Hi,
I think I've found the forum of people who might know or be able to find out what movie this was.
It was in the early 70's and I only saw about the last half hour of it around 2 in the morning. Astronauts had landed on Mars. Outside the space craft was this thing that looked like a cactus with a big red light (i suppose an eye) on it. It had three arms which had solar collectors on the ends and needed to point towards the sun.
Mission Control told him it was called a "Photose" (I think) and that they should try to be friendly towards it. One of the astronauts approached it and eventually it roasted him with a heat ray. The next guy had to figure out how to defeat the "Photose" and get back to earth.
I know this isn't much. If you try to search the web on "Photose", well, forget it, its just too common a misspelling for Photos. If it was spelled differently I'd never know...
The monster sounds vaguely like one from Battle Beyond the Sun (1962). Roger Corman bought a Russian movie, and had Francis Ford Coppola rework it for US release. Among the additions were two battling monsters resembling male and female genitalia.
Don't know if this is your movie, but the big one-eyed cactus could easily be a big one-eyed Willy.
This might be it but I'd have to watch it and I'm afraid to. Not that I'm afraid of the monsters or anything but more afraid of what the movie would do to my mind.
If there was a scene where they tried to move the rocket's attenna between the cactus monster and the sun to put it sleep, I'd have to conclude this was it.
Then I'd no longer be able to think of it as a cactus and more in terms of body parts you describe.
Doesn't sound like anything I've ever seen, but maybe this site will help;
Mars Movie Guide (http://marsmovieguide.com/)
It's a listing of all the movies they know about which involve Mars.
Thanks,
This is a valuable list in and of itself. From what I've gleened, if its not Battle Beyond the Sun, it might have been that the planet visited was not even Mars!
Maybe I'll draw a picture of the monster an post it. It won't be very good, probably a line drawing.
Think a giant club stuck in the ground (this thing wasn't mobile) which had one large red eye. So I guess it also counts as a cyclops. The red eye was able to blast out a heat ray. It was powered by three solar arrays which were attached like arms and followed the sun much the way sun flowers do. When I say solar arrays, it was still organic looking, everything was smooth no sharp edges.
At one point they tried to move the antenna of the ship in front of it to create a shadow to put it to sleep.