Main Cast: Peter Graves, Andrea King, Orley Lindgren, Walter Sande, Marvin Miller, Herbert Berghof
Release Year: 1952
Country: US
Run Time: 87 minutes
Plot
A husband-and-wife scientist team (Peter Graves, Andrea King) are experimenting with a "hydrogen tube" invention (which he got from a missing German scientist, lost in the collapse of the Reich), when they get signals back from what appears to be Mars. The culture-shock of that event is serious enough, and the couple and their family are suddenly thrust into the spotlight. But then they begin to translate the increasingly complex messages (which started out as mathematical equations) that they receive back, and find that Mars is a perfect world, a true Utopia, and that the messages are quoting Scripture -- and the inevitable conclusion is that God is speaking from Mars. Soon a religious revival starts to spread across the globe. What they don't realize is that the messages are a very calculated fraud, being engineered by a Communist operative (Marvin Miller) and carried out by the scientist (Herbert Berghof) who invented the hydogen tube, and who now has an even more sinister agenda of his own. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Review
Red Planet Mars is an eerily fascinating artifact of the era of the Red Scare, and also the first postwar science fiction boom, combining those elements into an eerie story that is all the more surreal because it is played with such earnestness. Peter Graves and Andrea King -- especially King -- act like they are in some kind of modern day morality play, and Herbert Berghof (a legendary acting teacher who was blacklisted at the time, as was his wife Uta Hagen) is so over-the-top as to be an embarrassment to his profession. And yet . . . therein lies the movie's value -- it can be appreciated as an Edward D. Wood, Jr.-type unintended laugh-fest, which is the way in which it has usually been presented since the 1950's and early 1960's. But it can also be seen as a slightly nutsy-but-valid expression of the concerns of its era, as the politics of Armageddon flowed through the corners of middle America. This would be a great double-feature with MGM's ever-so-slightly more level-headed The Next Voice You Hear, as the doom-laden rightwing equivalent to that movie's soft-peddled liberal version of anti-Communism. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Emmett Emerson - First Assistant Director, Harry Horner - Director, Francis D. Lyon - Editor, David Chudnow - Composer (Music Score), Mahlon Merrick - Composer (Music Score), Don L. Cash - Makeup, Charles Hall - Production Designer, Joseph Biroc - Cinematographer, Anthony Veiller - Producer, Donald Hyde - Producer, Murray Waite - Set Designer, Victor B. Appel - Sound/Sound Designer, John L. Balderston - Screenwriter, Anthony Veiller - Screenwriter, Robert H. Justman - Production Assistant, John L. Balderston - Play Author, John Hoare - Play Author
An Americanscientist contacts Mars by radio and receives information that Mars is a utopia and that Earth's people can be saved if they return to the worship of God. Revolution sweeps the Earth, including the Soviet Union. But there remains doubt about the messages being genuine, as an ex-Nazi claims he was duping the Americans.
One review described the film as follows: "Attempts to communicate with Mars sets off a chain of events which threatens the safety of the entire world. [This film is a] fanciful science fictionmelodrama with a bit more meat to the plot than most."[1]
