The Angry Red Planet


Movie Notes from the Rust Belt.....
Youngstown, Ohio

Just finished watching The Angry Red Planet, a 1959 Sci-Fi epic, courtesy of Netflix .  50s Sci-Fi is one of my favorite pastimes, and this one lands near the top of the heap.

There’s not a heckuva lot of plot to get in the way of the story here.  Mission to Mars.  Monsters on Mars who kill one of the crew.  In an interesting twist on the monster types, we have a giant one-celled creature that absorbs one of the crew in ghastly detail--nothing like you’d see now, of course, but still.....I mean, for Pete’s sake, he was ABSORBED!!  The male lead and the female lead manage to get home in their spacecraft to tell their story, which consists of a warning to keep away from Mars because, well, humans are so war-like and all.

You got your square-jawed all-American hero leading the crew--A Humphrey Bogart look-alike named Gerald Mohr, who worked in the movies and TV steadily from the late 30s through is early death due to a heart attack at age 54 in 1968.  You got your hot red-headed (ala Lucille Ball) lady scientist (played by Naura Hayden) who is the love interest of the spaceship Commander, or so it would seem.  Ms. Hayden appeared on TV regularly in the 50s and 60s, although never in a starring role.  The role of the absorbed crew member was played by none other than Jack Kruschen, that Canadian dynamo who typically was cast in the movies and TV as the mildly ethnic comedy relief.

All of the Mars surface shots were bathed in red--what with this being the red planet--and it did lend a certain alien atmosphere to that part of the movie.

Not a bad way to spend and hour and a half.  I liked it.

2 stars.  Have a look.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Very Simple Request

In the late 1970s (that would be during the Carter administration and THAT gas crisis), I drove a Datsun 1200 for a while.   It was a good, small, simple car, and I could afford it even though I had virtually no money. As I recall, it had 12 or 13 inch wheels, no power anything, a four cylinder engine, and a four speed manual transmission.   It was light weight with no amenities.   None.   It had an AM only radio and a tinny little speaker.   No air conditioning either—can you imagine?   No AIR??   On the freeway, when larger cars would pass, the jet wash would buffet the car slightly after the larger car passed.   It was orange, and it routinely got 35 to 50 MPG.   40 to 50 on the freeway and 35 to 45 around town.   When the tires wore out, it was about as expensive as putting new tires on your bicycle.   If it needed brakes, it was about as expensive as putting brakes on your bicycle.   Did I just repeat myself? Here's what the car did.   It provided reliable transportation
Read more

Karma

I see that the Marlin's Scott Cousins has been placed on the 15 day disabled list with a "lower back strain", and has been replaced on their active roster by Hanley Ramirez.  And that the Marlins are 3-18 since leaving San Francisco. Karma's a bitch.
Read more

For Love of the Game

  OK then. Baseball is finally over for my beloved Giants. Thank goodness. This leadership pair of Farhan Zaidi and Gabe Kapler has created a baseball team and method that’s just pitiful. It’s painful to watch. And boring. Tedious. A struggle. Never knowing from day to day who is going to be on the club as players or where they might be in the batting order or what positions they might play. No stars. The way Kapler handles pitchers makes it even worse. One result of the inconstancy in player positions is that the Giants lead all of baseball in errors committed in an era of lower error rates in baseball. I can’t be the only one who sees the problem and the source of said problem. It’s no puzzle why the Giants find it impossible to sign truly first rate talent. I’m a big fan of Mike Yastrzemski and Brandon Crawford, but, other than that…….Who would want to subject themselves to that nonsense, anyhow? It’s no wonder that the ballpark is habitually empty, or nearly so. All
Read more