The Wizard of Mars (1965)

Fantastic!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

Without it's absurd title this strange little film might have been taken more seriously. As it was, knowing that it was supposedly based on 'The Wizard of Oz', instead of placidly accepting this film as a sort of 'Z' budget precursor of 'The Martian', I instead sat through fully two thirds of its running time wondering when John Carradine was going to show up in order to justify it's catchpenny title. It actually seems to owe at least as much to C.S.Lewis, and the ruined city at the end reminded me more of Charn in 'The Magician's Nephew' than the Emerald City.Considering that David Hewitt was just 25 when he made this on a tiny budget estimated at just $33,000, it's certainly nowhere near the embarrassment that John Boorman's pretentious bore 'Zardoz' (which also derived it's title from 'The Wizard of Oz') was ten years later. It's handsomely photographed in Deluxe Color by Austin McKinney and has an interesting electronic score by Frank A. Coe; but any director who employs Tom Graeff (who directed 'Teenagers from Outer Space') as his editor and Forrest J.Ackerman his Technical Adviser is asking for trouble! For much of its running time it feels like a foreign film dubbed into English which has had its plot amended in the process; and according to her daughter, Eve Bernhardt as 'Dorothy' was indeed redubbed after a spat between her and Roger Gentry after he made a pass at her while they were on location. (Which might account for her being billed fourth in much smaller letters than her male co-stars.) Bernhardt is an extremely beautiful woman, and refreshingly she's portrayed as just one of the crew rather than made part of a romantic subplot (not that that would have been easy since she spends much of the film inside a spacesuit), but she's saddled with a whiny little voice that obviously isn't her's; and with a whiny personality to boot. (She has also suffered from shoulder and back pain ever since, as a result of spending a month staggering about in an authentic spacesuit and helmet that "weighed a ton").As they escape from the collapsing city at the film's conclusion, they pass out by the half-buried remains of a red brick road that recalls the gold brick road that had previously led them there. So now I finally know where the Red Brick Road led...!

"The Wizard of Mars" is a rather boring low budgeted film. I watched it mostly hoping it was at least interesting when it came to the parallels to "The Wizard of Oz" but sadly this didn't pan out at all.The film begins with a space ship crashing onto the surface of Mars. There are several men and, surprise, a lady. Their biggest problem is that they only have a very limited supply of air and so they leave their vessel in search of some way to survive. This search makes up the bilk of the movie and, sadly, it never gets interesting or the least bit like "The Martian"...it's just a cheaply made film with dull characters (despite the supposed Oz parallels). Even for bad movie buffs, this film has little to offer...it's not even enjoyable on a camp level.

Horrors of the Red Planet (1965) BOMB (out of 4) Four astronauts crash land on Mars where they walk around for an hour's worth of running time before meeting the planet's wizard (John Carradine). Here's a really bad movie that somewhat keeps you interested because you're expecting something to happen but when nothing does happen you can't help but be really upset. Carradine doesn't show up until the final ten minutes and when he does it's only his head. The rest of the cast members are equally awful as are the special effects, directing, screenplay and so on.

Hewitt's "Gallery Of Horrors" is one of the great "so bad it's good" funny films, and his really stupid "Monsters Crash the Pajama Party" is inept but a lot less amusing. so the genuine qualities of "Wizard Of Mars" caught me off guard. It's video title "Horrors Of The Red Planet" is actually a lot better and more fitting. I hate to get into a fight here about the obvious merits of MST3K, who did not even do this movie, but it would have in fact been a bad choice for the show, as the film does have a strange, hypnotic effect that goes along with the clumsy flubs one expects from a Hewitt film. The film has a dream like quality, and it's strange story seems, yes, an interesting forerunner to "2001". Three of Hewitt's "Gallery Of Horrors" stars (Carridine, Roger Gentry, and Vic McGee) are back. McGee does the best work of his career, even toping hissleazy ganster in Ed Wood's "Sinister Urge." Opps, there I go. Actually, Vic McGee is a terrible actor who appeared in a handful of grade Z films, but his work here is somehow moving. See, this movie just won't let you make fun of it. I don't know if the actress is overdubbing her own voice, but they should have found a better one to use(the whole movie is overdubbed). In any case, see this film. It's right up there with "Creation Of The Humanoids" in the strange department.