hope. Meanwhile stalagtites and mites abound, and every once in awhile a strobe obliterates everything else while the space mind dictates sentiments of interstellar dominance in a voice that's nothing if not reminiscient of the poetic ( or at least spoken) sequences of Hawkwind's "Space Ritual." In fact that may be a way to get the most from the film-turn the sound off and put on the LP. Sidney Pink understood much of what made Ed Wood great.