"The Angry Red Planet" (1959)

The Mars rocketship is spotted entering Earth orbit. The military and civilian experts are both worried and delighted because now they know the ship was not lost as feared, yet there has been no contact with the ship’s crew since arriving at Mars. Matters are complicated by uncertainty as to how to land the ship. This can be done by remote control if there is enough fuel. They decide to chance it and the rocket lands in the Nevada desert successfully. When the hatch opens, it is discovered that of the four-person crew, one is missing, one is dead, and another, Col. Thomas O’Bannion, is unconscious with some sort of green slime covering his arm. Only Dr. Iris Ryan can stand, but she is in serious shock. 

Dr. Iris "Irish" Ryan in Cinemagic

Hospitalized, Iris is incapable of explaining what happened. To make matters worse, all the data tapes are blank. It is suggested that she may do better if she starts at the beginning. Most of the movie is told in flashback from Iris’s point of view. Her tale begins the day after takeoff. It is clear that Col. Thomas O’Bannion and Iris (or “Irish” as he calls her) are fond of each other and we see them constantly trading flirtations. After forty-seven days they land successfully on Mars. Iris sees at the control cabin porthole a hideous face with three eyes. She screams and faints. The three men don’t believe her and relentlessly tease her. They don pressure suits and exit the rocket to explore the Red Planet. It is at this point that Cinemagic kicks in, turning everything we see on Mars bright red with light shades contrasting startlingly with dark shades. [This moment is much the same as the equivalent moment in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz when Dorothy opens the house door to expose the movie's wondrous Technicolor setting.] 

On one side of the ship is endless desert, on the other is dense jungle. They enter the jungle where Iris is almost eaten by a carnivorous plant. Later they explore the desert and encounter the 40-foot high iconic six legged bat-rat-spider creature that is prominent on the movie poster. They survive the encounter with the help of a “freezing gun,” then eventually break out a rubber dingy to explore the wide lake that they found while on their desert trek. They paddle part way out and see a vast city with buildings that spire at least half a mile into the sky. At this point they choose to turn back and are attacked by a giant amoeba with two rolling eyes. They make it to land and run to the hoped-for safety of their ship. Crewman Sam Jacobs opens the hatch to get a good shot at the monster with his freezing gun, but the creature grabs him and digests him. They have no choice but to take off a day early to escape the monster, but it is too late. The giant amoeba engulfs the ship. They are trapped. In due course the monster releases the ship, but just before they take off, they receive a radio message.... Cut back to the present. 

Biologist Iris has created a method to cause the green slime to detach itself from the colonel’s arm. Scientists rush in to say they were able to finally extract a message from the otherwise blank tapes. In one fearsomely deep voice, the Martians explain that humans are dangerous and are not welcome on Mars. If humans travel to Mars again, the earth will be destroyed. Roll title credits.

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The 40-foot high iconic six legged bat-rat-spider creature.

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The Angry Red Planet is of historical interest for three primary reasons:

• Its use of Cinemagic.

• It was the first of Ib Melchior’s two directorial works. (See end of this blog post for a brief profile of Ib Melchior.)

• It may be the first time a science fiction movie eschewed showing any credit—including the title—until the very end.

Cinemagic was one of long list of pregnant proper nouns used to pique interest in some of the “B” movies of the era. There were William Castle’s Emergo, Percepto, and Illision-o; Ray Harryhausen’s Dynamation; MGM’s Duo-Vision; Arthur Crabtree’s Hypno-vista; John Water’s Odorama; Michael Todd’s Smell-O-Vision; and Howco International’s Psychorama.

And let’s face it, the producers of “A” movies were concurrently exploring the allure of hyperbolic catch phrases and words and thus we were treated to Cinerama, Cinemascope, VistaVision, and Ultra Panavision 70, though these last were names for new important cutting-edge widescreen film processes, systems, and aspect ratios that quickly became standard—so common as they evolved into still newer formats with still more extravagant appellations, that before long there was no point publicizing the processes any longer. Nearly all movies we see in theaters today (and for the last 55 years) are widescreen movies of one sort or another, but never promoted as such any more.

Many things can be said about Cinemagic. It was certainly colorful, and images projected onto the screen were certainly different and to a large degree fun. And watching the Mars sections of this movie today certainly is nostalgic. But was it successful as a cinematic process? Perhaps not. But, not for lack of trying. For one thing, all the actors, while on the Mars sets, were required to wear stark white makeup to emphasize the startling high-contrast effects. The problem with regard to the successful development of the process was no more complicated than simply money and time running out.

Top: This rare The Angry Red Planet

(1959) poster emphasizes the

mysterious three-eyed Martian.

Bottom: The Robinson Crusoe on Mars

one-sheet poster; the ray gun is a bit

of creative license (from the author’s

collection). Ib Melchior co-wrote

The Angry Red Planet and directed it.

He conceived Robinson Crusoe on

Mars and co-wrote it. His mind was

at the heart of both these seminal

Mars motion pictures.

The development of Cinemagic and its use in The Angry Red Planet has been well documented. To those readers wishing to learn about the full history of the process I refer them to the writings of Robert Skotak, the celebrated Academy Award winning special visual effects artist, who has written several detailed articles and a chapter of a book on the subject. One interesting point that this further inquiry will unveil is that Norman Maurer, the creator of the complicated Cinemagic process, was severely disappointed that he had neither the time nor the money to work closely with the film labs to render the images just as he planned. The finally result, as seen in The Angry Red Planet, apparently is only a shadow of what he had hoped to put on the screen. He had another limited chance, though, when he was asked to produce The Three Stooges in Orbit. In this movie, there is an elongated scene where the black-tuxedo-clad Stooges cover their hands and faces with white paint while being filmed as part of the movie. Later, we see the results as shown on specially processed film. Maurer here was finally able to successfully show, albeit in a very abbreviated version and in black and white, what he had hoped to achieve with Cinemagic. The clear potential is very interesting.

Some of Robert Skotak’s discussions of Cinemagic are included in “The Angry Red Planet” in Filmfax Magazine number 17, November 1989, and “The Angry Red Planet” in Fantastic Films number 29, June 1982. Plus the “The Angry Red Planet” chapter in his biography of Ib Melchior, Ib Melchior: Man of Imagination, is chockful of history, as is Melchior’s own autobiographical discussion of his film career in Six Cult Movies from the Sixties: The Inside Stories by Writer/Director Ib Melchior.

Though intimately involved as the co-writer of half a dozen “cult” science fiction movies during the 1960s, Ib Melchior directed just two of them, The Angry Red Planet and The Time Travelers, both of which he can be justifiably proud. The Time Travelers was cleverly made and enjoyed a downbeat ending that was novel at the time, earning it comparisons to Rocketship X-M’s unexpected conclusion; the film also received fine international notices. The Angry Red Planet is exceedingly novel and colorful and, in point of fact, won this writer’s heart long ago despite some negative things that have been said about it. The other genre films for which Melchior is known are Robinson Crusoe on Mars (discussed elsewhere in this blog) and Planet of Vampires, both of which are practically universally considered classics due to their high production values and clever writing, and Reptilicus and Journey to the Seventh Planet, both of which were made in Denmark with little money and directed by Sid Pink.

As stated in regard to earlier movies, creating a plot for the crew aboard a spaceship on a long voyage is apparently not easy. In fact, I’m not sure of the cause, but these 1950s space trips nearly always focus on one or another plot point or both: The Angry Red Planet is the fourth rocket-to-Mars movie in a row (following Rocketship X- M, Flight to Mars, and Conquest of Space) that tries to liven up the shipboard boredom with a close call with either meteors or asteroids. The other plot point is onboard romance involving the sole woman with one or more of the men; only Conquest of Space avoids women in space, which means that three out of four of these early movies are burdened with the deadweight of both these asinine notions of acceptable scripting. Perhaps the first, Rocketship X-M, can get a pass, since these two ideas were introduced in that movie, but there is no excuse for the others rehashing the same threats and conflicts. For whatever reasons (probably executive ignorance), the writers of these four movies all seemed happy to create and then recreate the same preposterous romantic and dramatic situations.

The shipboard scenes of The Angry Red Planet are all painfully pedestrian, but the actors seem to be having fun, nonetheless. Les Tremayne plays the professor, Jack Kruschen doubles as the comic relief and the audience substitute, Gerald Mohr as the macho cap- tain, and Nora Hayden as the doctor of biology, Dr. Iris “Irish” Ryan. The one bit of the script that I found original and especially enjoyable is the captain invariably calling Iris “Irish,” with her complaints falling on deaf ears.

It is difficult to evaluate the character of Iris from our 21st century perspective. On one hand she is portrayed in a far better light than other women in 1950s science fiction movies, who often were merely window dressing, such as Margaret Sheridan’s Nikki Nicholson in The Thing from Another World, Joan Taylor’s Carol Marvin in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, and even Alix Talton’s magazine editor Marge Blaine in The Deadly Mantis. On the other hand, Hayden’s Irish is the real hero of the story; she has a doctorate in science; her role is solid; and the whole picture revolves around her performance. Yet, she is consistently referred to as “the girl,” is often asked to fetch coffee, and is constantly screaming and fainting. Irish certainly is a far cry from Carrie Anne Moss’ hard-as-nails Captain Bowman in 2000’s Red Planet.

Ib Melchior co-wrote The Angry Red Planet and directed it. He conceived Robinson Crusoe on Mars and co-wrote it. His mind was at the heart of both these seminal Mars pictures.

Cinemagic offered many exotic views of Mars.

 

 

 

Interestingly, producer Sid Pink had conceived of the movie as the obverse of the invasion from alien planets pictures that had proliferated during the decade before. He explains, “I thought that there had been so many invasions of Earth from space, that it would be novel to do the reverse, where we are the invaders of someone else’s realm” (from Skotak’s Ib Melchior: Man of Imagination). Indeed, the film’s original working title prior to completion was “Invasion of Mars.”

 

Unfortunately, that noble goal was superseded by a fairly routine rocket-to-Mars adventure story, and it isn’t until the last moments of the picture that the crew (and the audience) discovers that they have unknowingly “invaded” Mars.  One last item: the title credit for The Angry Red Planet does not appear until the end of the movie. That’s relatively common these days, but it was unheard of in the 1950s. I’m surprised that, with all my research, I haven’t seen that pointed out before.

 

Ib Melchior (1917–2015)

 

Ib and Cleo Melchior

The year was 2013, and my wife and I were attending the wedding in Los Angeles of one of my wife’s friends and business associates. The reception afterward was extremely loud with the band playing and all the cocktail chatter combining to make me uncomfortable. We sought out an untenanted corner and I sat on a chair and rested. Before long, I saw an older man in a wheelchair being pushed in our direction by an equally older woman. In a couple of minutes, the couple had joined us but conversation was utterly impossible because of the volume of the ambient noise. In a few minutes the man leaned over in his wheelchair and indicated he wanted to talk to me. I placed my right ear next to his mouth and his words were inaudible, I mouthed, “I can’t hear you.”

 

He tried again, and this time I heard the word “Melchior.” Hearing these three syllables was a joy to me just then because I was in the middle of writing a novel dealing with the three wise men and the Star of Bethlehem, and Melchior was the traditional name of one of the wise men. (The joy came from some sense of serendipity that I was on the right track.) He indicated he wanted to speak again, and this time I heard “Ib Melchior.” At first the addition of the prefix meant nothing to me, but suddenly it hit me (like a brick) that Ib Melchior was the man’s name and his name was one I was very familiar with. I yelled back, “The Angry Red Planet.... Robinson Crusoe on Mars!” He smiled and nodded. I was amazed; here I was minding my own business at this wedding and the next thing I knew I was conversing with the director of The Angry Red Planet and the co-writer of both The Angry Red Planet and Robinson Crusoe on Mars, two of my favorite Mars movies! Real conversation was impossible just then and the two wives quickly put their heads together and hatched a plan for us to get together.

 

One thing led to another and soon my wife and I and Ib and his wife Cleo, a land- scape architect and set designer, were enjoying a great lunch at The Tam O’ Shanter restaurant, which, once upon a time, was Walt Disney’s favorite restaurant in Burbank. It happened to be down the street from the new studio he built with the profits garnered from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In fact, we all sat at “Walt’s table,” as the back corner table is affectionately remembered.

 

Ib entertained us with some anecdotes from his native Denmark and with produc- tion stories of the six “cult” science fiction movies he wrote and/or directed in the six- ties: The Angry Red Planet, The Time Travelers, Reptilicus, Journey to the Seventh Planet, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, and Planet of Vampires—most especially The Time Travelers, which he viewed as his finest film. He helped us understand his rocky rela- tionship with Sid Pink, his creative partner on three of these films. (In 1952, Pink, with radio personality Arch Obler, had made cinematic history by producing the first 3D color feature, Bwana Devil, a true story about a pair of man-eating lions marauding a bridge-construction site in British East Africa at the turn of the 20th Century, the same story that was filmed again 44 years later as The Ghost and the Darkness.) Hearing the highlights and low points of his career in the film industry, we began to understand how frustrating, on one hand, and how rewarding and exhilarating, on the other, such a career amongst Hollywood power brokers could be.

 

In the “frustrating column” can be listed his well-documented contention that the hit Irwin Allen TV series Lost in Space had begun with Ib’s space-age Swiss Family Robinson treatment that had made the rounds in Hollywood, though he was never given any credit nor was he compensated. This Swiss Family Robinson idea had origi- nated from the same respect for the iconic classics from which Robinson Crusoe on Mars had sprung. Ultimately, the producers of the 1998 feature film version of Lost in Space recognized his fundamental contribution and hired him as that film’s Special Advisor.

 

The “exhilarating column” includes his directing and co-writing 1964’s very well- received and thought-provoking special-effects feast The Time Travelers, and also his collaboration with American International Pictures’ co-founder Samuel Z. Arkoff and the great Italian director Mario Bava on Planet of Vampires. A much-prized letter from Arkoff reads in part, “As you will note, Bava’s comments about your abilities are ... laudatory.” As will be mentioned often in this book, Planet of Vampires is one of three classic science fiction movies that heavily influenced the creation of Ridley Scott’s Alien, the other two being Queen of Blood and It! The Terror from Beyond Space.

 

The four of us had a great time. I hauled out my Robinson Crusoe on Mars discs and poster from my bag and asked Ib to sign them. He was 95. Sadly, early in 2015 he passed away at the age of 97, with Cleo preceding him by a few months. THOMAS KENT MILLER

 

 

USA. American International Pictures. Sino Production, Inc. Eastman Color 5250. 1.85:1. 83m.

CREDITS: Director Ib Melchior. Producers Sid Pink, Norman Maurer. Associate Producer Lou Perlof. Script Ib Melchior, Sid Pink. Story Sid Pink. Score Paul Dunlap. Special Effects Herman Townsley. Director of Photography Stanley Cortez. Editor Ivan J. Hoffman. Special Sound Post-Production, Inc. Cinemagic Norman Maurer.

CAST: Col. Thomas O’Bannion Gerald Mohr. Dr. Iris “Irish” Ryan Nora Hayden. Sam Jacobs Jack Kruschen. Prof. Theodore Gettell Les Tremayne.

Naysayer.

“If the Martians were indeed angry, cinema patrons had every right to be even angrier at the sanctimonious claptrap that Melchior tries to foist on them in the name of entertainment.”

—Dennis Fischer in Science Fiction Film Directors 1895–1998

Enthusiast.

“The Angry Red Planet is possibly the definitive pre–Jet Propulsion Lab Martian adventure. It is the story of a Mars we once dreamed of—the old Mars before JPL’s cameras, the microbiologists, and astrophysicists demonstrated how barren a world it really is.”

—Bob Skotak in the article “The Angry Red Planet” in Filmfax magazine number 17, November 1989

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Some Reviews and Praise for Mars in the Movies: A History