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The Angry Red Planet

The Angry Red Planet

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: god-Awful!
Review: This is undoubtedly one of the worst science-fiction films I've ever seen. The red hue and wierd "music" was boring and well..I've already taped over it-which is about as good of a use as I can recommend for this waste of tape.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Angry Red Planet
Review: Three men and a woman are the first people sent to Mars, but the expedition gets in trouble, so military-men and scientists back on Earth remote-fire the rocket's engines and bring the ship back. After the ship lands the female astronaut stumbles out of the ship, and the military rushes out to help her. They interview her and she recounts what happened on their mission to Mars. The flight there went fine (very boring, filled with techno-babble and rampant sexism), but when they land, weird things begin to happen. The Martians don't want Earthmen mucking about on their world so they terrorize the crew with 3-eyed cucumber-looking peeping Toms, foam-rubber man-eating plants waiting to devour the astronauts, and trees that turn out to be a really goofy spider-monster (it looks like some sort of rat with crab legs glued to it). But the best Martian creature is a giant amoeba thing with eyeballs that twirl (imagine a WHOLE bunch of Jell-O oozing across the Martian landscape) that appears while the explorers are paddling their rubber raft across a Martian lake.

This is one of those "aliens warning man that we are too violent" movies, and its not really all that bad. They attempted to make the set with its lakes and jungle look like Mars (yes I said lakes and a jungle) by filming everything as a reverse negative through the brightest red gel filter ever made, that way they could get away with cheap props and crudely sketched backdrops because you couldn't see anything anyways. To get the same effect try watching a movie through a glass of cherry Cool-Aid. It gets really annoying really fast. The acting isn't too bad, but the effects are, especially the creature effects. Still it's a fun '50s sci-fi adventure.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Filmed over the weekend on some leftover sets?
Review: Watch the first seven or eight minutes of this movie carefully, and you'll see something interesting: only ONE scene (an exchange between a few characters in an "aerospace" office) was actually filmed for this movie, and the rest is all stock footage-- of aircraft, naval bases, radar equipment, etc. In other words, it's another quality production of American International Pictures! And that opening segment is only the beginning. Wait'll you see some of the more ambitious cost-saving measures later on. And I guess that's my point: if you go into this movie as a kind of "student of schlock", you might have some fun with it. But if you are looking for something truly involving or actually thought-provoking, take the advice of the (badly hand drawn) martian in the movie and "keep away and never return!"

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Angry Red Planet: Reaction at the original premier
Review: Way back when, when exploitation flicks were really in full bloom, came "The Angry Red Planet" which was purported at the time to be filmed in a new film process, which turned out to be a red wash to make the cheap scenery and astoundingly dumb visual effects look like Mars.

For the record, the film actually had a World Premiere at LA's former 4-Star Theatre, once located in the Miracle Mile District.

I was just a kid and the screening was not filled, although the stars of the film, namely Nora Hayden, Gerald Mohr and Jack Kruschen (who went on to be a major character actor) attended - so theatre mangement let me in to take a look. Without giving away too much, many shots were apparantly lifted from an old 3 Stooges short, the film reeked of cheapness, the music score was
appropriately schlocky, and it was a cheap shot from beginning to end, however, it was fun and worth seeing once..just to see the real low end of the genre.Worth seeing anyway.


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