Flight to Mars

Flight to Mars was made in the hey-day of the Cold War, so perhaps it is not unreasonable that Monogram films chose not to advertise that the original story was "Aelita," by the Russian novelist Alexei Tolstoy.

Of course, the main character's name, Alita, does sort of give that away. The basic story line and character line up were retained, with the exception of the professional revolutionary who got dropped. In the book the reporter appears at the beginning and end of the narrative, and does not accompany the characters to Mars. In the book the engineer was married, not afianced. Of course, the Russians also filmed Aelita as a silent. What is interesting is that the American version is more faithful to the original plot.

Lippert Pictures struck paydirt with 1950's Rocketship XM, and was hoping for a similar result with this feature. As early sci-fi, the movie's okay, but lacks the grit of its predecessor. The premise is a real stretch with an underground Martian civilization that speaks flawless English, while the women parade around like Las Vegas show girls. (Not that I'm complaining.) Then too, the rocketship crew treats their pioneering flight like a trip to the mall.

But if you can get past some of this nonsense, parts of the movie are eye-catching. I really like the standing rocket in the dome with the people beneath. It's a well-done effect, especially in color. Also, the script deals fairly thoughtfully with the predicament the Martians find themselves in. In short, that aspect is not settled in a typical Hollywood wrap-up. Then there's the great Morris Ankrum as Ikrom, the sneaky plotter. Would any sci-fi of the period be complete without his lordly presence. Anyway, despite the pacing that sometimes drags, the movie ends up somewhere in the middle of all those goofy 50's space operas.

Surprisingly few of the reviews mention that - like George Pal's 'Destination Moon' (1950) - this was shot in colour; the brick red of Cinecolor well-suited to rendering the Red Planet.

Set fifty years in the future, it was plainly a prestigious production for Monogram, boasting an atmospheric score by Marlin Skiles, vivid photography by Harry Neumann, good model work and elegant production design by Ted Haworth making attractive use of the limited colour palate and anticipating 'Star Trek' (as do the women's costumes and the matter of fact depiction of Martian society as multi-racial; although the silly emblems on the men's costumes look more like something devised for 'Batman').

Taking it's lead from Pal's film Arthur Strawn's script (the usual tedious romantic complications notwithstanding) is fairly sober and plausible until we arrive on Mars, when Flash Gordon unfortunately takes over as its template as an early example of what Bruce Rux later described as "the mini-skirted space-maiden movie trend".

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.

I agree with the all the POSITIVE comments on this unique little blast-from-the-past. "Flight to Mars" is a very enjoyable movie, despite it's limitations.

Beware, however, of the new DVD of "Flight to Mars". It is NOT derived from the same print as the prerecorded videotape that came out several years ago. The DVD print is riddled with scratches, and several scenes are ruined by numerous missing pieces of film!

We can only hope that a new DVD -- transferred from a BETTER print -- is released in the next few years. Meanwhile, please take my advice and watch the videotape. You'll thank me later.