Hello, My Children –
I’ve been sitting here going through Cousin Estil’s footlocker, uncovering many treasures from the golden age of radio, especially the Top Forty era when all of us teenagers had our ears tuned to our transistor radios jammin’ to the latest hits from the local Top Forty Survey. It was a magical time and we each had our favorite artists and groups. Mine were Ricky Nelson, The Four Seasons, some guy named Elvis, Ral Donner, The Tornados, The Beatles, and The Dave Clark Five. Cousin Estil had saved many hits by these and others in the footlocker, as well as old 78s, commercials and radio copy. As I told you last time he also saved some radio spot records from movies he liked, I guess.
The first one of his I have chosen to highlight is actually one of my favorites, as well. It’s from 1959 and is called The Angry Red Planet. It was written by Sid Pink and directed by Ib Melchior.
I remember seeing this in the theater in early June, 1960, and was enthralled by it. It was filmed in a process called Cinemagic and I was impressed! It really made you feel like you were on the Red Planet. It had nightmarish Martian creatures and a cool Martian, too! The creepy music and sound effects gave it an alien atmosphere. I thought it was neat!
Ah, Cinemagic, a process discovered quite by accident. When it was decided to change filming from color to black and white to save money, a reel that was shot was accidentally mis-developed, either by an errant exposure to light or through a chemical mix-up. When viewed, the negative film took on a solarised effect where parts were in the negative and parts were positive. Shadows became white, and various elements shifted and glowed. The look appealed to producer Norman Maurer (The Three Stooges’ Moe Howard’s son-in-law) and director Melchior, and they decided it gave the perfect look to scenes shot on Mars, especially if the film were dyed red. It also would help disguise the cheaply-made studio sets. So, it was decided to shoot the non-Martian scenes in color and intercut the two.
Despite working with a restricted budget and a nine day shooting schedule, the producers came up with some creative visuals using rear projection with effective miniatures, a full-scale claw of the Ratbatspidercrab monster, an eerie amoeba monster, clever artwork for distant scenery and half mile-high Martian buildings, and a horrifying costume for the giant Martian. Everything looks so other-worldly that it is difficult to not get caught up in the reality of it all. I find it interesting that the on-set vegetation pieces and some of the flowers were actually real props, built and painted to look like they were drawn figures which blended in perfectly with the artwork used as backgrounds. Even the wonderful amoeba model, which was constructed so it could be manipulated to look like it was breathing, was painted to look like a drawing. The special effects and visual effects technicians as well as the set designers are to be commended for their work.
The cast is good with Les Tremayne adding his expertise and great voice to the proceedings, and blue-eyed Nora Hayden adding the feminine pulchritude. Gerald Mohr and Jack Kruschen are the strong alpha types taking leadership roles. The scene where Kruschen’s character gets absorbed by the giant amoeba is chilling.
I watched The Angry Red Planet the other night and was still impressed by it all. I thought it was atmospheric and well done. I was somewhat surprised to see that American International’s publicity department released only two radio spots for it – a sixty and a thirty. There was so much more they could’ve done if they would have had sufficient money in the marketing budget.
So, from Cousin Estil’s footlocker of forgotten treasures, join me as we venture to The Angry Red Planet!
