Red Planet Mars (1952)

Director:

Harry Horner

Writers:

John L. Balderston (screenplay) and
Anthony Veiller (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

15 May 1952 (USA)

Genre:

Sci-Fi

Plot:

An American scientist contacts Mars by radio and receives information that Mars is a utopia and that...

Plot Keywords:

Mars | God | Radio | Government | Pi

Cast

Peter Graves	...	Chris Cronyn
Andrea King	...	Linda Cronyn
Herbert Berghof	...	Franz Calder
Walter Sande	...	Admiral Bill Carey
Marvin Miller	...	Arjenian
Willis Bouchey	...	President
Morris Ankrum	...	Secretary of Defense Sparks
Orley Lindgren	...	Stewart Cronyn
Bayard Veiller	...	Roger Cronyn

Runtime:

87 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

USA:Approved (PCA #15801)

Company:

Melaby Pictures Corp.

Trivia:

This imaginative but prolix futuristic film contained no gadgetry or spaceships.

Quotes:

Linda Cronyn: It's the Sermon on the Mount... from Mars.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Svengoolie: Red Planet Mars (#1.12)" (1995)

The movie could have been much better if it wasn't so preachy

Seeing it now, fifty years after it's theatrical release back in 1952 "Red Planet Mars" comes across as one of the most extreme pieces of propaganda that Hollywood ever made.

The way the movie depicts the USSR and those in league with it is so outrageous that whatever it wanted to accomplish by showing Communist Russia as the "Evil Empire", that it was called by president Reagan years later, falls flat on it's face. Not that the USSR was a country not to be feared and defended against back then, the movie was made at the hight of the Cold as well as the Korean War, but to use a highly religious theme that God is on our side was something that the Soviets or even the Nazis never used in their propaganda against capitalism or the United States.

Watching it now, it looks like it was made by Pat Robertson's 700 Club with the contrast it makes between the actors representing the "Good" USA and the "Evil" USSR. American Peter Graves blond tall good looking All-American with a loving wife and two beautiful children and Communist Herbert Berghof dark scuzzy vindictive former Nazi. Living in a shack on the Andes mountains Berghof guzzles down booze so often that it's a wonder that he can be conscious and still stay on his feet, much less then to be able to manipulate signals and make them look like they come from a highly advanced civilization on Mars. All this of course sets the viewers up for the movies religiously inspired ending, so extreme as to be ridiculous.