Ib Melchior, son of famed Danish Wagnerian tenor Lauritz Melchior, had no desire to follow in his father’s footsteps and pursue a musical career. After graduating from the University of Copenhagen, he went to England and became involved in the theatre first as an actor and then as a stage manager and later a director. In early 1941 Ib came to the U.S., joined the Armed Forces, and worked as a military intelligence investigator. After World War II he entered into television directing hundreds of New York based shows in a wide variety of genres. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he wrote and occasionally directed low budget sci-fi movies, of which THE ANGRY RED PLANET is the most fondly remembered.
ARP was one of three science fiction features made in collaboration with American B movie producer Sidney Pink. The other two, REPTILICUS (1961) and JOURNEY TO THE SEVENTH PLANET (1962), were made in Melchior’s native Denmark. All three were distributed by American International and raked in tidy profits which wasn’t too difficult as they cost very little to produce. THE ANGRY RED PLANET, the first in the series and filmed in America, had the biggest budget. It was shot in 9 days and cost 200K. ARP was the first film to utilize the process Melchior and Pink dubbed “Cinemagic,” the magic here consisting primarily of tinting and colorizing black & white drawings during the Martian sequences. The rest of the movie was shot using standard color film stock.
PLANET tells the story of a rocket flight to Mars made by 4 astronauts, 3 men and 1 woman. Like most Fifties sci-fi films, no one wears space suits, they don’t experience weightlessness, and sit in modified desk chairs. Radio contact with Earth is as simple as flipping a switch on the console. The female scientist is is nicknamed “Irish” and given flaming too-red hair which obviously is not hers, nor anyone’s, natural color. One astronaut, a professor, smokes a pipe, another, the rocket’s mechanic, is a mensch from Brooklyn, and the Captain is your typical he-man with chest hair and an eye for his red-headed colleague. After stock footage taken from a 1950’s Space Center, they blast off and have a smooth, uneventful trip to Mars. Then the fun begins.
The surface of Mars is where “Cinemagic” kicks in. Although patently unrealistic, the red tint and solarized drawings are definitely surrealistic and imbues ARP with a unique, and undeniably angry red appearance. The astronauts encounter hostile vegetation, the infamous “Bat/Rat/Crab/Spider” creature which is a puppet with the strings matted out, a giant one-eyes amoeba, and finally a 3 eyed Martian. As for how things go from there, you’ll just have to watch to see for yourself. Without giving anything away, ARP was given a 1950s moral ending, which is not surprising. Actors Gerald Mohr, Les Tremayne, and Jack Kruschen, all B movie veterans who had been there and done that before, know how to handle this type of material. Actress Nora Hayden gives it her best, but one can understand why her career was a short one.
There are numerous versions of ARP available on home video including a recent Blu-Ray from Shout Factory. You can also find it free on the internet, but as is usually the case with free vintage films on the internet, the visual and sonic quality cannot compare with actual physical media. My personal favorite ARP is the original 2001 Midnight Movie DVD edition. While a little older, it does present the movie in its original aspect ratio and is not enhanced for widescreen TV which slightly stretches the picture. ARP also comes in a double DVD MIDNIGHT MOVIES set with three other movies which are THE MAN FROM PLANET X, the aptly less than stellar MORONS FROM OUTER SPACE and ALIEN FROM L.A. Avoid the Timeless Media foursome which doesn’t come with any extras.
The Capsule Critic 