One of the great truisms of our universe is that if Mars isn’t invading Earth, then we are invading Mars. Like a couple of feuding neighbors that dump dead birds in the others’ pools and send the Jehovah’s Witnesses to one another, both planets can’t seem to get by without trying to take a space dump on the other one. Hollywood caught on to all this interplanetary intrigue a long time ago and the whole genre probably peaked in the fifties and sixties with 1959’s The Angry Red Planet being a worthy effort distinguished by its serious tone, interesting message and the use of Cinemagic.

Cinemagic is the process that they used to shoot all the scenes that took place on Mars. It can best be described as kind of a cross between using a red filter and making a negative image of the film. The result is what looks like a film negative that is tinted red. It’s quite effective and allows the film to get away with some pretty atrocious special effects, but more on that later.

There’s a bunch of ga ga from military types on Earth about how they just located this missing ship that was supposed to go to Mars and then come back with all kinds of Martian trophies. It turns out that the ship is just drifting in space aimlessly, so they use their remote control stuff to bring it back to Earth. That’s a pretty nifty gimmick to have, but it kind of makes the pilot on board rather pointless. Besides, if they had remote control of this thing, how did they lose it in the first place?

Once they get their remote control rocket back to Earth, they surround it from a distance, fearing radiation from it. However, once the hatch on the ship opens up, the guy in charge says “forget the radiation, go help those people inside!” Uh, yeah, right behind you buddy.

Everyone rushes up to the ship, hoping to get the first autograph from a Martian, but all they get is the plain old stinky Earth crew that got the darn ship lost in the first place. One guy is hauled out under a white sheet and we see that his arm is covered in green goo. There is also a woman that is helped off the ship. I think they might have carted off a corpse, too. All in all, I would have to declare that a mission well done!

They take the two survivors to a hospital and they ask the woman what the frig happened up there. Did they let you drive or something, little missy? Dr. Iris Ryan begins to recount her story of “how we went to Mars and got ourselves a new arse-hole ripped” and it becomes obvious that this is going to be one of those flashback movies where we know pretty much that she survived and that so did a dude with a green hand. Everyone else aboard obviously didn’t make the cut.

The movie plays it smart by having only a four member crew. So many of these space flight films insist on having a crew of about ten cardboard characters. This just prevents us from spending much time on or caring about anyone. In this movie, you only have about four cardboard characters you don’t care about, so when somebody bites it, you know the movie means business!

These four people are the aforementioned Iris, the captain of the ship, Colonel O’Bannion, a professor of something or other named Professor Gettel and then there is Sam Jacobs. Sam is the funny, beefy guy that was standard issue on all space flights in the fifties. He’s the character that carts around some kind of ultrasonic freeze gun and names it Cleo, after Cleopatra because she is one cool babe. He’s also the character that you just know (and hope) gets wasted pronto on Mars.

Iris and the Colonel are immediately an item and the Captain spends most of the flight to Mars hitting on her and calling her Irish. I’m not going to lie to you about some parts of this movie being a bit dated. You’ve got the crew wearing what appears to be penny loafers, you’ve got the professor smoking a pipe, and you even have a scene of Iris typing up reports on a typewriter. She also finds time to put a little perfume on her pulse points. Keep in mind that this is a rocket ship we are on, not a Carnival Cruise Line vessel.

Once landing on the planet, all four of them roll out to take a look around. There’s nothing like a space mission where they leave no one in the ship. What if something happens to the ship when they’re gone, like a carjacking or something? At least protect your rig with the Club. The other concern of course, is what happens if they all get attacked by something, like one of those Martian man-eating plants you’re always hearing about? I think that Mission Control would like to have someone back at the ship that could report that everyone got themselves turned into Soylent Green and that could fly the rocket back home and turn over all the data that they collected.

So, ignoring their training, they all walk out into the alien Martian landscape and straight into Cinemagic! As film gimmicks go, this one is pretty good at conveying a sense of alieness. The negative effect acts to wash out many details so that the actors’ faces appear smooth with perfect lips and eyes which really comes in handy for the wrinkled up old Colonel. This effect allows the film makers to get away with what would normally be laughably bad paintings and sketches for backgrounds. Distracted by the fact that everything is red and that you can’t see things as they normally would appear, you can swallow that these pictures could very well be something from an alien world. Heck, I ain’t never been to Mars, maybe the landscape there looks like a bad drawing shot through a red filter and then negativized.

Their exploring finds our intrepid Cinemagicnauts doing what they do best – riling up the native life out of sheer stupidity. Irish is whacking away with her machete and they next thing you know she’s running away screeching “it’s alive!” That innocent looking branch she hacked off was really part of a gigantic monster’s leg hair or something. This is the creature that is featured on the poster and is best described as a thing with the body of a rat, the legs of a spider and the wings of a bat. This thing is moving on all its legs and making this awful sound before that guy with Cleo shoots it in the eyes and blinds it. It screeches around with some of its legs/arms trying to rub its eyes and eventually goes on its merry, but now very handicapped, way. I actually felt kind of bad for that sucker! After all, he was just minding his business and this dumb skank starts amputating his body parts.

After being chased by a giant amoeba, they decide it’s time to head back to Earth. The remainder of the movie reveals a message from Mars, explains who lives and dies and who got his armed slimed and the attempts to save him back on Earth. The ridiculously primitive view of space flight and the cruddy interplay between the crew (the fat guy complains to Irish that her space suit hides her curves) is more than outweighed by the look and feel that the Cinemagic process gives their stay on Mars.

The message from Mars at the end takes this one of out of the juvenile category that you may have been tempted to put it in based on its poster. This isn’t a story of how we can just land on some planet and take over through bluster and blaster, but about the fact that there may those out there watching and getting ready for us when we are finally advanced enough to come bother them. Don’t worry though, most of the movie is devoted to getting harassed by various monsters. Worth a look in spite of the clunky dialogue, stupid-bland characters, and the fact that the green goo infecting the Colonel looks like he just got too excited at the Jell-o bar.

© 2008 MonsterHunter