Hollywood’s Red Menace

 Decade After Decade, in One Cheesy Movie After Another, the Message Stays the Same: Mars Is Hazardous to Your Health!!!

Recent confirmation of primitive life on Mars eons ago didn’t surprise Hollywood a bit. Filmmakers have always known there’s life on Mars. And they’ve always known Something Else: It’s hostile.

            In the Hollywood canon, there are two kinds of Mars movies. You can go to Mars -- and meet a monster. Or, as is more often the case, you can stay home and wait for Mars to attack (as it invariably will). Either way, Mars is a sinister place, and it exerts a baleful influence, especially on filmmakers. Check out the catalog of Mars movies listed chronologically below and you’ll see what I mean. Maybe it’s something in the water, but Mars has a way of making movie people do some really stupid things . . 

            Rocketship X-M (1950). Astronauts Lloyd Bridges and Hugh O’Brian (…yeah; 50s’ TV’s Mike Bridges & Wyatt Earp) crash-land on the Red Planet and find themselves fighting for their lives against hideous mutants left over from a nuclear war that destroyed Martian civilization. Of course they do. 

            Flight to Mars (1951). Crash-landed astronaut Cameron Mitchell has to fight for his life against Martian sword-rattlers who want to use his spacecraft as the prototype for a Martian invasion fleet. (See a pattern here?) One of the last-gasp productions of the late, unlamented Monogram Pictures, and the first Mars movie made in color.

            The War of the Worlds (1953). Producer George Pal’s update of H.G. Wells’ 1898 novel, with Gene Barry as the Earth’s first line of defense, remains the “Citizen Kane” of Mars-attacks movies. The Oscar-winning special effects actually hold up nicely.

            Invaders from Mars (also 1953). Director William Cameron Menzies’ paranoid nightmare (and Cold War parable) finds hideous mutants from you-know-where sucking Earthlings underground (in little Jimmy Hunt‘s backyard) and controlling them by sticking radio-directed implants in the back of their necks. Only some late intervention and heavy firepower from the U.S. military keeps the Martian plot from succeeding. Two things: “Invaders from Mars“ is so good that Hollywood felt duty-bound to let Tobe Hooper remake it in 1986. His version has the feel of the original (and much better production values) but not its heart. It’s also missing Hillary Brooke, in a brief but memorable turn (in a brief and memorable negligee) as little Jimmy’s mother.

            Robot Monster (yup, once again, 1953, the annis mirabilis of Mars movies). A gorilla from Mars kills everyone on Earth except George Nader and his family. This movie is so shockingly awful that it’s hilarious. Made for exactly $16,000 (much of which went for stock footage from 1951’s “Flight to Mars”), it nevertheless grossed more than $1 million. Elmer Bernstein wrote the score.

            It! The Terror from Beyond Space, from 1958, is a Martian vampire, played by Ray “Crash” Corrigan in a rubber suit. If you’ve ever wondered where Ridley Scott found the plot for “Alien,” look no farther. (And never forget: a Classic, by definition, is just something that is better than everything it steals from.)

            The Angry Red Planet (1959). Astronauts Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne and Jack Kruschen battle Martian monsters that look like plants, except for one that looks like a gigantic cross between a mouse and a spider. A cult classic. And why? Because -- to duplicate the surface of the Red Planet -- this turkey was shot in a process called “Cinemagic” that only makes everything come out a nauseating shade of pink. Also because it was co-produced and co-written by a guy named Sid Pink (no kidding).

            The Day Mars Invaded Earth (1962) is a knockoff of Don Siegel’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”: It eventually dawns on dim bulb scientist Kent Taylor that the Martians are replacing Earth people with exact replicas. I am now going to give away the ending (if only to spare you some crummy special effects and lotsa cringe-worthy thespianism). It’s part of their conspiracy to conquer Earth, of course, but the sinister beauty of this movie is, try as he might, Taylor is helpless to stop the Martians -- and their plot succeeds! A terrific premise ruined by pedestrian execution.

            Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) is a knockoff of Defoe. It stars Paul Mantee as the stranded hero, and Mona, the Woolly Monkey actually has third billing, but it’s not that bad. Really. Co-penned by the same Ib Melchior who directed “The Angry Red Planet.”

            Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964). The title says it all. Arguably, the worst movie ever made. But not for my money. My money’s on . .. .

            Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965; a.k.a. Mars Invades Puerto Rico). Frankenstein here is neither a mad scientist nor a reanimated monster, but rather a NASA android in a cheesy costume. The Martians, with the Space Monster in tow (and cheesy costumes of their own), are here to kidnap Puerto Rican women and take them home to repopulate the Red Planet. I didn’t say the premise of this movie was idiotic but everything else about it most definitely is.

            The Wizard of Mars (1965). John Carradine was 108 years old when he essayed the title role in this embarrassing set-on-Mars variation on “The Wizard of Oz.”

            Mars Needs Women (1966). Who doesn’t? What has never been needed is this imbecilic variation on “Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster,” but without Frank. Utterly irredeemable.

            Total Recall (1990) is not a Mars movie per se; it’s actually a meditation on the evils of Imperial Colonialism; it just happens to be set on Mars. That said, it is also rip-roaring science fiction and the only time in screen history when Arnold Schwarzenegger has been married to Sharon Stone. It even has half a brain in its head, based as it is (though ever-so-loosely) on Philip K. Dick’s classic short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale.” Not to be confused with the 2012 version with Colin Farrell, which is closer to PKD and miles short of Entertaining.

            Mars Attacks! (1996). Just when you thought the genre was played out comes this affectionate parody (“Nice planet. We’ll take it.”) from director Tim Burton. With Jack Nicholson as the President and Tom Jones as Himself, I think you can kinda see what Burton’s going for here.

            Wanna make 114 minutes seem like Eternity? Plop yourself down in an uncomfortable chair with a six pack of Light Beer and unreel Brian De Palma’s Mission to Mars from 2000. And then watch in slack-jawed amazement as Don Cheadle and his Mars I crew are knocked off right after the opening credits, and then -- maybe they weren’t. So Gary Sinise and Tim Robbins and a whole other crew are sent off to … what? Maybe rescue Don; maybe sacrifice themselves trying? Or find out the Meaning of Life? Believe me, you won’t care.

            John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars (2001). Quintessential Mars movie, a schlock sandwich that’s so delicious you’ll never want another; tags every base. Monsters? Check: Martian mine workers whose bodies have been taken over by the title characters, rendering them into slobbering zombies. Crummy production values? Check; the whole movie was shot -- in the dark -- in a New Mexico gypsum mine whose normally white walls have been drenched in red paint to give it that -- well, Mars look. How ‘bout cast? Cast! Natasha Henstridge (of  “Species” infamy) as a police lieutenant charged with bringing Snake Plissken-esque outlaw Ice Cube to book. Jason Statham! Pam Grier! Joanna Cassidy! … Cost $28m to make, recouped exactly half of that.

            Doom (2005), based loosely (but perhaps not loosely enough) on the shoot-’em-up video game, is an absolute one-off: a movie with Karl Urban in it that is, nevertheless, unwatchable. Never happened before; hasn‘t happened since (and I‘m including that stupid Viking movie, “Pathfinder.”)

            The Martian (2015), the last Matt Damon helmer anyone paid money to see, is basically “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” for audiences who have lived through the Space Age. Based on a crackerjack novel (by Andy Weir); directed by none other than Ridley Scott. The one thing you take from this Rescue Impossible movie is the realization of just How Fucking Far Away from us Mars actually is. That’s the best news you’re liable to uncover in this whole damn book.