The Angry Red Planet
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Gerald Mohr, Jack Kruschen, Les Tremayne, Naura Hayden, Paul HahnDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 83 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-11-20
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of The Angry Red Planet
Movie Review: DVD delivers beautiful print of legendary SF schlock classic
Summary: 5 Stars
Is Angry Red Planet the greatest schlock SF movie ever made? If not, it's definitely in the running. For starters, it's in semi-gorgeous Eastman color by Pathe, and shot by the legendary Stanley Cortez (Magnificent Ambersons, Flesh and Fantasy). It's got a memorable combination-electronic/militaristic percussion score by Paul Dunlap, and "Cinemagic" effects credited to Norman (late-era Stooges cohort) Maurer. (Cinemagic is really just a combination of solarizing and tinting to cheaply combine live action with painted scenery and pencil drawings.) But the really great thing about Angry Red Planet is how everything about it perfectly emulates the look and feel of a 1950s SF comic or pulp novel, translated to the movie screen. The wild monsters (woman-eating plant, giant blob-creature, cool Basil Wolverton-look alien, colossal rat-bat-spider [immortalized on the cover of Misfits Walk Among Us]) and overall art direction and special effects are consistently imaginative and colorful, if not totally convincing. Plus, bad movie fans can relish the ripe dialogue and acting (particularly the sexist comments and leering manner of creepy `leading man' Gerald Mohr); lots of deadpan, meaningless jargon/technobabble; and the bizarre "Iris sneaking a dab of perfume" montage (one of my favorite non sequitur moments in movie history).The DVD includes no real extras other than the trailer (I don't count subtitles and chapter stops) but who cares! As with most of their other Midnite Movies DVD releases, MGM Home Video gives us a terrific print of both the movie and trailer. Other than some sporadic very light speckling/spotting the print looks gorgeous: bright, sharp, and detailed, with excellent contrast and great color (well, as great as Eastman color ever gets, anyway). Even the stock footage looks better than ever. You'll never see a finer print of this movie until someone digitally restores the negative; it makes my VHS copies look sick. Expect a small stampede as fans of this film rush to grab it at the bargain price.
Summary of The Angry Red Planet
Although widely admired among longtime science fiction fans, The Angry Red Planet is merely a substandard entry from the genre's 1950s heyday. With wooden performances, atrocious dialogue, and some monsters that would scare only very young kids, it's perfect fodder for a rainy- day marathon of cheesy movies, as long as you keep your expectations low. Following the standard plot of its day, the movie tells (in flashback) the story of four astronauts who land Rocket M-1 on Mars, only to find the "angry red planet" lives up to its nickname. The plants are carnivorous, there's a gigantic "bat-rat-spider-crab" that can snap humans in half with its pincers, and a slithering Jello-beast with a rotating eyeball that threatens to dissolve the rocket ship into a pile of digested goo.Naturally, there's an onboard flirtation between shapely space-gal Nora Hayden and astro-hunk Gerald Mohr (who inexplicably spends the last half-hour with his hairy chest exposed), while Les Tremayne and Jack Kruschen play the stock characters (respectively) of elder scientist and blue-collar engineer--the latter toting an "ultrasonic freezer gun" that forces attacking monsters to chill out. If that's not enough to whet your schlock-movie appetite, the scenes on Mars were filmed in a gimmicky pink-hued process called "Cinemagic," which resembles a negative image covered in Pepto-Bismol. Is this any way to spend 83 precious minutes? Look at it this way: When an angry Martian warns humans to stay away ("you are technological adults, but spiritual and emotional infants"), you may be laughing enough to make it all worthwhile. --Jeff Shannon
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