'Kind of eerie gives me the creeps.'
Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World.
‘Happy New Year - toot toot’
We’re looking at The Wizard of Mars.
'I've never seen anything so beautiful'
An attempt to bring Frank Baum’s perennial classic into the space age.
‘Will it work?’
Let’s find out.
Steve, Doc, Charlie and the significantly named Dorothy, are orbiting Mars.
‘We had to go to Mars. We couldn’t go to the moon like everyone else’
But they are hit by space lightning.
Causing them to crash land.
‘You think we stand any chance at all?’
Their only hope is to trek across the surface of Mars in search of the jettisoned Main Stage of their ship,
but who knows what might happen to them on such a journey.
‘Nothing technically’
Yeah, that’s pretty accurate.
They are attacked by alien creatures but...
This would be more convincing as a desperate fight for survival if the creatures were moving.
‘Let’s get these rafts over there’
Sidebar: whose idea was it to bring a dinghy to Mars?!
‘We weren’t even equipped to land’
And yet you brought a dinghy. I mean it’s worked out but seriously, that was a long shot.
‘It’s hard to belive’
The exciting journey continues...
‘Do you suppose something’s happened?’
No, no, no.
‘Isn’t there anyplace on this planet that isn’t a death trap?’
Yeah, saying it doesn’t make it so. But then! A mere 45 minutes in
‘A Golden road’
Like the wizard of Oz! If it took Dorothy three quarters of an hour to find Munchkinland.
‘Hey I think I’ve found something’
Thankfully it doesn’t take so long to get to the emerald city.
Which is long abandoned.
'From the looks of the cobwebs no one has been here for a long long time’
‘no one but the spiders. Or whatever passes for spiders around here’
Think I covered that well, no one in the audience’ll question it.
‘So ironically funny, don’t you see’
At this point they discover a preserved Martian.
'Whatever it is I'm glad it's dead.'
Who is not as dead as he appears.
'It's almost unbelievable.'
and shit gets weird.
And for one scene, 50 minutes in, the film is worth watching.
‘No, I’m serious’
Unfortunately they then stumble on John Carradine the great and powerful.
‘I see perplexity among you’
To be honest it’s mostly boredom. I mean I’m perplexed too but by this stage...
‘Who cares?'
Never the less, John explains what’s going on in a 3 and half minute, single-shot monologue.
‘WE enquired into the very nature of time’
on the off-chance that anyone in the audience was left awake. Or indeed in the cast.
'You are two minutes overdue with your transmission'
Yes, it was all a dream.
‘Perhaps I should have said nightmarish’
Here’s the thing, the 4 protagonists in the wizard of Oz had well-established individual goals which inform their characters and behaviour.
‘Some form of intelligence at work here’
These guys have one goal between them.
‘Let’s go home’
and the four of them put together couldn’t summon up enough personality for one engaging character.
‘It sure sounds like it’
These sort of journey, quest stories where characters go from a to b in search of x,
only work if the characters are people you want to spend time with.
‘What do we do now?'
Although it does also helps if stuff happen along the way
and if what they find at the end is anything other than an alien answering machine
with nine hours John Carradine talking about the nature of time!
‘You don’t understand’
What other children's classics need a sci-fi makeover? We're thinking The Very Hungry Caterpillar?
IN SPAAAAAAAAAACE
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'Wait don't leave'