Search - The Angry Red Planet on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Suitable for Children Movie Release: 1959 DVD Release: 11/20/2001 Format: DVD - Pan and Scan Audio Tracks: English Subtitles: English, French, Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 23 mins Studio: MGM Members Wishing: 5 Genres: Science Fiction, Sci-Fi Action, Space Adventure, Creature Film

The United States space program reports that its missing, overdue manned Mars probe has returned to Earth orbit, but that they haven't been able to make radio contact with it. When it is brought down by remote control, they find three of the four crewmembers aboard: one of them, Professor Gettell (Les Tremayne), is dead; another, mission commander Colonel Tom O'Bannion (Gerald Mohr), is in a coma and suffering from some kind of alien infection; and the third, exo-biologist Iris Ryan (Nora Hayden), is in a state of shock. The ship's tape library seems to have been wiped clean of any record of what took place on the mission, and the doctors can't begin to save O'Bannion until they know what happened. In desperation, they decide to put Iris Ryan into a state of hypnosis, forcing her to recall the events of the mission. The bulk of the film is an un-narrated flashback in which we see the voyage to Mars and the quartet of explorers -- rounded out by technician Sam Jacobs (Jack Kruschen) -- proceeding successfully to a landing. As they draw closer to signs of intelligent life, however, the group also encounters increasingly dangerous creatures, including a man-eating plant, a giant bat-rat-spider, and a huge amoeba-like creature that consumes anything in its path. Sam is killed in an encounter with one of these menaces and O'Bannion is infected with an alien microbe, even as the ship is held fast by a powerful magnetic force. Gettell figures out a way to launch, at the cost of his own life, and Iris is left alone with the stricken O'Bannion on the journey back to Earth. The film concludes as the scientists find the one piece of information left on the ship's tapes, a warning from the Martians that the primitive, war-like people from Earth may not visit the planet again, except at risk to their lives. One of a relative handful of 1950s sci-fi films done in color, The Angry Red Planet did its rivals one better with the use of a special effects process called "Cinemagic," which gave the entire screen a deep red tint but also created the illusion of dimensionality (i.e. 3-D, sort of), and made the monsters look particularly eerie. The mixture of better-than-usual special effects, coupled with more than competent acting (Mohr, Tremayne, and Kruschen were veterans of mainstream films and television) helps make this one of the more entertaining space-flight stories of its period, though not quite in a league with It! The Terror from Beyond Space for sheer suspense. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Gerald Mohr - O'Banion
Les Tremayne - Prof. Gettell
Nora Hayden - Iris Ryan
Jack Kruschen - Sgt. Sammy Jacobs
Paul Hahn - Gen. Treegar

Ib Melchior's The Angry Red Planet was one of those delightfully inventive (albeit silly) sci-fi-adventure movies that used to bring lots of fun to afternoon movies on local television. Not a "good" movie in any objective sense of that word, The Angry Red Planet was one of several pictures whose style and content went into the principal section of the satirical anthology movie Amazon Women on the Moon, mostly in the presence of the cheesy sets and color; the serious, stalwart crew with one comic relief character; and the cavalier outlook on planetary exploration. It has its problems, beginning with an explanatory five-minute opening sequence that lies as dead as doornail, except for some unintended humor; not until ten minutes in, with the spaceship landing that actually gets the plot rolling as an extended recollection by one of the characters, does the movie actually become interesting, visually or any other way, but from there on it is pretty much in a style all its own. The picture was photographed by Stanley Cortez (The Magnificent Ambersons), with the scenes set on the Martian landscape shot in a process referred to as "Cinemagic," which tinted everything in different hues of red and gives objects an illusion of three-dimensionality. It is eerie enough to make the movie very memorable, as are some of the threats and monsters encountered, such as the giant bat-rat-spider. The three-eyed Martian looked just plain silly, but most of the rest was pretty fair sci-fi-horror for its era (even on a black-and-white television set in the mid-'60s the Cinemagic image looked pretty strange). The film-to-video transfer is so sharp and clean, that one can spot the wires used by puppeteer Bob Baker to maneuver the bat-rat-spider creature, and the color is very close to the richness that the movie would have shown in its original release, the red of Nora Hayden's hair being the benchmark indicating the care that went into the release, along with the generous 16 chapters breaking down the 83-minute movie. As with other releases in MGM's "Midnight Movies" series, there is no insert, and the only bonus apart from a very entertaining trailer are a few factoids on the back jacket. The movie is presented full-screen without any seeming major loss of picture information on the sides. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide