Apparently I haven’t actually seen this since I was a kid. I watched it on Amazon this weekend and I was shocked that the entire film was in color. Admittedly it was made in 1959, but still. Otherwise it’s a really standard space adventure, with the standard crew (the tough and horny commander, the older wise scientist, the comic relief blue collar guy who inevitably is from Brooklyn–at least he doesn’t have a thick accent–and the hot female doctor who is constantly getting saved and who several guys refer to simply as “the girl.”)
What makes the film work is a neato collection of monsters once they finally reach Mars. The barely seen Martian isn’t that great, but there’s a (of course) fun giant carnivorous plant, a very Lovecraftian blob monster that’s really great, and of course the famous bat-rat-spider monster. The solarized red tinting on Mars helps to cover up wires and stuff, and the compositing (see the picture before) can be surprisingly good.
The blob is the star, though. I love the scene were it rises from the water, which again is very Lovecraftian. The monster is terrific, and the one eye is creepy. Until it starts mechanically rotating (the eye), at which point it suddenly looks a lot more a prop. The blob envelopes the ship and threatens to absorb it and it’s really good stuff. Anyway, I was glad I took the opportunity to give the movie another watch.
