Customer Reviews

Flight to Mars [VHS]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I collect 1950s era Sci-Fi and I have been replacing my VHS versions with DVDs. Unfortunately, I need to keep my VHS version for this movie because the print that Image Entertainment made this from was in such poor shape. The VHS version by UAV Entertainment (The Wade Williams Collection) is MUCH better. Hopefully, UAV will come out with a DVD version soon.

This is a fun piece of cheese from the time when not a lot was known about space or space travel. Well acted, just plain enjoyable for those of us who love our 50's sci-fi. Now the down side. The source material for the transfer is pretty poor. Image usually does a great job on their DVD's and perhaps the print used was the best available, after all this movie is over 50 years old. No matter, a movie about a trip to Mars which is inhabited by beautiful women and coniving men cant be all bad. And watch out for those meteors.

Fans of cheesy 1950s space operas will no doubt be pleased that this is out on DVD, although unfortunately the quality of the source print leaves a bit to be desired. Flight to Mars was rushed out by Monogram to capitalize on the success of Destination Moon, and really has no grounding in serious science fiction. Not yet famous and powerful, producer Walter Mirisch (Magnificent Seven, In the Heat of the Night) was still making Bomba the Jungle Boy movies, scripter Arthur Strawn had penned Karloff's The Black Room and a handful of potboilers, while director Lesley Selander (Vampire's Ghost, Catman of Paris) and associate producer/editor Richard Heermance cranked out mostly lotsa cheap westerns before and after Flight to Mars, everyone's sole SF credit. Genre fans will appreciate the presence of Cameron Mitchell (Gorilla at Large, Nightmare in Wax) as glib "newspaperman" Steve Abbott, Arthur Franz (Invaders from Mars, Monster on the Campus, Atomic Submarine) as bland, pipe-smoking Dr. Barker, and John Litel (perhaps most recognizable as Henry Aldrich's perpetually exasperated father) as Dr. Lane. Ubiquitous genre icon Morris Ankrum gets probably his meatiest SF role as Martian leader Ikron (he looks quite ludicrous in his `Captain Marvel' costume and cape), while Virginia Huston and Marguerite Chapman fill out the parts of brainy lady scientist (pining for the oblivious Dr. Barker) and brainy Martian babe Alita, respectively. Apparently they could only afford one set of space suits (for the Martians) so everyone just wears bomber jackets and aviator's caps on the takeoff and spaceflight. All the requisite elements of cheap 50s space epics are here: the threatening (animated) meteor shower; patronizing, sexist dialogue; technical inaccuracies (e.g. the Martian surface is covered with snow; no zero-G effect in-flight); quaintly obvious miniatures and model work; pseudophilosophical discussions that go nowhere; and of course the whirlwind love quadrangle of Mitchell, Huston, Franz, and Chapman. Somehow they survive a point-blank crash into a Martian mountain without injury (!), and of course [spoiler alert] the "friendly" Martians are really plotting against Earth and plan to use the repaired ship to attack us. Mitchell makes his play for Huston as Franz and Chapman get hot and heavy, the Earth people forge a secret plan (with Alita) to escape, and all is saved in a rather hasty and abrupt conclusion. While Flight to Mars gets a little talky at times (it's really not a hysterical knee-slapper on the order of Queen of Outer Space or Missile to the Moon) it will nonetheless appeal to any fan of campy low-budget space flicks such as Cat-Women of the Moon, Rocketship X-M, Project Moon Base (highly, highly recommended!!), Fire Maidens of Outer Space, etc. Serious SF aficionados beware.
This is another in Image's Wade Williams Collection and while probably the best print to be had suffers in comparison to most of its peers. There is light to medium speckling, spotting, and sporadic lining throughout (noticeably heavier around a couple of reel changes), although some stretches of the film are reasonably clean. There is also a very small but noticeable flickering emulsion `ding' at the lower center of the frame that comes and goes through nearly the entire movie. More annoying are a half-dozen or so jump-cuts scattered throughout the film; a couple show up at reel changes, and several are clustered in a climactic dialogue scene. Ouch! Purists who whined about the quality of Image's Destination Moon DVD will be similarly distressed by this release. That said, the brightness, contrast, and detail are fine; resolution is not razor-sharp but quite acceptable; and the bargain-basement Cinecolor looks as good as it probably ever did: heavy on the blue-greens and oranges in the palette, but well saturated, with reasonably accurate fleshtones. Not a stellar print, but a crisp, clean transfer; no doubt an improvement over any VHS version, and probably the best we'll see for the forseeable future. (Apparently Warner Bros. owns the old Monogram and Allied Artists catalogs and is sitting tight on them. And who knows if they even have a better print at this point?) The disc also includes two approximately 25-minute episodes of an early-80s Santa Monica, CA cable TV show, hosted by Scarlet Street contributor David Del Valle, with guest Cameron Mitchell. The interview is light in tone but informative and wide-ranging, covering Flight to Mars, Gorilla at Large, Death of a Salesman, Nightmare in Wax, the six (!) films Mitchell made for Mario Bava, and numerous other topics. The only downside is that the video quality on these segments is poor, like a mid-grade videotape (apparently the hi-def masters were lost). Still a nice extra, especially for Cameron Mitchell fans. A very-good-to-excellent-quality, lightly speckled trailer (with the same fluttering emulsion ding!) for Flight to Mars and five `bonus' trailers for other Wade Williams titles are included. The photo gallery promised on the box was nowhere to be found on my copy. With the flaws in the feature source print, the unfortunately mediocre picture quality of the interview segments, and missing photo gallery, objectively would I have to give the disc three stars, but this is still an essential (four-star) buy for fans of low-budget 1950s SF or Cameron Mitchell.

This is yet another great SciFi classic that I first saw as a kid way back in the mid 20th century. I've seen it since on TV and VHS and I was very excited when I heard it was to be realeased on DVD. That excitement was soon dampened when I viewed this DVD. The original image used for transfer is absolutely horrible. There is fading, graining, and many splices that make the film jump and in some spots causes choppy dialog - and those are the minor faults. Almost immediatly after the film begins there appears a very distracting brown smuge directly in the middle of the screen. A very anoying blemish that changes shape and contorts for nearly a third of the movie.
Unfortunately, this is the only DVD copy of this film available so I whole-heartedly recommend it as a buy for collectors. Most of the movie looks pretty good, but the defaults really make it a dissapointment. Too bad they couldn't find a better print to copy from. Guess I'll have to keep my VHS edition as a back-up.

This is an entertaining picture, but certainly not the best. The poor budget is reflected in almost every aspect.

The first few scenes glow with colors only possible through Technicolor, but after that the picture looks pretty standard.

The story has a crew of an experimental rocket being sent on a journey to the Red Planet, but meteor damage causes malfunctions that lead to a crash landing on Mars.

The crash of the spaceship is pretty poorly done, and the Martain cityscape will be painful to watch unless you're a very young viewer (flat cardboard cut-out travel cars and elevators seen from the wrong angles!).

The acting? Well... depends. I liked the two older professors in the crew, and the Martian bad guy.

There are some interesting gender issues, most notibly the overwhelming desire of the female crewmember to see the Martian version of a kitchen. For brainy scientists, the two leading female cast members still seem easily sidetracked by such things.

I think the best part of the picture is the first half; the flight preparations, getting to know the crew, and the interesting dialogue about Man's place in the universe that is discussed during the flight.

The ship tangles with the Moon's gravity, and the obligatory glowing meteor fragments, before crashing on Mars.

Once the crew meets the Martains and enters the elevator to the underground Martian city, the picture goes downhill too. The ending seems tacked on, as if money ran out and they had to stop filming where they were.

Still, the picture has some very good moments, and is enjoyable 50's sci-fi. It is much better than another picture that uses special effects clips from this movie, the notoriously bad (but fun!)"Queen of Outer Space".

"Flight to Mars" is a curious mixture of the best of 50's rocketship sci-fi, and the worst of 50's gender stereotyping.

The movie is a wonderful diversion on a Saturday afternoon, and is probably not as well known as other Saturday sci-fiers. As such, it may be an undiscovered gem for those who love old sci-fi.

It would also be a good candidate for your own MST3k party!

Flight to Mars gets off to a decent start, by 50's sci-fi movie standards, as a group of guys and the token gal set off for an ambitious exploration of the Red Planet. But once they arrive, they are greeted by very human Martians (wearing space helmets...can they not breathe their OWN air??). While the Martians offer to help the earthlings repair their rocketship, they are actually plotting to use the ship to launch an attack on Earth.

If you're looking for low-budget but still effective interstellar thrills, you probably won't find much here (see Invaders From Mars, Forbidden Planet, etc.). Admittedly, not much was known about real space travel in 1951, but much of the dialogue hopelessly dates Flight to Mars (Favorite bit: The Earth gal, upon seeing how the Martians live, asks a Martian female to take her to the kitchen). Yes, there is a certain appeal to the Martian women's costumes, some of which are so short I'm surprised they got past the censors. And there are a couple of mildly impressive sets. But really, the overall story moves at a snail's pace and the acting is mostly just tolerable.

As someone has already stated, the print quality here leaves a bit to be desired. Some scratches and color changes are to be expected from a film that's over 50 years old, but there are also numerous missing frames that usually result a in jarring break in the dialogue. Most annoying is a red spot just off-center of the picture which appears to be a spot burned into the print itself.

If you're fan of these type of films, you'll probably want this in your collection, despite its many flaws.

I don't know why, but I just like this movie. Most people would probably start snoozing after the first 10 minutes. The thing I like about this flick is it shows us how man in the mid-20th century believed space travel would be like. Their "space suits" are surplus WWII high altitude bomber clothing and oxygen masks. The martian suits appear to be left over from 'Destination Moon'. And this is the first space film that I've seen that the crew doesn't take any kind of weapon to protect themselves from the unknown. The film is kind of bland at times, but it does have its moments, especially the mini-skirts the martian gals wear (va-va-va voom). I've seen worse films, and I wish that MST3K would've done a lampoon.

Some astronauts in WWII outfits crash-land on Mars after being knocked off course by a meteor shower. They find a race of beings who seem nice, but are actually bent on our extinction. Then, .... Ah, who am I kidding?? The only reason I like this movie is Marguerite Chapman (The Amazing Transparent Man) and her ten-foot long legs! My goodness gracious! She gets to strut about Mars in her blue mini-dress, causing me to stare transfixed at her every move! Praise the Lord! Ms. Chapman is a true wonder of nature! Had I been one of the earthlings, I'd have fallen at her martian high-heels and...., well, you get the picture. Is it hot in here??...

FLIGHT TO MARS 1951

In 1951 a number of science fiction films debuted in theatres across the postwar nation-
The Man from Planet X, Thing From Another World, When Worlds Collide, Day the Earth Stood Still and Superman and the Mole Men. When Worlds Collide would take the Oscar for best photographic effects. Superman and the Mole Men would lead to TV's Adventures of Superman.

FLIGHT TO MARS premièred November 11. It was in color which was rare treat for aficionados of this genre.

The US Air Force secretly builds a rocket ship without the knowledge of Congress or the American people. The name of the rocket ship is MARS. Its intended destination is the mysterious and alluring planet Mars. For you see, it is under the surface of Mars that its alluring nature will be revealed.

Consisting of a scientific crew of three men and one woman, Steve Abbott, a newspaper reporter, a former war correspondent, is added to the mix. He falls for Carol, the beautiful assistant to Jim Barker. Unfortunately, Carol is madly in love with her boss and mentor, Jim. Jim does not have any romantic interest in Carol, but Steve and Carol hatch a plot to make Jim jealous. Kissing below decks on a speeding rocket is as romantic as it gets in space. Of course, Steve does not mind this new assignment in helping Carol.

As fate would have it in the human cosmological history of things, their rocket crashes on Mars. Unfortunately, their atomic power heads are destroyed which makes a return to earth impossible. Fortunately, for them there is an entrance to a subterranean city within walking distance. With their B52 bomber gear and oxygen masks-sorry no space suits for these humans- they head for the entrance and are greeted by space suited Martians-funny, the Martians look like your typical humans next door except the women dress in skimpy miniskirts. The men dressed in old European fashion with the cape ever flowing.

The Council Members led by President Ikron welcomes the visitors and offer them logging, food and new clothes. When on Mars, do as the Martians do.

Unfortunately, even with the skimpy dress, Carol cannot divert the attention of Jim. He is too absorbed in his work of repairing the rocket for the return to earth. One begins to wonder if the man had any interest in the opposite sex. Of course, this is 1951 and true to form walks in Alita, a lovely Martian scientist who is there to help Jim anyway that she can. Jim is smitten, true love at first glance-the first interplanetary romance. Poor Carol, she is heartbroken and cries for one hour and seventeen minutes on her cot as Steve plays solitaire at the desk and attempts to offer her words of consolation.

President Ikron isn't as saccharine as he appears. He is malevolent in an altruistic sort of way. He wants to steal the secret of rocket making, build a fleet and attack earth. For you see Mars is dying. They need a new home-that's right, they want Earth.

Of course, Tillamar, a member of the Council and Alita's father are opposed to Ikron's genocidal plan for earth. They decide to help the earth people.

A good old fashioned fist fight ensues. No ray guns are ever seen. Guess they could not find the ones from the old Flash Gordon films. Of course, all is well in the end.

The plot is descent. The special effects are ok. The characters are well written. The acting is not so bad.

Overall, it is a descent film from 1951. For its age, picture quality is ok. Is it worth 71 minutes of your time? Only if you are a devotee to the genre or just want something to do.

Do I regret purchasing this DVD? Not for a moment! It was worth the price. It is a nice addition to my collection.

The U.S. Air Force, in its space exploration program, finally puts together a manned (and womaned) mission to Mars. After the space travelers land, some leaders of the Martian people see an opportunity to seize the spaceship as a prototype and build a fleet of ships to invade Earth.

"Flight to Mars" is a superior sci fi movie about an advanced civilization on resource-depleted Mars trying to save its dying race, but poorly prepared on DVD. Several strange dropouts of dialog. Color quality of the DVD provides deeper and better colors over the videotape version, but many scratches. The videotape version contains copy protection and won't allow transfer to DVD on home equipment. I was disappointed with the purchase.