THE ANGRY RED PLANET

		Review by E.C. McMullen Jr.
THE ANGRY RED PLANET - 1959 USA Release: Nov. 23, 1959 Sino Productions, American International Pictures Rating: USA: N/A

From the nation's capitol to the Pentagon to a beautiful black 1959 Cadillac (automobiles courtesy of Hertz), important military officers are gathering to discuss the utmost important stuff!

Major General George Treegar (Paul Hahn: SCIENCE FICTION THEATER [TV], THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN) addresses a table full of uniforms and a suit, Dr. Paul Weiner (J. Edward McKinley: ADVISE AND CONSENT, THE TIME TRAVELERS, THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN, THE LEGEND OF LIZZIE BORDEN) that, unfortunately, reminded me a lot of a similar scene from ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES.

Maj. Gen. George Treegar: "Gentlemen, as you know-"

Major Lyman Ross (Gordon Barnes): "Then why say that?"

Maj. Gen. George Treegar: "Eh. What?"

Major Lyman Ross: "If we already know something why tell us that we know it?"

Maj. Gen. George Treegar: "Okay, 'Major' if I don't finish my sentence, then what do all of us in this room know?"

Major Lyman Ross: "Oh. Uh... um... we... we all work in the Pentagon?"

Maj. Gen. George Treegar: "You think this emergency meeting is about that?"

Major Lyman Ross: "Uh... no (cough!). No."

Maj. Gen. George Treegar: "Then shut the hell up and stop interrupting! Now then, as you all know, weeks ago we lost all contact with our first and only manned mission to Mars."

The Maj. Gen. brings them up to speed on the latest news. Earth sensors and tracking telescopes have picked up the rocket, adrift, only 90,000 miles from earth. The robotic controls on the spacecraft were set to return the crew to earth upon completion of the mission on the surface of Mars.

No one in the ship is answering communications. They may all be dead. If there's still enough fuel left in the rocket to land on earth, Air Force command plans to remotely guide it back. There are mission tapes on the spacecraft that could give them some idea of what went wrong. Moreover, we won't know if anyone is alive on the ship until we bring it back.

So they do and it does and it turns out that, out of the four astronauts who were on the mission, only two came back alive. One, Dr. Iris Ryan (Nora Hayden), is physically healthy but suffering from psychological trauma. The other is Col. Thomas O'Bannion (Gerald Mohr: THE MONSTER AND THE GIRL, INVASION U.S.A. [1952], MY WORLD DIES SCREAMING, THE FANTASTIC FOUR [TV - 1967 - 1968]) with something green growing on his arm that could infect the world.

Command is going through mission tape after tape but finding nothing.

The only witness they have is Dr. Ryan.

After much hemming, hawing, and screwing around for an 83 minute movie, the Air Force command medical team, with the permission of mission crew member Dr. Ryan, gives her a drug treatment that will break through the mental block she is too scared to remember.

Which means the drug will force her conscious mind to face what she fears to face.

It's here, through her memories, that we meet her four person crew.

The leering Col. Thomas O'Bannion who leads the team and openly flirts with Dr. Iris Ryan, up to the point of calling her, in front of the crew, by his pet name for her, Irish.

Prof. Theodore Gettell (Les Tremane: THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE MONOLITH MONSTERS, THE MONSTER OF PIEDRAS BLANCAS, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, KING KONG VS. GODZILLA, THE SLIME PEOPLE, CREATURE OF DESTRUCTION, FANGS, THE NEW SCOOBY-DOO MYSTERIES [TV], THE 13 GHOSTS OF SCOOBY-DOO [TV]), who seems to find the budding love affair between middle-aged senior officer, Col. O'Bannion and subordinate Dr. Ryan - who looks young enough to be the Colonel's daughter - adorable.

For all her flirty behavior, Dr. Ryan is innocently wide-eyed enough to be taken aback by O'Bannion's saucy innuendos (but never the less, she furtively brought along perfume which she uses to lure the Col.).

STOP

Think about that. The only reason we know the lurid details of Dr. Ryan using the Mars Mission to get into Col. O'Bannion's pants, is because she is telling her story to Air Force Command (!)

Col. Thomas O'Bannion: "Sorry everyone, but by god there are times in crisis such as this, when a man needs to expose his hairy chest!"

Bringing up the comedy relief while not supplying any at all, is the only enlisted man in the bunch, Chief Warrant Officer Sam Jacobs (Jack Kruschen: THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO GO TO MARS, CRY TERROR, THE LAST VOYAGE, CAPE FEAR [1962], THE TIME MACHINE [1978], DARK MIRROR [1984], DEADLY INTENTIONS). Sam is a rube and a stooge man-child who puts the moves on flirty Dr. Ryan before O'Bannion pulls rank. Beats me how he got to be a Chief Warrant Officer, but having been in the Navy, I wonder that about a few Chief Warrant Officers.

Once Sam is resigned to the fact that he won't get the girl, he spends the rest of the movie kissing various parts of the ship and his new gun, which he dolefully names Cleo.

Sam, as the lowest on the totem pole in rank, attempt to put a false happy face on his loneliness before the attention of his superiors, at least reaches heights of tragicomedy. The fact that he's a Chief Warrant Officer, a rank no one can achieve without demonstrably being the best of the best at your job, makes it all the sadder. On this mission, Sam has three bosses and no equals (And here's something else, Bob...).

STOP AGAIN

To keep up, Dr. Iris Ryan is telling Air Force Command just how god damn sexually desirable she was to the men on her crew and how at least one man, a capable specialist in his field, mentally crumbled upon realizing she was unattainable.

Iris tells the story as if she is Snow White with her Prince and two left-over dwarves from her lost years in the forest. The mission begins with this bon vivant "Hi-ho! Hi-ho! It's off to Mars we go!" joie de ver (no wait, that's French for Worm Joy. The phrase comes in handy, but I meant to write...) joie de vivre among the team, which is all it takes to get the suddenly horny Sam to come up behind Iris and embrace her in front of everyone, while talking romance. Iris laughs it off (who knows how long they all trained together and what went on then), but ... JEEZE! This is how the mission STARTS?!?

Understand I'm calling out the poor writing, not the morals of the day.

I'm doing my best to not write this as judgemental on the era. My idea of enlightenment is to look on the past and see how far we've come, how much we've grown, not how morally superior and hateful we can be in judging those who paved the way for us (well, except for Neandertals. Those F*n troglodytes!).

Even as I write this, looking back to 1959 from 2022, I'm aware of several modern Horror Thrillers that engage in the same situations with their heroes, but with an LGBTQ+ angle: sexually pushing themselves upon initially unwilling targets who finally relent (or if they don't they become villains/first victims). Today it seems that the same behavior is acceptable when directed toward same sex partners1.

(1 Except in real life where it isn't "cough!" Kevin Spacey "cough")

Anyway, they all land on Mars and there's merry mishaps with a tentacled vagina plant, a six-legged furry insect bat crab mouse (apparently called Batratspidercrab by marionette master, Bob Baker), and a one-eyed sea foam amoeba man-o'-war (with a spinning eye).

All the giant varmints seem far too massive to live in such a thin atmosphere made mostly of carbon dioxide (CO2), but since we've found no life on other planets, I'll ignore that for my

!!!SCIENCE MOMENT!!!:
In fact, this is probably the shortest Science Moment I've ever done because I'll focus on the narration in the movie trailer.

"Travel thousands of miles through space to the unknown!"

Our earth is Tens of thousands of miles in circumference.

We would have to travel Hundreds of thousands of miles through space just to reach our moon, Luna.

The astronauts in this movie leave earth to travel mere Thousands of miles through space ... TO MARS?!?

See more SCIENCE MOMENTS.

Ib Melchior (GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN, GIGANTIS THE FIRE MONSTER, ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS, JOURNEY TO THE SEVENTH PLANET, PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES, DEATH RACE 2000) was earnest in his attempts at writing and directing, not that his sincerity meant he was any good at it. THE ANGRY RED PLANET is Camp-tastic schlock at best.

Yet it's because of movies like THE ANGRY RED PLANET that the following cannot be stressed enough: Whoa! Could Ib and his producers ever come up with great visuals and concepts! Which is what kept Ib writing and selling screenplays while he learned the craft of how to write, and locked his name into some of the most entertaining mind-boggling low-budget cinema.

N00b movie makers may want to focus on this. Even for its time, THE ANGRY RED PLANET had a crippling low budget, but Ib did the best with what little he had, having his SFX crew making the most bonkers varmints they could think of and giving each show-stopping star turns.

This works for all big budget studio monster movies as well. Speak as highly as you want about Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, and John Carpenter - they all deserve their praise - but from the jowly great white in JAWS, to H.R. Giger's visionary designs and construction in ALIEN, and Rob Bottin's excruciating (in all the right ways) creature transformations in THE THING: all of these movies would be nowhere without their show-stopping varmints. They were all given their moments definitive to the story and the praise overwhelmingly centers on the creature(s) when they make their move.

This goes the same for low budget movies from CRITTERS to TREMORS.

Which is why an awkwardly directed, acted, and written movie like THE ANGRY RED PLANET still sells on bluray (in the time of 4K) for the premium price of $30 bucks for one disc and no extras of any note. Because of the shoestring budget, Ib's producers Norman Maurer and Sidney Pink (Sidney also wrote the story and is co-screenwriter), worked in post-production to give their rush-job puppet varmints (Howard Weeks: THE MAN FROM PLANET X, PROJECT MOONBASE) and painted backgrounds some otherworldly polish, creating what they called Cinemagic*, and spending about a quarter of their meager $200,000 budget to do it and shot in full color (while recognized masters like Alfred Hitchcock were still working in black and white)!

22 Years Later and THE ANGRY RED PLANET was still getting introduced to new generations

This was actually revolutionary enough - and influential enough - that for decades after, backyard filmmakers wanting to break into Hollywood with their Super 8 and 16mm film reels would call their car garage SFX work Cinemagic. In fact, Starlog magazine created her sister publication, Cinemagic, expressly for that purpose.

For over 60 years of audiences, THE ANGRY RED PLANET isn't all that entertaining, but the damn creatures look too insane to pass it by.

Two Shriek Girls.

This review copyright 2022 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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For those who scroll...

Ib Melchior's first sale and start in the motion picture industry began with his re-writing the American edit of GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN. His rewrite was released as THE VOLCANO MONSTERS. When that got no traction it was pulled, recut and retitled to GIGANTIS: THE FIRE MONSTER.

That re-edit of a re-edit wound up being so different from Ib's script for a revamped edit of GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN, that he repurposed THE VOLCANO MONSTERS and sold it to a Denmark movie company as REPTILICUS. So REPTILICUS is just a hack leftover of Toho Pictures GODZILLA.

It was also so poorly received among the Denmarkians (or Danish if you prefer) that they've never made another giant monster movie since.