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ON THIS DAY ON HORROR - September 2nd

"APOLLO 18" released in 2011

Officially, NASA's manned missions to the Moon ended with Apollo 17 on December, 1972, with the program cancelled due to budget cuts. In 2011, over 100 hours, supposedly the lost footage of the top secret Apollo 18 mission, was uploaded to an anonymous website www.lunartruth.com, which tells a very different story of why man has never returned to the Moon, in Gonzalo López-Gallego's found footage chiller, Apollo 18!

Watch the Apollo 18 trailer below!

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In December 1974, the crew of the cancelled Apollo 18 mission - Commander Nathan "Nate" Walker (Lloyd Owen), Lunar Module Pilot Captain Benjamin "Ben" Anderson (Warren Christie) and Command Module Pilot Lieutenant Colonel John Grey (Ryan Robbins) - are informed that their mission will now proceed after all, but as a top secret Department of Defense (DoD) mission. Disguised as an unmanned satellite launch, the crew was too place an early warning ballistic missile system in place, alerting the United States of any impending ICBM attacks from the USSR. While Grey remains in orbit aboard the Freedom command module, Walker and Anderson land on the moon in the lunar module Liberty and start to place the transmitters. While planting the detectors, the pair also take further samples of moon rocks to return to Earth. As Walker and Anderson rest, strange noises are heard over their radios, and the external mounted camera on the LM captures footage of a small "rock" moving nearby. Oblivious to the previous activities, the two astronauts continue with their lunar explorations, when they discover footprints that lead them to a bloodstained, functioning Soviet LK lander, and a dead cosmonaut in a nearby crater. Walker queries Houston about the Soviet presence, but he is told only to continue with the mission. The following day the pair find that the flag they had planted is missing. Disturbed by these events, Walker and Anderson prepare Liberty to leave, but the launch is aborted when Liberty suffers violent shaking. An inspection reveals extensive damage to Liberty and non-human tracks that Walker cites as evidence of extraterrestrial life. Suddenly, Walker feels something moving inside his spacesuit and is horrified as a spider-like creature crawls across the inside of his helmet! Walker disappears from view and Anderson finds him unconscious outside of Liberty, and, while examining Walker's chest wound, finds and removes a moon rock embedded within Walker. Anderson speculates that the true intention of the ICBM warning devices is to monitor the aliens, and that the devices are the source of the interference, only to discover something has destroyed them when they attempt to switch them off. As Walker slowly begins to show signs of infection (with increasing paranoia and delusions) and contact with Houston and Grey in the orbiting Freedom out of radio contact, Anderson hatches a last desperate plan to cross the desolate moonscape in the Lunar Rover and escape in the Russian LK lander, before he too is at risk of spreading the alien infection on Earth!

TRIVIA:    The comment about areas that never receive sunlight was about areas at the bottom of deep craters where the ground is always in the shadow of the crater wall. This does occur in many areas near the Moon's polar regions, which is where this movie takes place.

Top:   The lost crew of Apollo 18: Ben Anderson (Warren Christie), John Grey (Ryan Robbins), and Nathan "Nate" Walker (Lloyd Owen);

Above:   Walker finds unexplained wreckage outside the lunar module.

Produced by Timur Bekmambetov and directed by Spanish filmmaker Gonzalo López-Gallego, marking his first English-language film, Apollo 18 was primarily shot in Vancouver, British Columbia. The props and costumes were meticulously recreated from NASA's archives, with the Science & Entertainment Exchange providing scientific consultation to the film's production team, including the use of old camera lenses and film stock from the 70's. During production, the script was constantly rewritten, which directly resulted in how much (or how little) of the rock aliens to show on screen. An earlier version of the movie had giant moon rock monsters in it. Although they do not feature explicitly in the final cut, some brief glimpses of much larger rock spider creatures can be seen as the lunar rover carrying Captain Anderson (Warren Christie) and Lieutenant Walker (Lloyd Owen) flips over; and just before Walker is killed, a large shadow approaches him, and his body is quickly dragged away afterwards, suggesting a much larger creature. There were also multiple endings shot for Anderson's death, in which he alternately suffocates to death aboard the Russian lander, gets infected by rock creatures, is attacked by a large creature entering the lander, and where his ship crashes. The final choice ended up being a cleverly edited blending of the last two options by Wes Craven's longtime film editor, Patrick Lussier.

[discovering the LK lander]
Anderson: How can Russians be on the moon and no one knows about it?
Walker: We're on the moon... no one knows about us.

Top:   Anderson and Walker find Russians have also landed on the moon, discovering a derelict LK lander;

Above:   Walker is infected by one of the rock aliens!

Promoted as a "found footage" film that does not use actors, Apollo 18 was not screened in advance for critics. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Dimension Films head Bob Weinstein "balk[ed] at the idea" that the film was a work of fiction, stating that “We didn’t shoot anything; we found it. Found, baby!”. When in point of fact, the website featured in the prologue text stating that the documented footage of the secret Apollo 18 mission was uploaded to, "www.lunartruth.com" is typed into a browser engine, it automatically redirects you to "apollo18movie.net", which is the movie's official website! What is however factually true is when Apollo 18 concludes with a statement that the Nixon Administration gave away hundreds of moon rocks to foreign dignitaries around the world, and that many of these moon rocks have been "lost" or "stolen" (indicating the rock aliens are already on Earth) -  both the Nixon and Ford Administrations gave away 135 Apollo 11 moon rocks and 135 Apollo 17 goodwill moon rocks. Incredibly, in October 2011 (a little more than a month after the release of the film), NASA agents raided a Denny's restaurant and arrested a 74-year-old woman for attempting to sell a moon rock stolen from Neil Armstrong for $1.7 million on the black market!

TRIVIA:   NASA's liaison for multimedia, Bert Ulrich, has officially stated that "Apollo 18 is not a documentary ... the film is a work of fiction."

Top:   Walker's condition worsens as the alien infections spreads;

Above:   In his attempt to escape, Anderson walks into a swarm of rock aliens at the bottom of a moon crater!

Originally scheduled for February 5, 2010, the film's release date was moved ten times between 2010 and 2011, before finally Apollo 18 was released on September 2nd, to mostly negative reviews. Joe Leydon from Variety wrote, "Despite stretches of skillfully sustained suspense, Apollo 18 ultimately comes across as little more than a modestly clever stunt." and Film.com's Eric D. Snider concluding, "the source of the creepy events, when it's finally revealed, is profoundly dull, like a forgettable episode of The X-Files or Fringe". There were some positive reviews however, with Sean Kernan at We Got This Covered writing, "Apollo 18 doesn’t break any new ground but the film is well shot, the scares arrive in a strong rhythm keeping the audience in a state of perpetual tension and the finale leaves no questions about the astronauts’ fates. Most importantly, Apollo 18 has one moment, one big scare, that will elicit more than a few terrified shrieks".

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   24%

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