Wow! Such a good movie.

Powerful

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The Angry Red Planet (1959) ** (out of 4) After a failed mission to Mars, a spaceship lands back on Earth with only two astronauts surviving. One of them, Dr. Iris Ryan (Naura Hayden) tries to remember the events of the mission where they discovered that they weren't alone on the planet.THE ANGRY RED PLANET is a gimmick film if there ever was one. The Cinemagic process that was used basically has the entire screen tinted red whenever they are actually on the planet Mars. This effect actually is pretty neat and I always found it to be a good way of trying to cover up other issues with the movie. The tining certainly works extremely well during a few scenes where they're on the spaceship and the glow from Mars can be seen. The effect works well once they're on the planet but I do wonder how much of it was just the producers and filmmakers covering up really bad effects.The monster here is some sort of rat/bat/spider creature that looks really, really bad. I think the red tinting probably hides some more of its ugliness but there's no question that it's one of the least impressive from all the 50s sci-fi movies. Another problem is that the film can't afford special effects so instead of that stuff we get a bunch of dialogue scenes that are just downright boring after a while. You know you're in trouble when a film just keeps talking and you slowly lose interest in what they're saying. So, is THE ANGRY RED PLANET a horrible movie? No, it's decent for what it is but there's no getting around the fact that it's a low-budget movie that wants to do more but can't.

----SPOILER IN REVIEW---- I have no desire to offend my fellow film-addicts but seriously, if I actually paid to see this film in a theater, I'd be miffed and ask for my money back. If I attended a Funtementalist church and they showed this feature, I would feel more comfortable. This is a mixture of The Bible with a little Sci-Fi tossed in. It doesn't take long to discover a very simplistic script with actors who are one sided and predictable. You have the science guy, the loving wife who has a religious God-loving core, and an evil, Satan-loving Nazi, with Ruskies from the USSR built in and a Bible quoting, Billy Graham clone as the US President. The basic premise is that God lives on Mars and he has begun replying to our science couple living in San Diego, who are trying to contact Mars, only WHOOPS it was the evil Nazi tricking all of us instead, including the Reds who toss out the Commies and replace them with the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, but then WHOOPS AGAIN, it really was God in the first place. The worse and most farcical part is Peter Graves telling the Prez that we shouldn't release the first religious message cause it ain't science, while his wife says otherwise along with the Prez later making speeches in King James language. I want my 90 minutes back.

I well remember The Angry Red Planet from when I was a lad as it appeared on double bills as a second feature to some class A film from MGM. Although it certainly has not stood the test of time as the Mars rover has indicated, the film still has a nice fun and imaginative quality to it.The film is done in flashback as a lost spaceship to Mars is found apparently dead in space. One of the survivors after some shock therapy tells the story of the expedition.There were four on the crew Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Jack Kruschen, and Les Tremayne. The place is a forbidding red tinted world accomplished on screen through a red tint filter. The crew meets up with some really strange life forms and they do get a glimpse of what looks like the Emerald city on Oz if it were red instead of green.I really loved the giant Bat/Rat Spider, one of the lower forms of life on Mars. There was also a giant amoeba and a carnivorous plant for your thrills and enjoyment.The end is really something as a recording is played where the Martians tell the people of Earth to stay away from their planet, they don't want them messing up the neighborhood as earthlings are primitive and warlike. I'm betting space exploration was put off several generations.I rather enjoyed The Angry Red Planet and I think most viewers will.

The names of Sidney Pink and Ib Melchior are associated with two of the less satisfactory science-fiction films that I saw in the 1960s: this unbelievably boring and moronic film and, three years later, "Journey to the Seventh Planet", made in Denmark, with a story that resembles Stanislav Lew's novel "Solaris". (I have not seen "The Time Travelers", but apparently things improved). It takes almost 30 minutes of its running time to get to Mars and a few more to get out of the ship, only to discover settings in a horrid "process" called Cinemagic, that makes everything look like a cartoon in red. The cast is terrible. Watch the astronauts' shoes and socks.