Movie Monday: Flight to Mars

For this week's Movie Monday we take another trip to the red planet in 1951's Flight to Mars!

Flight to Mars opens up with a pre-credits sequence, with two science-y looking guys staring into a massive telescope:

...and what are they staring at? Why, Mars, of course!

Yes--man is preparing its first trip to the red planet!

The crew on this historic mission consists of five people--four scientists and a newspaper reporter(?) named Steve, played by Cameron Mitchell.

There's a whole lot of talk before our intrepid explorers make it to Mars, to the point where its almost a half hour before they reach their destination. Flight to Mars is only 71 minutes long, so you're wondering how much story there can be left in the film!

Anyway, the rocket is damaged during the journey, forcing a rough landing on Mars. The explorers find a huge temple on the surface of Mars, proving there is--or at least was--life! As they try and decide what to do next, they are met by...actual living Martians!!

...um, yeah, these are the Martians: other than some goofy clothes, they look exactly like humans. So I think its obvious they didn't have a lot of money to spend on this movie.

The Martians explain that their whole society was forced to move underground after the planet's surface became too inhospitable. The Martians are friendly and warm to their guests, but soon we see them have a private meeting where they plan to keep the Earthlings prisoner on the planet!

While their ship is being repaired, one of the explorers, Dr. Jim Barker (Arthur Franz) falls in love with Martian girl Alita (Maguerite Chapman), who is the daughter of one of Mars' ruling council named Tillamar.

Tillamar doesn't want to kidnap the humans, but the council's militant leader Ikron (Morris Ankrum) sways the rest to his side, and plans to sabotage the ship's repairs to keep the humans on the planet longer. He then plans to take their ship, go to Earth, and conquer!!

Barker, via Alita, learns of this and shares this information with his fellow explorers. They try and hide their progress on the ship so as not to tip off Ikron.

Despite the film's obvious meager budget, there are some nice matte shots featuring some way-cool 1950's-style futuristic stuff:

But, sadly, most of the film is taken up with the Martians and Earthlings running back and forth on the same two or three sets, overhearing things and sneaking around. The costumes on the women are classics of the time:

...that's gotta be cold!

Eventually, the explorers sneak back onto their rocket. Ikron's men manage to grab Alita, but Dr. Barker risks his life by going back and rescuing her, bringing her aboard, where they all head back to Earth.


This film was produced by Monogram, which was one of the lowest of low-rent "B" studios in Hollywood. Shooting a film with all these costumes and sets--not to mention in color--was a huge expenditure for them (even if some of the sets are re-used from 1950's Rocketship X-M and costumes from 1950's Destination Moon).

The print used for the DVD would have made Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino proud: its full of splits and splices, with chunks of dialogue skipped when the film jerks from one frame to another. I'm guessing Monogram didn't spend a whole lot of effort caring for their back catalog.

Overall, Flight to Mars is worth seeing only to enjoy so many of the sci-fi cliches films of later decades would reference and goof on: the stilted dialogue, the short skirts on alien women, etc. It doesn't provide much excitement because so much of it is talk, talk, talk, but hey, sometimes long trips are kinda boring!

Movie Monday: The Laughing Policeman

This week's Movie Monday subject is the gritty cop thriller The Laughing Policeman!

If there are two things a movie can have that, to me, virtually guarantees its going to be good, or at the very least interesting, they are: Walter Matthau and being made in the 1970s.

Matthau, always one of my favorites, had an extraordinary hot streak in the 1970s: during the decade, he appeared in Plaza Suite, The Front Page, Charley Varrick, The Taking of Pelham 123, The Sunshine Boys, The Bad News Bears, House Calls, and Hopscotch. Not only are all of these pretty good-to-pretty-great movies, but go from Neil Simon comedy to foul-mouthed kid flicks to gritty action thrillers, and Matthau is great in every single one of them.

I had vaguely heard of The Laughing Policeman before, but never realized what it was and who was in it. When I stumbled across the fact it was a cop thriller starring Walt Matthau and was made in 1973...well, I couldn't move it to the top of my Netflix queue fast enough!

The film opens sans titles, in a San Francisco bus station. A sweaty, nervous-looking guy is being followed, and he knows it:

The hunted tries to lose his pursuer by jumping on a bus at the last second, but the second guy manages to stop the bus before it takes off and climbs aboard, sitting a few rows back from his target.

The bus picks up some more people along its route, the last being someone whose face we don't see. This person sits all the way in the back, and quietly begins to assemble a high-powered rifle.

Before anyone else notices what's going on, the sweaty guy sees what's about to happen, and screams in panic. But its too late:

The gunman slaughters every single passenger on the bus, bullets flying in all directions in what makes for a particularly bloody sequence. The bus driver is killed, and the bus crashes into a nearby building. We hear police sirens, and eventually a crime scene is taped off.

Some plainclothes detectives arrive, including Sgt. Jake Martin:

The cops climb aboard the bus and examine the crime scene. They are shocked and stunned to see one of the victims--the one who was doing the tailing of the sweaty guy--was Martin's partner Dave Evans! What was he doing on this bus, at this time of night, in this part of town?

Protocol being what it is, the another detective, Insp. Leo Larsen (Bruce Dern), becomes the co-lead on the case. Larsen is kind of a weird guy, full of black humor, and Martin is less than thrilled to be paired up with him:

Various members of the SFPD investigate the backgrounds of the various victims, leading mostly to dead ends. Many of the leads involve some of seamier parts of city life, something the detectives are less than thrilled to be involved with.

Martin eventually discovers that the sweaty guy was named Gus Miles, who, years ago, provided the alibi for a man named Henry Camerero (Albert Paulsen), who murdered his wife years before. That case was the responsibility of Martin, who is still haunted over it.

Martin is generally cynical and sullen, and keeps trying to freeze Larsen out of his investigation. But Larsen refuses to give up, tagging along to Martin's constant annoyance. They do some further investigating on Camerero, trailing him throughout the city:

Turns out Camerero is a closeted homosexual, something the film treats with less than sensitivity. There's a scene in a gay bar that drips with condescension about its subject:

Despite Martin's boss (Anthony Zerbe, chewing the scenery) telling him to drop the Camerero angle, he refuses, convinced he's right. He and Larsen learn that Camerero is going to strike again, on another city bus, and are the only ones there to stop him:

The film ends on a...not so much downbeat note, but an absurdly anti-climactic one, kind of reflecting the mood of the whole movie. When it arrived, I had looked away from the screen for a moment, and when I went back I was shocked to see credits rolling! What the?!?

The Laughing Policeman is a strange film--it has that uber-cynical attitude so many 1970s crime thrillers had, and the general views of the filmmakers shine through a bit: director Stuart Rosenberg (Cool Hand Luke, The Amityville Horror) was in his late 1940s when this movie was made, and gay equality was just start to emerge in mainstream American culture. The use of the word "fruit" is so rampant that, while probably completely realistic, made this viewer roll his eyes more than once.

Also, there are so many characters in this movie that Matthau as Jake Martin doesn't get enough to do; and when he's on the screen, he's generally sullen and crabby--its Bruce Dern as Larsen who gets most of the lighter stuff, constantly reacting to Matthau's taciturn lead.

There are some scenes that are classically 1970s, so much they made me laugh: Matthau questions a suspect, played by Cathy Lee Crosby, and he thinks nothing of slapping her around, repeatedly. Imagine a movie's hero doing something like that nowadays.

The Laughing Policeman definitely deserves to be considered part of Walter Matthau's solid streak of interesting 1970s films: while not a complete success (its not as delightfully Matthau-centric as Charley Varrick, and not nearly as action-packed as The Taking of Pelham 123), its nevertheless an interesting movie, and well worth the time of fans of 1970s cop films.

Movie Monday: The Black Hole

This week's Movie Monday subject is the cult classic(?) The Black Hole!

My informal rule for Movie Mondays was to only cover films I've never seen before. But when I was deciding what to recap this week, I remembered that while I have seen The Black Hole, its probably not been since I first saw it in the theaters as a wee lad.

I guess I was pretty into the movie, too--and that's not just my (quite possibly faulty, colored by nostalgia) memory talking. There's empirical evidence:

...that's me, age eight or nine, rocking a Black Hole t-shirt at our cabin in the Poconos. Our dog Patrick has other concerns.

So I thought it'd be fun to revisit a movie I haven't seen in at least thirty years, and see how--if--it holds up. So without further ado, The Black Hole!

In the year 2130, the spaceship Palamino is on its way back from a mission in deep space. The crew consists of Captain Holland (Robert Forster), Lt. Pizer (Joseph Bottoms), Dr. Alex Durant (Anthony Perkins), empath Dr. Kate MaCree (Yvette Mimieux), journalist Harry Booth (crusty homophobe Ernest Borgnine), and a robot assistant named V.I.N.C.E.N.T. (featuring the uncredited voice of Roddy McDowell).

The ship's sensors detect a nearby black hole; even more shocking is the existence of another spaceship which is somehow defying the black hole's enormous gravitational pull:

They determine the ship is the USS Cygnus, thought long-lost. Aboard the Cygnus was Dr. MaCree's father.

The Palomino is damaged by the black hole's gravity field, but it manages to reach the Cygnus, which suddenly comes roaring to life. Its at this point we get some, frankly, visually astonishing shots of this movie's ornate and sometimes downright beautiful architecture, involving some fantastic matte work:

The Cygnus' look is that of a futuristic Jules Verne; as if Captain Nemo was commanding a spaceship and not a sub. Indeed, the Cygnus' captain, Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximillian Schell) looks a bit like a Jules Verne character, and definitely has that patented Captain Nemo Crazy Look:

Reinhardt explains all his crew was killed when it encountered the black hole; and his entire crew is made up of robots he built himself, including the imposing Maximillian, who never seems too far from Reinhardt. Additionally on board is B.O.B., this ship's version of V.I.N.C.E.N.T., who seems unlike the rest, in that he hints that Reinhardt is not what he claims to be.

Reinhardt has been planning a trip into the black hole, convinced he and his ship can survive this ultimate feat of exploration. Everyone aboard the Palomino thinks this is completely crazy--except for Durant, who seems to quickly fall under Reinhardt's spell, becoming obsessed with the idea of traveling into a black hole.

B.O.B. tells the Palomino crew that Reinhardt's crew didn't die in a giant accident--rather, Reinhardt killed them all and used their bodies as hosts for his robots. V.I.N.C.E.N.T. relays this to Dr. MaCree, who in turn tells Durant, in a last gasp effort to get him back to the Palomino (scheduled to leave by Captain Holland, who is equally suspicious of Reinhardt).

Durant, snapped out of his spell, grabs a nearby robot servant, and beneath its face mask he sees:

...okay, maybe this is not the most shocking or gruesome make-up you've ever seen, but still pretty heady stuff for a Disney movie.

Durant and MaCree try to leave Reinhardt's bridge, but Maximillian steps in, whirling an arm made up of razor-sharp blades. It cuts through Durant's book of notes, right into Durant (Disney!), killing him instantly. Reinhardt orders MaCree to be taken down into the ship's hold and be brainwashed in anticipation of her transformation.

V.I.N.C.E.N.T informs Captain Holland of this, and he rescues MaCree while tussling with some of the robots, leaving one of them in the way of a laser:

Booth begins to panic, and takes off in the Palomino, leaving his shipmates behind. But Booth doesn't know how to control the ship, and it crashes into the Cygnus, killing him.

The crash also destroys the Cygnus' portside anti-gravity field, leaving the ship unbalanced. A meteor shower begins to hit the Cygnus, causing the entire bubble to collapse. With nothing to protect it, the black hole begins to pull the Cygnus apart.

Both Reinhardt and the Palomino survivors plan to use a small craft attached to the Cygnus, but a large piece of debris falls onto Reinhardt, trapping him. He calls out to Maximillian for help, while Holland, MaCree, and Pizer barely escape to the escape pod, dodging a massive fireball ripping its way through the ship:

These scenes look better, more real, than most of the last decade's worth of CGI-heavy SFX movies. How is that possible?

Anyway, the three crewmembers learn that the pod is programmed by Reinhardt to go into the black hole, and there's no way to stop it. They resign themselves to the fact they're about to die.

Meanwhile, Maxmillian and Reinhardt float into the black hole together, and when we see them again they have somehow merged like Reinhardt's lobotomized shipmates:

As the camera pans back, we see Maximillian standing atop some sort of rock formation, in what looks like a landscape from Hell itself: molten rock, fire, and smoke. It doesn't make a whole lot of logical sense, but its nonetheless a very creepy, weird final scene for the villain of the movie.

The film's final sequence is mostly sans dialogue, as Holland and his crew experience what seems like a trip through Hell then Heaven, only to emerge out the other side of the black hole, near what seems to be a habitable planet.

Its a very ambiguous ending, unusual for most sci-fi movies other than 2001 and very unusual when you consider this was a Disney film clearly meant to cash in on the post-Star Wars sci-fi craze.

Overall, I was pretty impressed with The Black Hole--its an ambitious film, both visually and thematically. It doesn't quite work as a rip-roaring sci-fi adventure: the action scenes are perfunctory and boringly staged, and the score is pretty lame, shocking that it came from music legend John Barry.

Many of the robot characters are too derivative of ones from Star Wars: V.I.N.C.E.N.T., the robot guards, and Maximillian are clearly meant to seem like R2-D2, the Stormtroopers, and Darth Vader, respectively. The laser gun battles are also very boringly staged: basically just long shots as the SFX team drops in little bolts of energy across the screen. And I never really bought Reinhardt was anything but a mad man: from his first scene, he's clearly cuckoo for cocoa-puffs, and Schell is basically playing every scene in the same, quietly crazy manner.

All that said, the film is still quite enjoyable: surprisingly intense and even a little nasty for a Disney movie, with visuals that are, as I said above, at times breathtaking. The model builders and matte artists did an amazing job on The Black Hole, and while the film does occasionally veer into Star Trek: The Motion Picture territory (i.e., too many shots of fancy SFX just for the sake of fancy SFX) for the most part the film keeps the story moving and doesn't let the sets overwhelm the movie.

I probably loved The Black Hole as a kid--the film is pretty damn good. No wonder I wanted a shirt!

Movie Monday: Robinson Crusoe On Mars

This week's Movie Monday subject is the underrated 1964 sci-fi adventure Robinson Crusoe on Mars!

I had never seen this film until the 90s, when it was released on a Criterion laser disc featuring some beautiful jacket art and some stills that made it look really interesting to me. Criterion didn't usually put their brand on "B" sci-fi films, so its inclusion told me there was something special about this film.

The film opens in a space ship as it orbits Mars. The first person we see and hear is none other than...Adam West!!

West plays astronaut Dan MacRedy, recording a mission log. Moments later we're introduced to his fellow astronaut, Christopher "Kit" Draper (Paul Mantee), as well as their quasi-mascot, a chimp named Mona.

In order to avoid a meteor, their ship uses all its fuel, leaving them stuck in orbit. Having no choice but to land on the Mars surface, they each depart, but McRedy is killed in a crash, leaving Draper all alone...the first--and only--man on Mars.

Right here the film is tweaking with our expectations: West is introduced first, and he's certainly the more typical leading man. You think he's going to be the main character, only to be killed off, a little dramatic sleight of hand Alien would use to great effectiveness in the next decade.

Draper learns to survive on the harsh Martian terrain. He determines how much air, food, and water he has left, recording a log for posterity. He figures he only has a few days worth of air left, even if he sleeps most of the time.

Strangely, Mona the monkey seems to not require food or water, disappearing for hours at a time. He follows her, seeing she has discovered an underground pond. With the additional realization that a particular type of rock, when burned, gives off oxygen, Draper realizes he has the ability to stay alive for a while.

This film, directed by War of the Worlds' Byron Haskin, features some very beautiful images. Combining sets with matte paintings and back projection, some of the more quiet passages (like when Draper wanders the surface of the planet) are visually striking:

Draper goes looking for McRedy, assuming he has landed somewhere else on the planet and is surviving as well. But when he finds McRedy's crashed ship, he finds his friend did not survive:

Now utterly alone, Draper starts to go a little mad, driven to fits of anger every time his "floating supermarket" (his ship, still in orbit) flies past.

At one point, McRedy walks into Draper's cave, leaving him overjoyed, not even questioning how this could have happened. When McRedy just stands there, completely silent, its only then that Draper realizes he's hallucinating.

Months pass, and during one of his walks he finds a rock sitting in an unnatural position. Under it is a skeleton's hand, wearing a black bracelet. Determining that this creature was murdered, Draper suddenly realizes he may not be so alone, ordering his orbiting ship to self-destruct to hide his presence.

Shortly thereafter, Draper sees a ship begin to land. At first thinking its a rescue ship, he's shocked to see its an alien ship, presiding over a pack of slaves who are being forced to mine. One of the slaves (Victor Lundin) escapes, and Draper takes him in:

By the bracelet he wears, Draper realizes just who this guy is. Naming him Friday (of course), Draper begins teaching his new friend English.

In a film filled with visual delight, its the appearance of Friday that, to me, is the only letdown: his costume is bare bones, looking like it was off the rack at the studio costume department. Maybe a little more visual punch would have been appropriate.

Anyway, Draper and Friday learn to like each other, and become friends. Friday even introduces Draper to air pills, which provide oxygen. Later, the alien ships (looking similar to the Martian invaders in War of the Worlds, a coincidence?) return, tracking Friday by his bracelet.

They blow up Draper's cave, forcing them to run through the canals of Mars, which aren't the safest of places:

Draper rescues Friday from the sort-of quicksand, and they eventually run all the way to Mars' ice caps, building a small shelter. While hidden from the alien ships, Draper manages to cut off Friday's bracelet. Just when things are looking up, a meteor crashes nearby, melting much of the ice caps.

But then, Draper sees a ship in the distance. When he hears a human voice over his radio, he realizes its a ship from Earth coming to rescue him!:

As Mars recedes in the distance, we reach...The End!

Robinson Crusoe on Mars is a lot of fun, filled with solid performances (one, really) and some gorgeous visuals. Like Cast Away decades later, it gambles that we'll want to follow just this one person for a long time, and actor Paul Mantee pulls it off. Why he didn't become a bigger star after this is a mystery to me (and kind of to him, too, as he mentions on the DVD commentary track)--an actor couldn't ask for a better showcase than a movie like this.

The film leaves a lot of things unanswered, which is also pretty atypical for 50s/60s sci-fi: who are these aliens, exactly? Where are they from? The fact that there isn't some giant space battle at the end is another example of this film being a bit different tonally than a lot of other sci-fi movies of the time.

I've watched Robinson Crusoe on Mars several times now, and I'm always charmed by its simple story and wonderful visuals. Definitely offbeat, it rewards sci-fi fans who want something a little different.


My original intention was to do profiles of several Mars-themed movies all in a row, but at one post a week that would tie Movie Monday up for months. So while I'm going to cover something else next week, pretty soon we'll be returning to the red planet!

Movie Monday: House of Long Shadows

For this week's Movie Monday is the 1983 almost-classic House of Long Shadows!

I say "almost classic" because, as we'll see, this films comes so close to be a completely winning, ghoulish good time of a movie: after all, its the first, last, and only film to have horror icons Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and John Carradine all together.

The film opens on our main character: a top-selling mystery novelist named Kenneth Magee (Desi Arnaz Jr.) as he is being escorted around London on one of his book tours. Despite his fame and wealth--or maybe because of it--Magee seems bored and more than a little spoiled.

He has dinner with his publisher (Richard Todd) who challengers Magee to try something new (clearly, this movie is a fantasy). Magee boasts that if properly motivated, he could dash off a Wuthering Heights-esque classic potboiler in less than 24 hours. His publisher bets him $20K he can't, and offers to put Magee up in a remote castle so he'll have total solitude. Magee agrees to the bet.

Magee heads there on the proverbial dark and stormy night, running into a young couple at a bus station, as well as a mysterious figure who utters grim, tight-lipped warnings about Grisbane Manor.

Magee ignores all this, arriving at the manor ready to work. But he finds the place isn't quite so uninhabited: living there is a woman named Victoria (Sheila Keith) and her uncle, Lord Grisbane (John Carradine):

Apparently Lord Grisbane and Victoria have been taking care of the place for decades, but they won't quite say why such a vast, empty manor needs such devoted housekeeping. Magee sets down to work, but the interruptions are just starting: there's a knock at the door, and on the other side of it is Lord Grisbane's son Sebastian (Peter Cushing):

Soon after Lord Grisbane's other son, Lionel, arrives, played by Vincent Price:

(I wonder how Carradine, who was only six years older than Price and eight more than Cushing, felt about playing the father of his fellow boogeymen. Considering some of the utter garbage Carradine appeared in, maybe he was just happy for the work)

Anyway, more people arrive--this place is like Grand Central Station--like Magee's publisher's assistant, sent there to scare Magee out of staying and working on the book, as well as a potential buyer of the property, a creepy guy named Corrigan (Christopher Lee):

One of the main problems of the movie becomes very evident at this point: we've finally got Carradine, Cushing, Lee, and Price together, but we're already forty minutes into a 100-minute movie. So much time was wasted on set-up and the vain attempt to make Desi Arnaz Jr. a leading man.

Anyway, the Grisbane brothers reveal why they are here: to release their other brother, Roderick, who has been imprisoned in the manor for over forty years. Apparently Roderick killed a young girl when he was 14 and the family dealt with it by imprisoning him.

But when they go to Roderick's cell, they find...its empty!

They decide to call the police (oh, now they do it!), but the phone is dead. Then it all goes to hell: Lord Grisbane dies of a heart attack, Victoria is found strangled, and the tires of everyone's cars are slashed.

The young couple Magee met at the bus station have also arrived, only for them to be killed: the young woman washes her face with what turns out to be acid, in a fairly gruesome sequence:

The young man is killed by drinking poison punch, leaving the remaining group to search the hidden passageways of the castle to find and kill Roderick.

Sebastian is killed after he gets separated from the group and ends up hung by the neck. Corrigan reveals he is, in fact, long lost brother Roderick, killing Lionel and then going after Magee:

Sebastian is killed after he gets separated from the group and ends up hung by the neck. Corrigan reveals he is, in fact, long lost brother Roderick, killing Lionel and then going after Magee.

Magee manages to knock Corrigan down the stairs (Desi Arnaz beating Christopher Lee in a fight? Sure), seemingly ending this whole nightmare. But then something happens--which I will not reveal here, though it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out--that shocks Magee:

This scene of Arnaz digesting what's really been going on seems to be about five minutes long.

In the end, Magee wins the bet by writing a new book, one that, this time, he's really proud of:

...The End!


The idea of putting these four horror icons into one movie is great, and the plot, while not great, is serviceable enough to be carried by these legends. Ironically, other than the acid scene, this movie isn't very gory: relying more on shadows (long ones, yes) and creepy noises, director Pete Walker makes this movie more of a throwback to the haunted house horror thrillers of the 1930s--right at the time when mainstream horror was hitting its apogee of blood and gore.

So all those elements work, and the movie gets a lot of mileage just by having Lee, Price, and Cushing all the in same shot several times--its just a real kick seeing these guys all together.

But like I said above, it takes too damn long to get them all together, and Desi Arnaz Jr. is just not enough of an actor to fill the space while we're waiting for the creepy guys to show up. He acquits himself well enough, but in retrospect it seems so odd the movie didn't cast someone more familiar and comfortable with horror, someone who doesn't stick out like a severed sore thumb in a film like this.

And while it remains a big missed opportunity, House of Long Shadows is still a lot of fun if you're an old-school horror fan.