THE ANGRY RED PLANET
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| Not Rated
| | Copyright 1960 American International Pictures
| | Reviewed by Andrew Borntreger on 'a long time ago'
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- Dr. Iris Ryan - Nicknamed "Irish," she is here to scream at all the scary monsters. Her entire face unhinges. I swear the woman is part snake.
- Colonel Thomas O'Bannion - Mission commander who starts putting the moves on Iris before the ship is even out of orbit.
- Chief Warrant Officer Sam Jacobs - Gleeful moron with a freeze-ray gun, spends most of his time lavishing affection on it until the amoeba eats him.
- Professor Theodore Gettell - We are informed he is the spaceship's designer and an expert on such things, then watch him wander around with a pipe. Dies of a heart attack or stroke.
- General George Treegar - Why in the heck was a military officer in command of this?
- The Bat-Rat-Spider - Give some disturbed kid a chainsaw, thread, and the named animals. He will make one for you. (You need a lobster too.)
- The Carnivorous Plant - Tries to eat Iris, they chop her free and move to a safe distance, then Sam freezes it out of spite.
- The Giant Amoeba - The largest single celled organism ever, this thing must be a hundred yards across. Col O'Bannion rewires the radar to fry it with electricity.
- The Martians - The galactic equivalent of farmer Joe with his shotgun, don't like no humans trespassing on der property!
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| A film, from 1959, which deals with the exploration of Mars is going to be cannon fodder so I'll stick with common sense aspects. Two months after it was presumed lost on Mars, the rocketship MR-1 is discovered in a stationary orbit around Earth, but attempts to raise the crew via radio are useless. Two months? Pathfinder took seven months just to reach Mars, who made this ship, Ferrari? General Treegar and the other experts (No meeting with the President and the brightest minds available?) decide to land the craft under remote control. What followed left me dumbfounded, a launch - in reverse, as they land this enormous rocket with no problem. I'm pretty sure that part cheeses off the Mars Polar Lander fellows to no end. Two survivors are on board, Iris and Colonel O'Bannion, the latter's arm is covered with a strange growth. She is finally able to relate the mission's fateful journey, including having gravity the entire flight! You heard me, the astronauts walk around their spacious craft under normal gravity, which is explained as "constant acceleration." It's almost as if they were actually on the set of some movie studio... ...reality is a gossamer thing I tell you. After landing they spend several minutes looking out viewports and describing the sights to us, then Iris sees a scary face in the window and screams. Everyone suits up and goes outside to explore, boy are strange things waiting for them: carnivorous plants, huge bat-rat-spider-lobster things, a giant amoeba, and the Martians themselves. How they mistook the bat-rat-spider-lobster beast for a patch of trees is still a mystery, but common sense fled me (Early on and under a hail of blows from the film.) anyway. |
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| Things I Learned From This Movie: | |
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- The Pentagon has screen doors.
- A rocket landing looks just like a rocket taking off, except in reverse.
- Shifting desert sand dunes make excellent landing pads.
- Earth is orbited by deadly radioactive meteorites. (I do not mean small particles, I mean glowing hunks of rock.)
- Palm trees grow on Mars.
- If it looks like a man-eating plant then it probably is a man-eating plant.
- Having your eyes flash frozen sucks.
- Nobody likes us. (Us humans that is.)
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- 2 mins - Is it called the X-1 or the MR-1?
- 3 mins - They flew to Nevada in a B-52? (A bomber.) Why not a passenger aircraft?
- 16 mins - That is a darn roomy spaceship.
- 27 mins - Why is she cleaning everything, it wasn't clean when they first packed the gear?
- 32 mins - Stole those spacesuits from the local service station didn't you?
- 42 mins - I really think that their helmets are open, no faceplates. (I'm right you know.)
- 66 mins - Maybe you should check out the top of the tree...
- 77 mins - Even through this crazy red effect I can tell that is a drawing.
- 84 mins - This is the first point I can confirm one of my suspicions, their control room is where the engines should be...
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- Sam: "If those Martians are out there they must invisible."
- Sam: "Some baby, that rat-bat-spider nightmare, huh?"
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| | Audio clips in wav format | SOUNDS | Starving actors speak out | |
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| File | Dialog |  | angryred1.wav
| Control: "Stand by to check interior radiation."
Treegar: "Hold it, look!"
Control: "Recovery squads, hold!"
Treegar: "Someone's alive!"
Guy: "The girl!"
Treegar: "To hell with radiation, let's go!"
| | angryred2.wav
| O'Bannion: "Mars, the angry red planet."
Iris: "Sounds so foreboding, doesn't it?"
| | angryred3.wav
| Sam: "Well, should we go out and claim the planet in the name of Brooklyn?"
| | angryred4.wav
| The Martians laying down the law.
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| | Click for a larger image | IMAGES | Scenes from the movie | |
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| | Watch a scene | VIDEO | MPEG video files | |
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 | angryred1.mpg
- 2.4m
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| The Bat-Rat-Spider! Even with the effects available when this movie was made he is one of the more memorable creatures to ever come out of Hollywood. My humble opinion of course.
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| | Leave a comment | EXTRAS | Buy the movie | |
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