31 Days of Cheese Day 11: The Angry Red Planet

Taking leave of men in Gorilla suits (they will be back, alas) today’s slice of cheese is The Angry Red Planet from 1959.

As the film starts, two months after they were presumed lost, the first Mars exploration ship returns to earth. Of the four crew only Dr. Iris (Irish) Ryan (Yes she has red hair) is able to tell the tale.

Rounding out the crew is the commander who is a self impressed dick. I mean very self impressed. There is a doctor/professor/egghead type who I guess designed the rocket so they brought him along. And a guy from Brooklyn. They don’t say he’s from Brooklyn but he might as well have been wearing a dodger cap. He is, and there is no polite way to say it, an idiot. Granted in 1959 we didn’t know how manned space travel worked but even so you’d never put this nitwit inside a space ship.

Anyway as Iris/Irish starts to tell the story (her memory has been repressed by the trauma or some such) we follow along as they fly to Mars (and this takes a long damn time, padding I think they call it) and as they travel, the self impressed dick hits on Iris who likes being hit on by said self impressed dick. The idiot reads magazines and makes radio reports while the egghead type smokes a pipe.

Eventually they land on Mars and they spend time looking out the window. We don’t get to see what they see just yet – The effects budget for this film was limited you know.

They do venture out and they find Mars is red. The film uses a red filter effect to add depth to the painted back rounds –sometimes it works sometimes it gives you a head ache.

They run into a man, actually woman eating plant, that after Iris/Irish is rescued, is reduced to a frozen vegetable by the idiot using his special freeze ray gun (which uses ultra sound so they don’t have to add in ray gun effects in post production. This film does have a limited budget.) The Idiot then spend the rest of his film time calling the gun Cleo after Cleopatra. Don’t ask.

In the films iconic moment they run into the Rat-Bat-Spider-Crab which is the best effect in the film and is the moment you remember afterwards. It’s probably better known than the movie itself. You see it you know it. Especially if you’re a fan of the Misfits.

Then they see a city on a lake, are attacked by a giant ameba which eats the idiot and causes injury to the self impressed dick. They defeat the ameba with electricity (take that you massive one celled organism!) and escape Mars (the egghead dies in the process). Back on earth, the self impressed dick’s injury is healed and he and Iris are making plans to hit Broadway to take in a show. But the ships tape’s contain a warning. The head Martian (I guess) tells us in no uncertain terms not to come back to Mars.

That last segment seems to come out of left field – you see the Head Martian lurking about but there is no lead up to his dismissive “do what you want with your own mud ball but stay the hell off Mars you insane bloodthirsty lunatics” speech. In the Day the Earth Stood Still you knew that Klatuu viewed the political situation of Earth with impatient contempt. So his “do what you want with earth but keep your insanity local or we’ll reduce earth to a burnt out cinder” message at the end feels right. Not so here. He just seems like a standard bad guy.

It’s a silly movie and painfully dated.

On a personal note I remember that this was on the local TV Sci-Fi Movie more than once as I was growing up. I do have to say, I miss being able to watch horrible films late at night on TV – these days, when I can’t sleep at 3 am all that’s on are infomercials for makeup, grills, salad makers and exercise videos. Have a man in a gorilla suit demonstrate a salad maker and maybe I’ll pay attention.

Enjoy with Crab Legs.