Review: The Angry Red Planet
DVD: The Angry Red Planet (1959)
As I once again step into the wonderful world of low budget sci-fi thanks to the appropriately named kind people at Fabulous Films, I’m greeted by 2 familiar names as the title sequence begins on 1959’s The Angry Red Planet; Director Ib Melchior and writer Sidney Pink (read my reviews on The Time Travelers and Reptilicus for more on these guys) and so I’m immediately in my comfort zone and prepared for all that they are going to throw at me.
Having been missing for 91 days, Rocketship MR-1 returns to Earth from its mission to Mars. Of the 4 crew members that began the mission, only 2 are now on board; Colnel Tom O’Bannion (Gerald Mohr) and Doctor Iris ‘Irish’ Ryan (Nora Hayden). O’Bannion, having been attacked by a giant amoeba while on Mars (yes, you read that correctly!) has a deadly and infectious growth on his arm (which took me back to my school days when we used to take great pleasure in dipping our arms into vats of swarfega). While the scientists try to find a cure, traumatised ‘Irish’ Ryan recounts what happened to them all on that fateful mission.
With a shooting schedule of 9 days, a budget of $200,000 and a screenplay that Pink wrote on his kitchen table with his children acting as critics, you can already imagine what delights lay ahead for me (even more so if you’ve clicked on the previous links to my reviews of their previous work). A ‘Cinemagic’ process was invented by producers Pink and Norman Maurer which was supposed to give a pseudo 3D effect while casting a deep red glow over the picture. In reality this gave the effect of the actors walking around in a blurred off-red cartoon, not so much ‘The Angry Red Planet’, more like ‘The Peeved Blurred Orange Planet’.
A variety of monsters are seen while on Mars, which range from blatant drawings, to crudely animated beasts that wouldn’t look out of place in Poundland stores the day after Halloween…you know, those REALLY cheap looking ones that nobody buys even for a quid! The main monster however is quite passable; a towering 40 foot high beast (a 1.5 feet marionette in real life) which is a cross between a rat, bat, spider and crab! It’s quite an iconic monster and can also been seen on the cover of Misfits 1982 album ‘Walk Among Us‘.
Professor Theodore Genteel (Les Tremayne) and Warrant Officer Sam Jacobs (Jack Kruschen) are the 2 crew members who don’t make it back to Earth (I won’t spoil what happens to them) but it is O’Bannion’s obsession with Irish that had me in stitches on more than one occasion. His sleazy chat-up patter and leering looks had me thinking that previous female astronauts must surely be filing law suits against him. Add to this his propensity to bare his hairy chest at any given moment and you have a situation that would (allegedly) make former BBC employees have flashbacks to the 1970’s.
As with the previous sci-fi titles I’ve reviewed from Fabulous Films, you don’t watch these for the Academy Award winning acting, or the mind-blowing special effects…even the storylines won’t challenge the intellect of your average 5 year old. What you DO get though are movies which entertain on a level that a lot of modern day big budget blockbusters would love to compete with. The Angry Red Planet was a blast to watch from start to finish. Now get yourselves over to Fabulous Films and buy these beauties.
Review by Dave (host of 60 Minutes With) from a disc kindly supplied by Fabulous Films.
