FOR ALL MANKIND
1989 - USA

Director: Al Reinert  
Starring: Alan Bean, Michael Collins, Eugene Cernan, Charles Conrad, Charles Duke, James Irwin, Jim Lovell, Kenneth Mattingly, Jack Swigert  

- Reviewed by Tom

This DVD is great! I was kind of expecting the same thing that I taped off the TV a few years ago, with crappy sound and all, but the DVD has been much improved over the old video version. I was very surprised to find that the disc even had Dolby 5.1 surround sound! Of course there is a limit as to how much surround effects there can be with an old Apollo video, but the music surrounds you, and the sound of the rockets firing sure sounded great with my subwoofer.

The movie is about 80 minutes long and has 2 different soundtracks. The first one is the regular soundtrack from the movie (with the 5.1 Dolby) and the other one is a commentary from Gene Cernan and the director Al Rienert describing the scenes. The DVD also includes a bunch of extra stuff:

  • Audio clips from many of the flights.
  • A whole bunch of Alan Bean's paintings—and he describes the paintings as you look at them.
  • Some short clips of the different rockets launching (Mercury [Redstone and Atlas], Gemini, Saturn I, and Saturn V)
  • Subtitles of the audio, as well as subtitles that show the astronauts' names and flight as they show up on the screen—neat feature!

I think some of the video has been cleaned up slightly, but for the most part it is still the same old-looking scratchy picture as the original movie. But of course the only way to fix that is to fly to the moon again and re-film it! I think the whole soundtrack has been redone since it sounds pretty good. Good background music too—kind of spooky-sounding that seems to fit well with the images of the moon.

Overall, I give this movie my highest rating. I was so impressed with it I just put in an order for my own copy for my Apollo collection.

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