The Angry Red Planet

The.Angry.Red.Planet.1959.BRRip.XviD.MP3-RARBG

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source: The Angry Red Planet

----SPOILER IN REVIEW---- I have no desire to offend my fellow film-addicts but seriously, if I actually paid to see this film in a theater, I'd be miffed and ask for my money back. If I attended a Funtementalist church and they showed this feature, I would feel more comfortable. This is a mixture of The Bible with a little Sci-Fi tossed in. It doesn't take long to discover a very simplistic script with actors who are one sided and predictable. You have the science guy, the loving wife who has a religious God-loving core, and an evil, Satan-loving Nazi, with Ruskies from the USSR built in and a Bible quoting, Billy Graham clone as the US President. The basic premise is that God lives on Mars and he has begun replying to our science couple living in San Diego, who are trying to contact Mars, only WHOOPS it was the evil Nazi tricking all of us instead, including the Reds who toss out the Commies and replace them with the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, but then WHOOPS AGAIN, it really was God in the first place. The worse and most farcical part is Peter Graves telling the Prez that we shouldn't release the first religious message cause it ain't science, while his wife says otherwise along with the Prez later making speeches in King James language. I want my 90 minutes back.

I saw this movie in the theater when I was 5 years old and it stayed in my memory all these years. By today's standards it comes up short, but I've seen movies with hundreds of times the budget that were a lot worse. Sure the acting is bad, but anything John Wayne did before 1939 could not be called good acting either. This movie does have some positives working for it. The female among the 4 astronauts is a biologist/zoologist and is not just window-dressing. The martian monsters and landscape/city are imaginative. They had some kind of 1g drive that allowed their rather capacious spacecraft to not need zero gravity effects, although they could have showed the turnover at the halfway point. All in all this is not the stinker some other viewers have labeled it. My score 6/10.

First off, I'd like to say that the user comments alone left me with tears in my eyes from laughing. One comment that bad SF movies become good comedies is right on the mark. MST3000 made it's living off that. If you look at THE ANGRY RED PLANET as the fever dream of a 10 year old comic book reader from 1959, you'll have the handle on this sucker. All the elements are there: the pseudoscience, occasionally logical, more often hilariously infantile. The adolescent boy attitude toward sex, with the "gigolo" captain (good call on that one, guys!) making eyes at the buxom "scientist" with hair so red it's a wonder it doesn't set off the fire alarms. The ridiculous conception of Mars as a planet so alien that everything glows red, yet one alien monster has a mouse face, and the blob alien has an eye that rotates like a kid's toy. The comic relief, an overweight astronaut (!) who sounds like he never finished the 8th grade in Brooklyn and has a psychotic fixation on his ray gun. And of course, the mere fact that alien = dangerously evil. If these people had met E.T., they would have roasted him in two seconds flat! "OW" indeed! Don't get me wrong. I rated this movie low. Still, it's never boring (except when the scientist tries to explain everything - only to make it all sound more and more ridiculous), and you have to admit, in your little kid core, it makes you jump a few times. Okay, then don't admit it. I guess you were never 10.

One of only two survivors from a Martian expedition is so traumatized she (Naura Hayden) does not remember the circumstances of the trip. The film stars Gerald Mohr and is directed by American International Pictures regular Ib Melchior. Melchior was only given 10 days and a budget of $200,000 to make the film. All things considered, he did alright. The New York Times wrote, "The Angry Red Planet solemnly warns its audiences not to go to Mars. Stubborn patrons who ignore the advice will discover that the planet looks like a cardboard illustration from Flash Gordon and is inhabited by carnivorous plants, a giant amoeba and a species resembling a three-eyed green ant." Well said. Great film? No. Fun film? Yes.

This movie is funny and painful at the same time. The "Cinemagic" almost gave me a seizure. Despite what they imply, "Cinemagic" is not some innovative technical procedure. It was "developed" as the result of an accident, and they used it because it disguised the fact that their "monsters" were so stupid-looking. I also don't think it's a coincidence that the writer is Sid "Pink". This movie is good for a laugh, if you are really looking for a movie made in 9 days on 200,000 dollars. It is entertaining; at least I can say that about it. The bat/rat/spider is the highlight. (edit 12/2021) I wrote this first review 20 years ago, and forgot about it until I saw the movie again, today! Well, I have to update my rating, because it's not really as bad as I thought back then. It still has entertainment value, which is better than plenty of movies I've seen.

I remember seeing this when I was 8 years old on a Saturday afternoon. I didn't see it again until a few years back. It's not a great movie but is still fun. Get a load of the rat-bat-spider-crab monster! It is pretty lame but still has a low-budget special effects charm to it. The scenes on Mars would have better if the sky and ground were orange instead of everything. The process used made the actors look like they dove face first into pancake make-up. OK, now for the positives: the acting is good and features some "B" movie vets in Gerald Mohr, Les Tremayne and Jack Kruschen. The spaceship and interior are for the most part convincing(given this was made in 1960). The film moves at a good pace. Direction was pretty good despite the fact that this was made in 9 days. Worth a look for fans of 1950s and 1960s Sci-Fi films.

This generation produced many B films in the horror/science fiction genre. This particular one was broadcast on tv when I was nine years old, and it frightened me so much that I had to sleep with the radio on as my security blanket for about five nights. This is basically a monster movie, and the worst one, oddly, was not the most menacing, but the depiction of the intelligent Martian with a very distorted face. He didn't look worse than a Klingon, but what is a nine-year-old never exposed to Star Trek supposed to know. (I had the same problem with the brief portrayal of the Yeti in The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas starring Forrest Tucker). If there is a lesson in this, it is to be careful about what young people see. I was in fact frightened half to death by many of the poor quality s.f. movies I saw on tv before the age of 11. Why did I watch them? Not much else on tv. Good thing I didn't see "Alien" back then. Oddly, Angry Red Planet was broadcast not too long ago, and it did seem strange to view it after almost 40 years and recollect an almost traumatic childhood experience. Oh yeah, check out "The House on Haunted Hill," too.