VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA (1961)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *fair*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*


I follow up (purely by coincidence) a review of Disney's most famous super-submarine movie with Irwin Allen's own attempt at that subgenre, which was popular enough to lead to a 1964-68 teleseries of the same name.  Surprisingly, though most Irwin Allen movies are noteworthy for flat characterization and rambling plotlines, VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA is stronger in both departments.

VOYAGE was Allen's third venture into the domain of metaphenomenal cinema, following the bizarre fantasy THE STORY OF MANKIND and the tepid adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's THE LOST WORLD.  Allen would later become something of an "enfant terrible" in the world of televised SF, ranging from the above-mentioned VOYAGE series to THE TIME TUNNEL, LOST IN SPACE, and LAND OF THE GIANTS.  Most of his movies and teleseries episodes tended to follow very narrow formulaic plotlines.

VOYAGE possesses a touch more dramatic heft.  The central plot involves a natural cataclysm of the sort that would earn Allen the name of "master of disaster" in later films-- specifically, that Earth's Van Allen radiation belt catches fire.  Worldwide debate ensues, lining up between the "do-nothings," who posit that the fire will burn itself out, and the "do-somethings," who claim that the fire must be put out by positive action.  Retired Navy admiral Harriman Nelson (Walter Pidgeon), who built the super-submarine "Seaview" with his own resources but is still vaguely tied to the American military.  Nelson, in concert with research scientist Professor Emery (Peter Lorre), determines that nothing will stop the fire but an atomic missile fired from just the right position into the Van Allen belt-- and he also determines that he will use the Seaview to do so, no matter what anyone else says.

Among the crew that signs up to join Nelson on his perhaps-mad mission are young Lee Crane, with whom Nelson has a surrogate father-son relationship, and Crane's girlfriend Cathy, who is Nelson's secretary.  The two are scheduled to be married (though Cathy is first seen lasciviously shaking her rear end to the music of another sailor, played by the redoubtable Frankie Avalon).  Crane's loyalty to Nelson is destined to be tested, however, in a manner that suggests the age-old alpha-male conflict of "father" and "son."

What Allen's script produces is something like THE CAINE MUTINY with science fiction trimmings.  As the Seaview makes relentless progress toward its goal, the sailors are driven hard, and two lives are lost, causing Crane to question Nelson's sanity.  In addition to external threats, such as antique mines and a giant octopus, a saboteur is aboard.  Is he religious fanatic Alvarez, who draws sharp censure from Crane for counseling the sailors to sit back and accept their God-given fate?  Or is it some less likely suspect?

As it happens, both Alvarez and another passenger provide different internal threats, but the real emphasis is upon Nelson's stress.  Significantly, he alienates Crane when he slaps around the malingering Avalon character, with the result that the Seaview's progress is almost impeded by Oedipal issues.  Fortunately for the world, those issues are overcome in the nick of time, and the world is saved.

Interestingly, when this core concept was turned into the teleseries, I rarely if ever saw such conflict between the teleseries versions of Crane and Nelson.

20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *fair*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*


Like many of the "baby boomer" generation I watched and enjoyed Walt Disney's 1954 production of Jules Verne's 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA.  I didn't read the book for many years, and even when I did, I didn't make extensive cross-comparisons at the time.  Since the few other attempts to film LEAGUES were uniformly awful, I've tended to remember the Disney version as essentially accurate to Verne's vision.

However, having recently reread the unexpurgated Verne novel with more attention, I'd say that while the 1954 film is still the best of the adaptations, it departs from the original in too many ways to be called a faithful translation.

Of course, no one could have expected a commercial film, then or now, to include the dozens of rapturous but static scenes in which Captain Nemo uses his magnificent submarine to show his guests-- Professor Arronax, his manservant Conseil, and harpooner Ned Land-- the serried wonders of the ocean depths.  It was inevitable that when director Richard Fleischer and scripter Earl Felton approached the novel, they would seek to tighten the loose plot. Unfortunately, their tightening changed the essence of the novel's focal character, Captain Nemo, without coming up with a valid vision of their own for him.

One of the most salient changes is the way the modern world first encounters Nemo's fantastic invention.  In both book and movie, the Nautilus is initially mistaken for some new species of sea monster, as no such submersible exited at the time.  In Verne's book, Nemo doesn't go out of his way to encounter the ships of mankind; rather, they usually suffer damage from accidentally colliding with the Nautilus or from attacking it, though later in the novel it's suggested that the Nautilus does attack ships which practice the slave-trade. 

In order to tighten Verne's plot, however, Fleishcer and Felton open with scenes of the Nautilus attacking ships at will, and his reasons for doing so are never fully explained.  Later he will attack ships that are expressly involved in the slave trade, but Ned Land's frequent references to Nemo as a "madman" suggest that he's lost any power to discriminate between good and evil.

Verne's Nemo is in essence the anti-social man of Jean-Jacquest Rousseau, eternally desirous of getting away from the evil entanglements of human society-- and even though Nemo has a crew with him, none of them are characters in their own right: they might as well be golem-servants created by a medieval sorcerer.  In addition, Verne depicts Nemo as possessing a monomaniacal but nevertheless admirable love of all things relating to the seven seas.

Fleischer's Nemo, given stately bearing by actor James Mason, seems far less motivated by love of the sea than by hatred of mankind's evil ways.  In addition, whereas in the novel he rescues the three castaways intentionally-- though with the caveat that they must remain members of his crew forevermore-- in the film the castaways find their way aboard the Nautilus when everyone happens to be off the ship.  This Nemo, taking some measure of pleasure in his godlike power, threatens to let all three men drown.  He reverses himself, but it doesn't seem to be for any beneficent motive. 

As in the novel, marine biological expert Professor Arronax (Paul Lukas) becomes bonded to Nemo by virtue of their common love for the sea, but the film tends to show Arronax's fascination in a negative light in that this love threatens to become a true monomania.

In the book Conseil is the perfect manservant to Arronax: not only does he unthinkingly risk his life to save Arronax, he accedes to Arronax in every way, even when Ned Land wants the servant to vote on whether the three seek to escape their floating prison.  The film, perhaps sensing that Verne's "perfect manservant" trope would seem slavish to modern audiences, changes Peter Lorre's Conseil to Arronax's apprentice.  This Conseil is quite capable of taking initiative to defy the Professor's over-identification with Nemo.

Ned Land receives quite a bit more buildup in the film than in the novel, doubtless because the film version is portrayed by heavy-hitter film-star Kirk Douglas (though admittedly Douglas, Lorre, Lukas and Mason share joint above-the-title crediting).  In the book Ned Land is an intelligent but plain-spoken sailor, a diamond in the rough but not without his own system of morals.  He's uncomfortable with being confined aboard the Nautilus but doesn't act rashly to secure escape.

Douglas' Ned Land is a greedier, more selfish character, who has no appreciation at all for Nemo's accomplishments but only wants his own personal freedom.  Nemo's anomie against the inhumanity of man means nothing to Land, but he very much wants to use the resources of the Nautilus to harvest sunken treasure, and even stoops to attempt robbing Nemo's treasure-trove. 

The novel shows Nemo and Land as equals in terms of their puissance-- Land saves Nemo from a shark, and Nemo returns the favor by saving Land from a gigantic squid.  But in the film, Land does all the saving, rescuing Nemo from being eaten by a squid-- which, at that point in the film, is the only thing that keeps Nemo from executing him for a previous disobedience.  However, Land ends up costing Nemo his life later, by sending forth a note-in-a-bottle that reaches Nemo's enemies the slavers.  This note makes it possible for the slavers to invade Nemo's island sanctuary, and though Nemo destroys the island and presumably the (mostly unseen) slave-takers, a slaver-bullet takes Nemo's life-- a less poetic demise than he meets (or seems to meet) in the Verne novel.  It may be merely coincidence that the film's Land, who's willing to do almost anything for a buck, indirectly finds himself on the side of the slavers who follow much the same ethos.  But coincidence or not, it doesn't make me like Land all that much.

In terms of the state-of-the-art effects of the Disney film, no other adaptation can touch it.  The battle with the giant squid is still one of the great scenes of metaphenomenal cinema.  But the definitive adaptation of Verne's novel has yet to be made.

KRULL (1983)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, metaphysical*


KRULL, debuting a few months after the concluding chapter of George Lucas' STAR WARS, shows its creators struggling to assimilate the demands of the science-fantasy genre.  Director Peter Yates, best known for the Steve McQueen thriller BULLITT, directed no metaphenomenal films before or after KRULL, suggesting that he had no great interest in such genres.  Writer Stanford Sherman had done various teleseries episodes for BATMAN and THE MAN FROM UNCLE, so he at least had some prior acquaintance with writing fantasy-fiction.  Still, KRULL, though a fairly enjoyable fantasy-film, feels like an effort on its creators' parts to cash in on STAR WARS and/or the emerging Dungeons and Dragons subculture.

"Krull" is the name of a fantasy-planet inhabited primarily by humans, though there are various fantasy-beings who live there as well.  The film opens on a world where feudal-style kingdoms have been at war with each other for some time, but an alien threat has arise, as armored soldiers called "Slayers" have invaded, under the command of a monstrous creature called "the Beast."

Two formerly warring city-states-- that of King Eirig and that of King Turold-- attempt to patch up their differences and form a permanent alliance against the Beast's forces. To this end they arrange a marriage between Prince Colwyn and Princess Lyssa, who are already romantically involved prior to the arrangement.  Interestingly, Lyssa's father Eirig is more than a little reluctant to see his little girl married to Colwyn, as he dourly predicts that "good warriors make bad husbands." 

The alliance is foiled when a contingent of Slayers invade Turold's castle.  The evil drones carry off Lyssa and murder everyone in the castle, missing only Colwyn.  A wise old man named Ynyr seeks out the surviving warrior and guides him in his quest to recover Lyssa.  His first goal is to direct Colwyn to claim a mystic weapon called "the Glaive", which, as seen above, looks like a metallic throwing-star.  Colwyn claims this without much trouble, but the next step proves difficult. Colwyn can only find the hideout of his enemies, the "Iron Fortress," with the help of seers, for the fortress teleports from one location to another on a daily basis.

In approved D&D tradition, Colwyn and Ynyr collect a number of allies as they progress toward their goal.  Most of these allies belong to a gang of bandits whom Colwyn manages (not very convincingly) to talk into being his honor guard.  Others include a comic-relief magician who keeps accidentally turning himself into animals, a bland little boy, and a cyclops who can foresee his own death.  However, the Beast becomes aware of Colwyn's effort and sends forces to harry him.  The villain also uses magic to block most ordinary seers from finding his fortress, forcing Ynyr to seek out the one being whom the evil one can't block: the "Widow of the Web."  Once Ynyr acquires and conveys the information-- at the cost of his own life-- Colwyn and his followers invade the Iron Fortress.  Aided by the steadfast love of Lyssa, Colwyn manages to use the power of the Glaive and defeat the monster, so that Krull will endure in a happy-ever-after future.

Despite the many fairy-tale touches, KRULL is, in contrast with the work of George Lucas, very preoccupied with themes of death.  One of the bandit-followers remarks that all they're getting for their efforts are "rocks in our pockets and gravestones over our heads."  One of the other bandits dies slowly in quicksand despite his friends' attempts to save him, and an old blind seer who joins the company is slain by a demon so that she can take the seer's place and spy on the group.  And, as noted before, Rell the Cyclops belongs to a race that had once been two-eyed, but as a group sacrificed an eye apiece to the Beast, who promised them knowledge of the future-- though all the Cyclopses ever know is the hour of their own individual deaths.

Similarly, the sequence in which Ynyr must venture alone into the dwelling-place of the "Widow of the Web," a giant white web guarded by a giant white spider, is haunted with death-imagery. Ynyr only gets through by appealing to the Widow on the basis of a previous romance they shared, and she admits him by using a magic hourglass to temporarily suspend the giant spider's activities.  Before Ynyr can get the needed information, the old woman-- who for some unexplained reason shares the same proper name as the hostage princess-- reminds him that because he left her after their time together, she took out her anger at him by killing their child-- which seems to have something to do with her lonely vigil in the web.  Ynyr forgives her, though, so she gives him the information he needs, as well as passage out of the web, although the necessary magic costs both her life and Ynyr's.  It's easily the best sequence in KRULL, but it's certainly far more depressing than anything in George Lucas.

Speaking of Lucas, though there's some decent design-work in the film, one can't help but think Lucas every time one sees an animated ray-blast or looks at the Slayers in their dark version of Storm Trooper duds.  Worst of all, when Slayers perish they make a high-pitched screechng sound strongly reminiscent of R2D2's scream at the end of STAR WARS.  One source claims that the sound-effect was recycled from the earlier film AT THE EARTH'S CORE, but even so I suspect it might have been chosen on the basis of its resemblance to a sound from the Lucas oeuvre.

The Beast, who spends most of the film trying to talk Princess Lyssa into marrying him instead of Colwyn, isn't a terribly compelling villain.  He's essentially a retread of familiar devil-motifs, ranging from "the devil as trickster" (cf. the bad deal he gives the Cyclops race) to "the devil as tempter," trying to convince Lyssa that Power is more important than Love.  The Beast makes one paltry attempt to convince Lyssa that Colwyn will cheat on her by showing her a "crystal ball" scene in which his female demon attempts to seduce the Prince.  However, even the Beast's own lackey betrays him by falling for noble Colwyn, accidentally reaffirming Lyssa's belief in Love.  Yates never manages to make these scenes of highflown sentiment as interesting as the ones involving death and loss.

There are some minor references to the sexual alchemy of male and female, particularly at the climax, where Colwyn loses the Glaive but can still use its power thanks to being empowered by Lyssa's willing assent to his love.  But few of the characters come alive even to the extent that the Star Wars characters do, not even the death-haunted Cyclops Rell.  None of the principal cast-members became strong headliners, though one of the minor bandit-characters was essayed by a very young Liam Neeson.

NEVERLAND (2011)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: * psychological, cosmological*


British writer-director Nick Willing seems to have made a regular habit of re-imagining public domain franchises.  He adapted the Oz books as TIN MAN and came out with two different takes on ALICE IN WONDERLAND.  Prior to watching the TV miniseries NEVERLAND I'd only seen Willing's second take on the Alice books, a patchy 2011 miniseries presenting a version of Alice who becomes Wonderland's judo-skilled freedom fighter.

NEVERLAND, though it was financed by the Syfy Channel as was the two-part ALICE, shows Willing warming to his material to better effect.  Possibly this was because J.M. Barrie's PETER PAN has stronger adventure-currents than the source material of either Alice or Oz.  To be sure, were I classifying the Barrie novel, I'd tend to consider it a "combative comedy," in that I think the comic tones of the book overpower the adventurous tones.  Likewise the Disney version of PETER PAN.  However, Nick Willing's version falls more completely into the category of the pure adventure-work.

Stage versions of PETER PAN originated a tradition in which the same actor played both the principal "father-role"-- Wendy's pater George Darling-- and the less than paternal villain, Captain James Hook.  Willing picks up this vague "daddy issue" potential and centers the narrative of his prequel upon it, probably with no small influence by the Harry Potter/Severus Snape relationship in the J.K Rowling series.  Rather than following the scenario where Peter and Hook meet in Neverland, Peter (Charlie Rowe) is one of several "lost boy" orphans born in the early 1900s, who follow the tutelage of Fagin-like thief-master and arms dealer Jimmy Hook (Rhys Ifans).  Peter, Hook and the boys are transported into Neverland-- actually posited to be a planet in the center of the universe-- by a magical orb.  Once there, they have various run-ins with denizens who were also transported to Neverland by similar orb-encounters.  The "friendlies" are a tribe of Indians, the "Kaw," whose princess is the "Tiger Lily" of the Barrie books. The "unfriendlies" are a shipful of pirates from the 1700s, led by a fiery wench named Captain Liz Bonney, played by Anna Friel and clearly patterned after the real-life female pirate Anne Bonney.

Gradually Peter and the Lost Boys are drawn to side with the Kaw, who protect the fairies/"tree spirits"-- whose number includes Tinkerbell-- from the depredations of the pirates.  Hook, however, is literally seduced to the side of the pirates by Bonney.  He proves a capable leader, urging the pirates to acquire the "fairy dust" that makes flight possible and to return, with the help of a duplicate orb, to the 1900s to acquire weapons and conquer Neverland.  And though he's been a surrogate father to orphan Peter, he willingly betrays him to serve his ambitions.  He also has a secret in that he was once in love with Peter's mother, but when he wasn't chosen to be her husband, he reacted rather, shall we say, badly.

Obviously one's enjoyment of this miniseries will vary according to one's tolerance for seeing Barrie's simple, spontaneous children's fantasies subjected to logical psychoanalysis and political correctness (the noble savages here are considerably nobler than in Barrie: think PETER PAN meets DANCES WITH WOLVES).  But though Willing never re-invents the wheel creatively speaking, he provides a much smoother tread than most adapters-- particularly the Disney version, which I find superficial and irritating. Willing provides a number of strong action-sequences, such as one in which the pirates have to cross a giant spider-web to reach a destination, calling up recollections of the 1940 THIEF OF BAGDAD.  In addition there are several vivid scenes of emotional turmoil, mostly between Peter and Hook, showing good chemistry between Rowe and Ifans.

This miniseries isn't "true" to the original Barrie works, though Willing's prequel does provide some links to the setup with which Barrie begins (where Peter will become a wilder spirit with no memory of the past and no shadow).  But in some ways I prefer seeing a lively if unfaithful adaptation to a spiritless by-the-numbers re-creation.  



   

THE SEA SERPENT (1984)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*


Though I give SEA SERPENT the same mythicity-rating seen in the recent YONGARY MONSTER OF THE DEEP-- meaning that neither goes beyond a very functional level of symbolism-- YONGARY is at least good basic entertainment for anyone in need of a giant monster-fix.

In contrast, I can't top the remark made by a Youtube viewer of SERPENT: that it was the best sock-puppet monster-movie made in the last few decades.  But even with that distinction, it's pretty barren of the sort of inspired absurdities that make a movie "so bad it's good."  This story of a sub-Godzilla awakened by the usual nuclear testing is nothing but dull.

Given that writer-director Armando de Ossorio showed that he could deliver decent horror-movies in his "Blind Dead" series of zombie-films, it's apparent that he brought nothing to this film but a desire to get a paycheck.

There's just one curious scene I happened to notice, on which I've seen no remark.  Lead actors Timothy Bottoms and Taryn Power separately witness the monster's seaside depredations, but can't convince anyone else that the monster exists. In a scene that could have taken a few minutes, Bottoms visits Powers (the real-life daughter of Hollywood star Tyrone Power) in her hospital-room to enlist her help.  I kept expecting the scene to end, but de Ossorio kept the dialogue going and going for an absurdly long time. I finally realized that his likely reason for so doing was that the nubile Powers was seated in bed while she talked to Bottoms, wearing a scanty, non-hospital-style negligee.  This was the only scene in which Powers put her considerable charms on display in this film, so it seems de Ossorio was determined to drag the scene out as long as he possibly could for that very reason.

THE VANISHING SHADOW (1934)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: * psychological*


This obscure serial has two distinctions: it's the first sound serial by long-time serial-maker Universal Studios to make heavy use of SF-devices (credited in part to Ken Strickfadden, hence lots of zap-happy electrical arcs), and (2) it's the first feature effort by actor-turned-director Lew Landers, who would make his best-known film-- the Bela Lugosi/Boris Karloff horror-film THE RAVEN-- the very next year.

In addition, this outing reverses one of the more common tropes of the SF-tinged adventure-serial.  From the silent years onward, it was standard for the heroes or heroines to be skilled but essentially ordinary human beings faced with mad geniuses who could conjure up assorted super-technological death-devices, as seen in the previous year's THE WHISPERING SHADOW.

VANISHING SHADOW starts with a common enough setup: young (but repetitively named) scientist Stanley Stanfield wishes to avenge the death of his father, brought about by corrupt businessman Barnett. But Stanley happens to make contact with an even more inventive scientist, Doctor Van Dorn, who also bears Barnett a grudge.  Van Dorn happens to have a small arsenal of weapons that he'd been developing on his own, with a vaguely expressed idea of turning them over to the army for national defense.  With Van Dorn's help Stanley begins using the weapons against Barnett and his gangster allies-- particularly the device that gives the serial its name, an "almost-invisibility belt."  When anyone wears the belt, his body vanishes from sight but his shadow remains visible.  In addition the sometimes mad-seeming scientist also cooks up a death-ray that destroys only living matter, various electrical traps and, in the very last episodes, a giant humanoid robot (seen above).

The narrative problem of this reversal soon becomes clear: with so many super-weapons against them, Barnett and his thugs seem overmatched-- so the scripters are forced to even the odds by allowing the hoods to get control of the weapons, or to have the weapons backfire on the heroes, etc.

Despite this weakness, VANISHING is never dull.  Like many Universal directors of the time Landers keeps the action quotient high, while the actors are allowed to have a few moments of relatively strong characterization.  Female lead Gloria is actually the estranged daughter of Barnett, but she's foresworn her father's name due to his criminal activities.  She has some good melodramatic moments trying to persuade her father to go straight.  She's also the one who asks Van Dorn why he, one of the "good guys," happens to making all these death-weapons.

To horror-fans familiar with Onslow Stevens' work in Universal's 1945 HOUSE OF DRACULA, it'll prove interesting to see him as a young serial-hero, for all that he's not especially dashing.  James Durkin has the best role as the semi-mad scientist Van Dorn.  The villains, unfortunately, are never interesting beyond Barnett's conflict with his daughter, and spend most of their time trying to steal some valuable bonds rather than appropriating Van Dorn's miracle weapons. 

THE ANGRY RED PLANET (1959), QUEEN OF BLOOD (1966)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: (1) *poor* (2) *good*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological, psychological*


Though these two SF-films are separated by about seven years, they belong to the same subgenre that deals with "future-astronauts-vs.-aliens."   They also make an interesting contrast in that even though ANGRY RED PLANET had a budget about four times that of QUEEN OF BLOOD, the 1966 work is unquestionably the better film.  Granted, the later thriller did piggyback on a couple of more expensive Soviet productions, by excerpting scenes therefrom after the producers of AIP bought the rights to those films.  But any of BLOOD's American-lensed scenes are easily the superior of the entire mise-en-scene of ANGRY.

ANGRY, written by director Ib Melchior and producer Sid Pink, duplicates the broad contours of the "cosmological" motif of science fiction-- its focus on strange forms of life born in alien environments-- but fails to yeild anything more than a soulless duplication.  The most that I can say for it is that it does at least have a fairly coherent plot, in contrast to my least favorite SF-film of the period, SPACE PROBE TAURUS.

The story begins *in media res,* as the officials of Earth welcome the return of the first manned spaceflight to Mars.  To the onlookers' dismay, only two survivors from a four-person crew have returned: the expedition's leader Colonel O'Bannion, unconscious due to an alien growth infecting his arm, and the mission's female doctor Iris Ryan, traumatized and unable to remember what occured on Mars.  However, after a brief period of treatment, Ryan's memory returns and relates the bulk of the film's narrative in retrospect.

In short, once the astronauts have successfully landed on Mars, their scientific investigations are continually hampered by hostile Martian life-forms-- a carnivorous plant for one, a monstrous hybrid (dubbed by fans the "rat-bat-spider", see illo above) for another.  After one of their number is killed, the astronauts determine that they should leave Mars early-- no considerations of the difficulties of lining up the trajectory of their ship for the return trip mentioned, of course.  A force field, created by intelligent Martian locals, stops them from leaving, and a giant amoeba attacks the ship.  The amoeba kills another male astronaut and infects O'Bannion.  Ryan, showing commendable resource in some (though not all) scenes, manages to pilot the ship back to Earth despite losing her memory thereafter.  The film returns to present-time, at which point Ryan gets a brainstorm and figures out in jig time how to purge the alien life-form from her commander's arm with absolutely no ill effects afterward.  A coda informs the Earthlings that the intelligent inhabitants of Mars have observed the culture of their neighbors and have "angrily" closed off their borders to any future incursions.

The real star of ANGRY is not any of the actors-- all reputable jobbing actors, but given a subpar script with which to work-- but is rather the "CineMagic" process used by the production to depict the "angry red planet" in tones of bilious red.  Against such backgrounds, the hand-drawn animations of creatures like the giant spider-thing would seem to meld with the surrounding environment.  I find it hard to credence that this intrustive effect could have inspired any "sense of wonder" in audiences of the period, but if it did, that might be more to the credit of the audience-members than to that of the filmmakers.

With the central character of Ryan, the film takes two steps back for every step forward. Like a number of other 1950s leading-ladies in SF-films, Ryan is an esteemed professional, and comes off fairly well in the science-scenes, even if her quick-cure of O'Bannion at the conclusion strains one's credulity.  On the other hand, the shipboard romance of Ryan and O'Bannion proves painful to the ears, and neither actor is able to make anything of the tedious dialogue.  The sociological critique of mankind, seen to such good effect in 1951's THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, is here tossed off with no real conviction and fails to give the Martians any sociological mythicity.

In the futuristic year of "1990," Earth has its first encounter with an alien race. Earth's authorities (one of whom is the esteemed Doctor Farraday, played by Basil Rathbone) receive a radio transmission from an alien vessel that has crash-landed on Mars.  The authorities, eager to make contract with an advanced race-- possibly to profit from their technology, though the point isn't emphasized-- send a crew of astronauts to land on Mars and effect a rescue.  The crew (including such lumianries as John Saxon and Dennis Hopper) reaches Mars and finds one survivor on the alien ship: the QUEEN OF BLOOD (Florence Marly), a green-skinned, beehive-hairdoed female.  The Earthlings aren't able to communicate with the Queen, but are apparently disarmed by her feminine helplessness.  Despite her being an unknown quantity, she's allowed to have the run of the ship (much to the catty displeasure of female astronaut Judi Meredith).  Slowly crewmen start to perish of extreme blood-loss.

One may fairly criticize the convenient way the alien vampire is allowed to prey upon the crew without rousing suspicion, though the script gives the writers a possible "out" in that the Queen possesses hypnotic powers that might have dulled the reactions of the Earthpeople.  Eventually the Queen is vanquished, though, like a more famous ALIEN life-form, she leaves behind a clutch of eggs that may eventually spell Earth's doom.

Whereas director Melchior in ANGRY RED PLANET simply shot the actors speaking lines with a lot of boring middle-range shots, QUEEN's director Curtis Harrington uses copious closeups of his actors.  Perhaps this was done to conceal the bare-bones nature of the production, but the effect is to give the largely shipboard proceedings a claustrophobic quality.  The Queen herself is an excellent example of evoking the cosmological motif, for even though she never speaks, her habits and actions are comprehensible through the lens of an extraterrestrial biology.  At the same time, alien though she is, she also evokes the psychological and sociological motifs of the Eternal Feminine in its negative form; of being willing to destroy any number of male victims in order to pave the way for her "children."