It's l952....the Godless russkies have The Bomb and they're spreading over the world (and infiltrating the US.) like a metastasizing cancer. Hollywood movies take up arms with the premise that faith and Christianity will have the same effect on communists as a bucket of water thrown on Margaret Hamilton's Wicked Witch Of The West.
And coming to the rescue of us all is "Red Planet Mars", an explosively crazy concoction (even for the 1950's ) of science fiction, religion and anti-communism.......the movie never leaves earth but floats high above the atmosphere in its own self satisfied state of delirium....
A husband and wife scientist team (Peter Graves, Andrea King) have established radio contact with Mars. They've accomplished this unprecedented feat with a 'hydrogen tube', technology left behind by a fleeing Nazi war criminal. (Herbert Berghof)......so revving up their phone booth to Mars requires enough incendiary hydrogen gas to refloat the Hindenburg or Rush Limbaugh.
While Peter Graves is gung-ho boyish about dialing up the Martians, the wifey-poo has apocalyptic mood swings on the subject. Within a single line of dialogue, she goes from warm, loving helpmate to screaming out stuff like "you're sending us to oblivion!" She's like a bipolar Doris Day.
To everyone's surprise, the Martians finally pick up the phone to chat (in numeric code) and as in all science fiction, they're light years ahead of us in everything........extracting pure energy from the cosmos, feeding thousands from one acre of food and enjoying a life expectancy of 300 years....(Unlike NASA in the Matt Damon starred "The Martian", Graves and King only have to wait a few minutes to hear back from Mars....evidently they've got a better T-Mobile plan..Plus, they've got a 50 inch flat screen TV over their fireplace.....we can only surmise it was a 'welcome neighbor!' gift from the Martians,so advanced that they already have Best Buy and Amazon....)
Now at this point in the movie, you really have to check your brains in a closet to continue watching. All this Martian Lifestyle good news(and the idea of any of it coming to earth) sends the Western world into a tizzy of a downward spiral.....industry collapses at the very thought of the uselessness of coal mining, oil drilling, or farming. (If this happened today, we imagine the 300 year life-expectancy news would provoke Regis Philbin to demand immediate reinstatement as Kelly Ripa's co-host....)
Meanwhile, those evil Russian commies rub their hands in glee......high up in the snowy Andes, decoratively parked underneath the Christ The Redeemer statue, the commies have installed the original Nazi Radio Guy, a champagne guzzling slime who's monitoring the U.S-Martian communications on behalf of his new employer Mother Russia......Herbert Berghof has a fine old hammy time with this role, performing it like he's doing a one-man dinner-theater 'Springtime For Hitler'
You think this can't get any wackier? Ha! To the communists everlasting horror, the Martians start sending faith-based homilies lifted directly from the King James bible. Yes, boys and girls......just like on earth, God's on Mars too. This sends the Soviet populace into open revolt, digging up their treasured, long buried bibles and braving the withering machine gun fire of their Kremlin masters . (a Boris Badenov bunch led by the suave-voiced Marvin Miller, whom all us Ancient Mariners will remember as the guy who used to hand out the checks on "The Millionaire" TV show) A Joseph McCarthy fever dream ensues, with the communists overthrown and replaced with a presumably benevolent church Patriarch.
For those who may not have encountered this gem, we dare not go further into the plot....since it unveils a triple-whammy of surprises that forever enshrine 'Red Planet Mars' as a bonkers milestone in 1950's cinema. It may be one of the oddest artifacts of its era, but BQ loves watching it anyway.....like viewing vintage footage of those early catastrophic attempts at airplanes. It doesn't fly, but oh what fun are the crashes......
So we'll unashamedly lift our eyes skyward and pray for 3 stars (***) for "Red Planet Mars", an out-of-this-world, out-of-its-mind experience like no other......Mars, can you hear us now?
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