THE WIZARD OF MARS (1965)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

Since penning my largely negative remarks on JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TIME, I haven't tested the possibility that one of David L. Hewitt's other offerings might be worse than time. But I discovered that WIZARD OF MARS, the first film Hewitt wrote and directed after his script-collaboration for 1964's THE TIME TRAVELERS, was probably the next best thing he produced.

I'm reasonably sure I first saw WIZARD in my teen years, if not younger, and I'm sure that I knew that it was a very cheap movie. After all, toward the story's end, the protagonists have to nullify a temporal stasis by shoving a big pendulum with a stylized sun carved into the mechanism's face so that the pendulum starts swinging again. But unlike some reviewers, I don't object to a film purely because it's cheaply made.

WIZARD concerns four astronauts who have been sent in their spacecraft from Earth to fly over Mars and take readings. A magnetic disturbance causes the ship's instruments to fail, and the craft separates into two stages. I never followed why a ship that had already taken off from Earth would have more than one stage. The whole practice of using stage-sections was always about leaving the planet Earth by jettisoning one section of the ship to lighten the load once the rocket reached a certain point. But that's the predicament in which the four astronauts find themselves: Captain, Science Guy, Comedy Relief and Cute Chick land on Mars in one section while the other part of the ship lands elsewhere. 

All four crewpersons survive, but the section they're in can't go anywhere. They can only return to Earth by restoring the other stage to flyability, but that means locating that section via a radio beacon, and hoofing it over the alien landscape of Mars with limited oxygen supplies

A lot of online reviews didn't like the fact that the astronauts spend the next half-hour just trekking across the Martian deserts, crossing a Martian river, and making their way through Martian caves (played by the Carlsbad Caverns). There's one moment while crossing the river that the quartet is attacked by some sort of vine-creature, but clearly the budget didn't allow for a fully articulated monster, just as having the foursome traipse around in heavy spacesuits didn't allow for much characterization. Yet I for one did get a palpable sense of peril even without a lot of alien attacks. 

The best scene in WIZARD takes place halfway through the film. To the travelers' dismay, they learn that the signal they've been following is coming, not from their ship, but from an ancient probe Earth sent to Mars long ago to remotely study planetary conditions. Comedy Relief is particularly incensed by this, and he fires a round or two at the useless derelict craft. Captain belatedly realizes that the old hulk still has a partial store of liquid oxygen within it, and the astronauts are able to tap this resource to keep themselves alive for a few days longer. I might quibble that all the oxygen-deprived wanderers ought to think "possible oxygen resources" the moment they see the probe. But I still like the lines spoken by Comedy Relief, to the effect that they're going to die on this world after having sent a probe to discover if life was possible there.

Then the quarter finds a Yellow Brick Road-- and did I mention that Cute Chick's name was Dorothy? But happily, Hewitt doesn't pursue any other parallels to the 1939 movie classic; I think these two references were just minor touchstones designed to give a cheap movie a little extra color. The road takes the four to a dead-seeming city, where the adventurers encounter the former occupants, preserved under glass as it were. The audience sees just one of the preserved Martians up close, and it turns out to be the head of the creature from 1965's SPACE PROBE TAURUS. The Earthlings find evidence of intruders who were apparently incinerated for trespassing. 

Then they meet The Wizard of Mars himself (the floating head of John Carradine). Presumably he too is one of the preserved Martians, but he's fully able to communicate with the Earthlings. He gives them a lecture about his people's past follies, and instructs them to move the pendulum-thing in order to put an end to the Martians' unnatural perpetuity. The astronauts do so, and the Wizard apparently rewards them by projecting them back into their craft (possibly fully restored?), only seconds after the ship was torn apart-- though the travelers still retain vestiges of their ordeal: sweat, grime, and five-o'-clock shadow for the guys.

The Martian trek scenes were. for me at least, saved from tedium by various instrumentals by composer Frank A. Coe. But Hewitt deserves some credit for trying something fairly ambitious. Though he's not able to achieve the poetry necessary to make WIZARD truly magical, at least Hewitt understands that poetry is what he's shooting for.