Angry Red Planet, The (1959)

A mission to Mars returns with crew members missing and comatose, and only Dr Iris Ryan (Nora Hayden) can be made conscious to tell the story.

Under the influence of drugs, “Irish” recalls their expedition and how – together with Colonel Tom O’Bannion (Humphrey Bogart-lookalike Gerald Mohr), Professor Theodore Gettell (Les Tremayne) and Warrant Officer Sam Jacobs (Jack Kruschen) – she encountered horrible lifeforms, including man-eating plants and a giant carnivorous bat-spider-crab.

The team’s scientist, Professor Gettell, urged the mission to depart for home, but a forcefield was holding their rocket – the MR1 – back.

Hoping to find the intelligence behind the forcefield, the four-man crew set out in an inflatable raft across a Martian ocean, where they found a highly advanced city guarded by a colossal, hungry amoeba.

Chief Warrant Officer Jacobs was absorbed and consumed by the amoeba as the others returned safely to the ship. Attempting to save Jacobs, Colonel O’Bannion’s arm was infected by a deadly green growth.

After electrifying the hull of their ship and repelling the amoeba, the rocket returned to the stars, but not before the Martian intelligence issued a warning to the crew (and to all mankind, whom it calls “spiritual and emotional infants”) about returning to the angry red planet.

The cartoon-like, expressionistic special effects are red-tinted thanks to the film process “Cinemagic” to approximate the distorted, dream-like quality of Nora Hayden’s drug-addled reminiscences.

Cinemagic involved turning live-action footage into hand-drawn animation so the hand-drawn backgrounds blended with the live-action footage.

The effect was also designed to make everything look negative, with a reddish glow that gave audiences a headache. The story goes that the budget was slashed mid-production, so the producers considered turning the film into black-and-white to keep costs down. However, one reel became accidentally double-exposed, which produced a shimmering, vaguely psychedelic glare that director lb Melchior latched onto, thinking it would suit his purposes for the Mars scenes.

It also helped to camouflage the cheap Martian monsters and scenery.

The AIP film was shot in just ten days on a budget of $200,000.

Colonel Tom O’Banion
Gerald Mohr
Iris Ryan
Nora Hayden
Professor Theodore Gettell
Les Tremayne
Warrant Officer Sam Jacobs
Jack Kruschen
General Treager
Paul Hahn
Professor Weiner
J Edward McKinley
Dr Gordon
Tom Daly
General Prescott
Edward Innes

Director
Ib Melchior