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 Trouble erupts when a scientist makes radio contact with Mars. He's using
equipment invented by a Nazi war-criminal. People panic when messages from
Mars indicate they live for 300 years, have lots of food, and have all the
energy they need. Then they messages start talking about religion, calling for
a "rebirth of the worship of God." The USSR has a revolution because of the
messages, but soon some are wondering if the messages are really from Mars.
"Exciting, suspenseful thriller" the box says and closes with a quote from
something called the Motion Picture Herald: "The comparatively unknown cast
turns in credible and attractive performances." 1952, 87 minutes, VHS
How can a pro-Christian, anti-commie, science fiction movie starring a very
tall, tan, and blonde Peter Graves fail to provide an entertaining experience?
Graves plays an astronomer named Dr. Chris Blahblah who is trying to make
contact with Mars via radio or CB or something. Breaker! Breaker! This is
Dr. Chris coming at ya! Come on back now, ya hear! Ten-four! He works with
some people who take pictures of Mars and they've noticed that over the weekend
the Martians have somehow managed to melt their polar icecaps. And to think,
it will still take us a couple hundred years before we can duplicate that
catastrophe. Eventually Dr. Chris gets a signal from Mars (94.5, the X, more
rock, less talk!) and gets all jacked up about it. Of course every good
scientist on the verge of a major break through, needs a whiney, superstitious
wife to try and hold him and progress back. Dr. Chris is no exception and we
are introduced to Mrs. Dr. Chris who's name escapes me at the moment (my
counselor says that I should not concentrate on things or people that make me
angry) so I'll baptize her, Jezebel. Jezzie, as she no doubt likes to called,
tells Dr. Chris that she's living in fear! Utter and abject FEAR! Why?
Because science is so scary and it's causing terrible things to happen, such as
the atom bomb, the uh, ah, atom bomb, and well there's the atom bomb, and oh
yes the Edsel. Then she screeches that Dr. Chris and his fancy-pantsy science
pals are going to "advance us right into oblivion!" Can you imagine being
married to the haranguing hag? No wonder Dr. Chris is trying to get some kind
of hookup on another planet! Then we switch to a Russian observatory manned by
some Nazi war criminal and he's also trying to radio Mars. This Nazi invented
the "hydrogen valve" that allows us to radio Mars. He knows that Dr. Chris
has made contact with Mars and is listening in. The movie then begins its slow
descent into annoying evangelism by focusing on a statue of Jesus and then
on a painting of Jesus. You should have heard the moan escape from the crowd
that
filled my trailer to watch a good old-fashioned alien invasion movie. It was
obvious we were going to be watching a good old-fashioned Sunday School lesson.
Where were Davy and Goliath when you needed them? This movie then begins its nauseating efforts to get out it's message about how
great America is and crappy the commies are and how wonderful a Christian god
is. We get to see Dr. Chris' domestic bliss with him and his kids farting
around doing projects and his wife smiling inanely at their antics. Life is
good and then an admiral shows up at their house. He's an expert in codes and
he's going to help Dr. Chris decipher the messages he's been getting from Mars.
Chris' wife switches back into bitch mode, by noting that Mars is the God of
War. Hey, honey that's great, glad to see the G.E.D. is paying dividends.
Chris' cute little kid comes up with a way to talk to Mars involving using Pi.
You do like Pi, don't you? That's probably what got Dr. Chris stuck in his
loveless marriage in the first place. So they are able to decode the words of
wisdom that the dopes on Mars fire off at Earth. You then get your standard
"parade
of headlines" scene. You know the one I'm talking about. All these newspapers
fly by the screen from all over the world announcing the new messages, each
more exciting and amazing than the last: "Martians live to be 300 years old!"
"Martians feed 1000 per acre!" "Aliens kidnap old-west lawman in 1899!" Wait a
sec - that last headline is from my Weekly World News. Sorry about that.
Anyway, people start reacting to this astounding news by setting up souvenir
stands next to the lab that Dr. Chris works at. Once everyone gets their fill
of Dr. Chris t-shirts and bumper stickers that say, "Don't laugh Martians, it's
paid for!" they then decide to panic. Farm prices crash, mines close, NBA
players go on strike - it's pretty much the end of the world as we know
it. And as you
might have already guessed, it's completely illogical. Just because a really
tan egghead says the Martians are talking to him about how much they can grow
on Mars, why does that have any impact on what happens here on Earth? People
don't just stop working because Peter Graves is waving a decoded Martian
message in their face. Here's a question. Why does everyone assume these
messages are real? If this really happened, many people wouldn't believe it
and would need something a little more than Dr. Chris saying so. But the world
of Red Planet Mars is populated by idiots like his wife who runs around like
some self-important Chicken Little. Keep in mind that this movie still has communism to bash. Periodically we
interrupt the stirring tale of Dr. Chris and his mentally unbalanced wife to
check in with the Rooskies. We do this in a couple of ways. You get your
scenes of the Nazi whooping it up in his mountain lab, getting wasted on cheap
Russian booze and running his mouth at his Russian bosses. There's really no
point to these scenes other than to have the Nazi keep saying that he's
listening to all the talking between Mars and Dr. Chris. You also got your
scenes at what is probably supposed to be the Kremlin where the Reds are
babbling about crushing the USA or starving their own people or whatever it was
that commies plotted about back in the day. Then you got your poor
downtrodden Russian people who are all these old geezers with long white beards
(and that's just the ladies!) who listen to the Voice of America radio station
secretly (less rock, more propaganda!) and have to hide it under the stones of
the fireplace (like they were Hogan and Newkirk and Schultz was running around
trying to make sure Hogan wasn't up to something while a very important general
from the front was visiting along with his beautiful niece) before Russian
soldiers arrive to roust them. Suddenly a brand new message is decoded that
shakes humanity to its very foundations. "Love goodness, hate evil" proclaims
the Martian dolts. Everyone goes ga-ga over that because they all think it's
from the Bible or something and I'm thinking, I ain't never read no Bible, but
I'm pretty sure I coulda come up with that message without any help from
above. The president is creaming himself over this, cause he's a strong
Christian and his God is an awesome God and WWJD and all that jazz, so he
releases the message worldwide and suddenly religious fervor sweeps the globe.
I should point out that when I say "religious fervor," I mean a Christian
fervor, because it's the annoying conceit of this movie that everything that is
wrong in the world could be cured if everyone became a Christian and all the
governments were theocracies. Yeah, that's always worked out well, when
they've tried it in the past. More messages are supposedly received and decoded and these messages are now
pretty much saying the same thing, "attention Russians, overthrow the Commies!"
Also, an avalanche buries the Nazi and his observatory at about this time for
no real reason. Soon, the Russians heed their Martian masters and they revolt
and throw those commie bums out on their keisters! USA! USA! Everyone on the
planet is happy now! Peace is breaking out all over and everyone suddenly goes
back to church, (Christian of course). At this point, I went out into my
kitchen to put my head in the oven, but then I remembered that the dang thing
hasn't worked in about two years. It kind of limits my cooking to the burners
on top of the stove, the microwave, and Taco Bell. I sullenly returned to the
movie and they were still trying to beat me over the head with their thinly
veiled and simplistic message. So, everything is great until Dr. Chris gets
an unexpected visitor to his lab. It's Franz! The Nazi-inventor of the
wonderful
hydrogen valve which made this stinking pile of religious dung possible! He
survived the avalanche. I guess God does work in mysterious and plot-friendly
ways. Franz drops this bit on Dr. Chris and his smelly wife. He was the one
who sent the messages! Well, Dr. Chris and I had a good, hearty laugh at that
one, but Chris' wife didn't find it funny at all. Then it comes out that the
president had some of the religious messages sent out, not Franz. Franz, in a
moment of self-realization announces gleefully that "I love satan!" Um, yeah,
he's a Nazi. He's a really bad guy. I get the point, even without him
broadcasting his feelings for old Scratch. Since he's really bad and Satan's
pal and all that WWSD jazz, Franz declares that he is going to tell the world
that he faked all the messages. Of course why anyone would believe the
rantings of Nazi-satanist is beyond me, but let's accept that for melodrama's
sake and move on. Dr. Chris and his wife don't want that to happen so they get
ready to blow up the lab with them and the Nazi inside of it. These were real
stomach-churning scenes as the wife tries to act all gallant and asks for a
cigarette so that she can dramatically light it up and blow all three of their
worthless behinds to smithereens. Everyone in my trailer (and by that I mean
me since I have no friends and even if I did, would they be stupid enough to
come and watch this at 2:00 a.m.?) is chanting "blow, blow, blow!" Before they
can do it, another message from Mars comes on and Franz shoots the screen and
we all get our wish as they're blown into oblivion, except Peter Graves who
would have a long and healthy film and television career.  Basically this movie made me want to puke, with it's moralizing and
oversimplification of about every issue that people have differences on. If
you want to spew forth your religious propaganda, go ahead, but try to be an
artist about it. This was like watching some awful play put on by the goons
that are in charge of the 700 Club (If you'd like to see how it ends, please
send your donation to Pat here at the station!). The entire movie was
completely unrealistic in its portrayal of man's reactions to its first alien
contact. Civilization collapses five minutes after they blabber about the
first message. So what do they do? They keep releasing more messages, even
after they saw the effect the first one had on everyone. Do you think our
government releases every bit of contact they have with alien intelligence? Of
course they don't. They lay everything on thick in this movie. Commies and
Nazis? Come on, where were the child molesters and the liberals? I never did
understand the whole deal with Franz the Nazi. Why have an avalanche? Just to
surprise us when he showed up at the end? Why is he showing up at the end
anyway? If you wanted to go public with the claim that you faked the messages,
why would make the effort to escape the avalanche and the iron curtain and then
go to Dr. Chris and his stupid lab? And just because you have the decoded
messages written down, so what? Maybe you decoded them. Maybe you just made
them up after you heard what they were. Maybe your scheme is so convoluted
that the audience should hate you not because you are a Nazi, not because you
are a satanist, but because you had all that time up in Siberia to come up with
something killer and all you could do is show up and taunt Dr. Chris and his
zealot wife. I ain't saying that the idea of receiving messages of religious
significance from outer space and the impact that would have on the world isn't
a good one. It's an interesting premise, and one that many science fiction
writers like Arthur C. Clarke have dealt with in well written books. Some of
these have even made it to the big screen (2001: A Space Odyssey comes to
mind) and manage to be thought provoking pieces on man and his spiritual
relationship to the cosmos, but this junk is just a polemic they're trying to
cram down our throats and it doesn't work, and as the years go by, it's more
and more ridiculous, and that most of all is why you don't want to sacrifice
the idea to deliver propaganda. Propaganda dates fast and almost always badly.
So how can you do this successfully? In the words of the president of 49% of
the
United States, you need to "subliminalize" it.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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