Flight to Mars (1951)

User Rating:

4.8/10   

Director:

Lesley Selander

Writer:

Arthur Strawn (writer)

Release Date:

11 November 1951 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Romance | Sci-Fi

Tagline:

Fifty Years Into The Future!

Plot:

Five astronauts successfully fly to Mars where they encounter seemingly friendly and advanced inhabitants who harbor covert plans to use their ship to invade Earth.

Plot Keywords:

Mars | Martian | Scientist | Astronaut | Reporter

Cast

Marguerite Chapman	...	Alita
Cameron Mitchell	...	Steve Abbott
Arthur Franz	...	Dr. Jim Barker
Virginia Huston	...	Carol Stafford
John Litel	...	Dr. Lane
Morris Ankrum	...	Ikron
Richard Gaines	...	Prof. Jackson
Lucille Barkley	...	Terris
Robert Barrat	...	Tillamar (as Robert H. Barratt)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Wilbur Back	...	Councilman
William Bailey	...	Councilman
Trevor Bardette	...	Alzar
Stanley Blystone	...	Councilman
David Bond	...	Ramay
Raymond Bond	...	Astronomer #2
Tristram Coffin	...	Commentator
Russ Conway	...	Astronomer #1
Edward Earle	...	Justin
William Forrest	...	Gen. Archer
Everett Glass	...	Montar
Perc Launders	...	Workman
Anthony Marsh	...	Attendant
Bill Neff	...	Sergeant
Frank O'Connor	...	Councilman
Bob Peoples	...	Soldier

Runtime:

72 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Supercinecolor)

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

USA:Approved | Finland:S

Company:

Monogram Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

In the scene where the reporter and one of the professors go back to check for damage. The round red object he opens up is a complete (minus 2 machine guns) belly ball turret for a B-17 bomber from World War II. It is minus it's revolving and raising and lowering mechanisms.

Quotes:

Steve Abbott: [playing solitaire] How many years you've been in love with him?
Carol Stafford: [tearfully] Three.
Steve Abbott: How many tears do you think it'll take to wash out three years.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Watch the Skies!: Science Fiction, the 1950s and Us (2005) (TV)

A subversive movie

I saw this film years ago, Before Starwars, and may I rise to defend it? This film is the American version of Aelita, from the novel by Count Alexei Tolstoy (the less famous of the writing counts Tolstoy) and the first version of the novel is worth reading (he later did many more versions to try to please Stalin, but that's another story.) A Russian Engineer and a Revolutionary fly to Mars, which was colonized by humans from Earth's Atlantis in the past (who inter-married with the natives -- they have blue skin)-- the planet is dying of lack of resources and a revolution is brewing. Aelita is the local princess. In the end, the Earthmen precipitate a doomed uprising and flee. The Russian movie tells much the same tale, but in the end it turns out to have been a dream. The American version is in many ways a faithful retelling of the novel done under a low budget. There is the engineer with the unhappy love-life, the revolutionary has been replaced by the reporter (who was in the book too), and Aelita becomes Alita, a Martian engineer with a slip stick as long as her arm. The movie came out from Monogram and was written and directed by people who specialized in westerns, produced by someone who specialzied in Westerns (of the B variety) and by Water Mirisch, who was the only one to break from the mold (with, oddly enough, a western, 'The Magnificient Seven,' which was also cannibalized from someone else's work. And it isn't that bad. For Monogram it was a high budget production; the special effects (the meteors hitting the rocket, the rocket crashing in snow covered mountains) were re-used again and again and have been seen in many other movies and TV shows. Of course they had to hide the origins. This was 1951 and Tail Gunner Joe was looking for commies under every bed, and while Tolstoy may have been a nobleman, he went out writing propaganda for Uncle Joe.