2013's Christmas Movie: Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972)

For the past four or five Christmases I've had the tradition of re-watching at least one of the two Christmas-themed Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes; either Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964) or the Mexican-produced Santa Claus (1959). Usually I watch the movie on Christmas night, although in 2012 I fulfilled the tradition early by subjecting my Warhammer 40,000 gaming group to Santa Claus a week or two beforehand.

This past Christmas, I again carried out the tradition by inflicting Santa Claus Conquers the Martians on the group. (The movie was universally regarded as being worse than Santa Claus). However, thanks to my mother (a fellow MST3K fan), I added a new movie to my list of Christmas films to suffer through annually: the RiffTrax take on Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972), which I watched on Christmas night.

If you're an MST3K fan and you're not already familiar with RiffTrax, I strongly suggest you check them out. RiffTrax is done by Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett. Mike Nelson was the head writer for MST3K long before he took over as the show's host halfway through its run. Kevin Murphy was the voice of Tom Servo from the second season on while Bill Corbett played the voice of Crow T. Robot for the three seasons that Mystery Science Theater ran on the Sci-Fi Channel. Those final three seasons are probably my favorite, so I was very happy to find that RiffTrax is very similar in the tone and pacing of the jokes. There's no Satellite of Love, there's no Shadowrama, and there are no wisecracking robots, but it turns out that Mike, Kevin, and Bill do just fine without them.

Anyway, Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny has almost no plot to speak of and the entire film turns out to be a framing story for another film (Thumbelina in the version that RiffTrax mocks and Jack and the Beanstalk in other versions). The movie starts with Santa's elves discovering that the reindeer have arrived at their strangely snow-free North Pole workshop without the jolly fat man or his sleigh. While the elves wonder about their boss's whereabouts, we discover that Kringle is stuck on a beach in Florida. Unlike his NSA-like counterpart in Santa Claus who uses various bits of technology to spy on all the world's children (and even to look into their dreams), this Santa Claus personally flies around the world before Christmas to determine which children have been naughty and which have been nice.

During his pre-holiday audit, Santa apparently set down on the beach and became stuck. Bizarrely, the eight flying reindeer that Santa usually employs were unable to pull the sleigh free of two inches of loosely piled sand. Deciding that it was too hot to hang around, the reindeer headed home and left the fat guy in the fur coat to die of heatstroke. After muttering about the heat for several minutes, Santa uses his vaguely defined powers to summon a dozen or so children for help.

The children, being dullards, decide that a sleigh that couldn't be freed by eight reindeer might be moved by the kind of animals you would typically find at a petting zoo. One by one the children bring a miscellaneous animal (e.g., a donkey, a sheep, a pig), harness it to the sleigh, and then watch as the animal fails to do what eight large, magical animals working in concert failed to do. Santa, apparently as dimwitted as he was when he conquered the Martians, simply allows the children to waste their time and effort while sitting on his duff and muttering encouragement. By far, the most surreal moment occurs when, instead of a real animal, one child brings an actor in a shoddy costume a gorilla. I'm sure someone thought that this would be whimsical; instead it just comes off as creepy. You'd think that at least one of these children, who live within walking distance of a Florida beach, would have thought to bring a sand pail and shovel and simply dug the sleigh's runners out of the sand.

The horror...

With the children having exhausted all their ideas, Santa decides to encourage them by telling a story; a relatively faithful version of Thumbelina. Since this version of Thumbelina was originally a separate film that was shoehorned into this one, it has its own framing story as well as opening and closing credits. In this film within a film, a girl visits the Pirates World theme park (which was put out of business by Disney World shortly after this movie was released). While there, the girl listens to a recording of the story while admiring several associated dioramas. Most of this film consists of the the girl's imagining of the story, which is periodically interrupted by brief scenes of the girl moving on to another diorama while the recording drones on. The RiffTrax gang frequently points out how odd it is that Santa is apparently telling a story about a girl that's listening to a story at a pirate-themed amusement park.

Who doesn't think of the classic story of
Thumbelina when they think of Santa Claus?

The quality of the sets and the acting almost brings Thumbelina up to community theater standards, which is more than can be said about those parts featuring Santa Claus. Even weirder, in a 90 minute movie called Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny, a fairytale that has nothing to do with Santa or bunnies takes up about 60 minutes of the total running time. By the time Thumbelina has married the flower-fairy prince, the audience has mercifully forgotten that Santa Claus is even in this movie. Sadly, though, once Thumbelina's story is over we still have to get Kringle out of the sand.

Contrary to all reasonable expectations, Santa's story has inspired the children to run off and ask the Ice Cream Bunny to help. The children soon return on an antique fire engine with the Ice Cream Bunny at the wheel. As a parent, this whole sequence is utterly nerve-racking. It's painfully obvious that the actor in the bunny costume can barely see since he repeatedly has to jerk the wheel to keep the truck on the road, all while a dozen unrestrained children are riding on the vehicle. Santa greats his "old friend" warmly, confident that this mascot reject will save the day.

The Ice Cream Bunny, apparently a mute, merely nods while winking one poorly actuated eyelid. Thanks to Bill Corbett, this scene may very well be one of my favorite MST3K/RiffTrax moments. Whenever the camera focuses on the Bunny's horrifying face, Corbett supplies him with an utterly bizarre laugh. I can't even think about this scene without cracking up.

Having decided to use the fire engine to return to the North Pole, Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny climb into the truck and immediately drive off. Yes, this means that Santa simply leaves the children on the beach, apparently expecting them to walk home while he rides away on a mostly empty vehicle. Almost immediately after the fire truck is out of sight, the sleigh magically disappears. No, there is no explanation as to why Santa didn't demonstrate this kind of magic before. Given everything that came before I think we can safely say that he's an idiot and simply forgot that he can do magic.

Oh, and Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer show up on a raft at one point and watch the children's attempts to help Santa Claus. No, they don't actually contribute to the story nor is their presence explained. That's just the kind of movie this is.

F (but thanks to the RiffTrax guys it's one of the funniest movies I've ever seen)

Book Review: World War Z

The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z

World War Z is Max Brooks' 2006 follow-up to his Zombie Survival Guide, published in 2003. While the serious nature of World War Z is apparent from the beginning, the Survival Guide has inexplicably been marketed as a humor book. Anyone approaching the Survival Guide expecting a laugh might be disappointed, though. Its tone is entirely serious and fits a lot better in the sci-fi genre than comedy. While the survival aspects of the book could possibly be seen as satirical, the sections about zombie behavior, the nature of solanum (the zombie virus), and historical cases of zombie attacks clearly aren't meant to be funny. In fact, they represent solid sci-fi world building that forms the basis for Brooks' World War Z. Two or three references to "the civilian survival manual" in the latter book reveals the Survival Guide to be an in-universe text.

An Oral History of the Zombie War
While The Zombie Survival Guide acts as a primer for surviving a zombie apocalypse of the kind shown in George Romero's Living Dead films, World War Z purports to a be "an oral history of the Zombie War" compiled ten years after the war's official end. The author, a U.N.-supported historian, traveled around the world and interviewed a number of individuals involved in key events of the war to create the account. The author contributes little in the way of narration or a historical framework since the audience is assumed to already know about the key events of the war. This means that real-world readers have to piece together a broader historical outline based on indirect statements by interviewees. For example, the book never directly tells the reader what the "Great Panic" was, the first interviewee that mentions the Special Forces "Alpha Teams" simply assumes that the audience knows what they were, and the vital "South Africa Plan" is referenced several times before the interview describing its inception finally reveals what the plan was. Brooks leaves behind enough hints and clues to figure out what happened during the Zombie War, but readers will have to correlate each piece of information for themselves.

The first interview documents one of the earliest known outbreaks of the solanum virus in China (although the actions of the Chinese government suggests that previous outbreaks had been contained and kept secret). The virus spreads as infected refugees attempt to flee the country while outbreaks occur in far-flung locations such as Brazil when infected organs from Chinese "donors" (most likely executed political dissidents) are implanted into recipients. At the time, the nature of the virus and the fact that its apparently insane, cannibalistic victims are actually mindless reanimated corpses is unknown to the vast majority of people. Government coverups only make things worse and before long there are hordes of the living dead roaming through almost every country.

Although it isn't necessary to read The Zombie Survival Guide before reading World War Z, it's in this first portion that the information on zombie physiology and behavior found in the Survival Guide is helpful. For example, the doctor who investigates the earliest known Chinese outbreak first examines the bite wounds of several individuals who tried to subdue a teenage victim of the virus. The doctor is amazed to find that the villagers' wounds are entirely free of bacterial infection. This is meant to be an ominous sign, but only if you had read the Survival Guide. In the guide we learn that the solanum virus is lethal to nearly all forms of life (but will only reanimate human bodies) and actually repels any number of species. This is why a zombie can remain a threat for years; insects, bacteria, scavengers, etc. that would normally consume the average corpse are either killed by infected flesh or will avoid it at all costs. The villagers' wounds show no signs of infection because the solanum virus has eliminated any bacteria that might have infected the wound.

Anyway, the first part of World War Z builds up to the "Great Panic" that sees the fall of civilization as we know it and the death (and undeath, in many cases) of more than half the world's population. This is where most of the novel's horror is found and is the point where the average zombie story ends. Where Brooks really shines is in his vision of what happens next.

While the walking dead continue to make appearances, the second section focuses on the living and their efforts to gather survivors, form safe zones, conserve resources, and prepare to go on the offensive. The third part covers the reversal of the course of the war, the changes in military doctrine needed to defeat the living dead, and the eventual victory over the zombie hordes. The author also spends a lot of time showing the geopolitical consequences of a worldwide brush with annihilation. Events such as China's conversion to democracy, Russia's return to a czarist system, and Cuba's wartime renaissance are revealed during the course of the interviews. Without going into too much detail, the novel explains how the interaction between politics, geography, history, culture, religion, and military response to the zombie menace leads to the post-war world.

World War Z as Serious Sci-Fi
Bizarrely, the copyright page of World War Z classifies the novel as "War-Humor". First, World War Z isn't remotely funny. Brooks has attempted to realistically depict the collapse of modern society in the face of an unimaginable horror. Second, the author clearly put a lot of thought into the hard choices and sacrifices that would have to be made as well as the tactics and equipment that would be needed to reverse a zombie apocalypse.

While the zombies are defeated, there's no Hollywood ending to Brooks' story. Characters are traumatized, for every person who rises to the challenge there are many more who give up or give in to their baser instincts, many who are rescued from years of being under siege are resentful, and the victory is so hard won that no one can even find the energy or the heart to celebrate.

Finally, the depth of the author's sci-fi world building and the extent to which he explains why his post-war world takes the form that it does are far beyond what I had expected out of a zombie novel, let alone one designated as "humor". Rather, it reminds me of the post-Formic War Earth that Orson Scott Card developed for his Ender's Game series. Contrary to my original expectations, World War Z turns out to be a serious and well thought out science fiction story.

About World War Z's Zombies
In the acknowledgements, Brooks thanks "the genius and terror of George A. Romero". It's apparent in both The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z that Brooks is a huge fan of the Living Dead films and of the now-classic "Romero Zombie"; i.e., a slow moving, mindless flesh eater that can only be killed by destroying its brain. Brooks' living dead are so similar to Romero's that one could easily think of Night of the Living Dead (1968) and its sequels as describing incidents that occurred during World War Z's Great Panic.

As far as I'm aware, Romero never explained in detail the exact nature of the zombie disease. This is where Brooks steps in. As described in the Survival Guide, the solanum virus affects every cell in the body, turning each into a more or less independent entity. Shooting a zombie in the chest does no good, since its body doesn't require the use of any of the organs that could be affected. The only organ that still has any function is the brain itself, which continues to coordinate the zombie's movement and drives it to consume living flesh.

Any attempts to kill a zombie that doesn't involve destroying the brain are bound to fail. This frequently comes into play in World War Z, particularly at the disastrous Battle of Yonkers. The modern weaponry used by the U.S. Army in that early battle was designed to kill living soldiers by shredding them or causing severe blast injuries. Weapons that were expected to be 100% lethal within a certain radius ended up being only partially successful against the living dead. Without enough antipersonnel weaponry to defeat the horde, and with soldiers trained to shoot at an enemy's center of mass rather than the head, the Army is routed and forced to retreat with heavy losses. The living are only able to reverse the tide of the war by adopting radically new tactics.

The Novel versus the Film
Since I haven't seen the movie yet, I can't compare the two with any level of detail, nor can I judge the quality of the film. However, the ads alone show that World War Z (2013) is fundamentally different from the novel it's supposedly based on. The whole point of the novel is to provide a history of the entirety of the war through the experiences of various individuals. The film, on the other hand, appears to focus on the real-time experience of a single character. How can you depict a "world war" when you spend most of your time with a single person?

Another huge change is in the nature of the zombies. Max Brooks' slow-moving zombies are threatening due to their weight of numbers and relentlessness. While it's common for people to laugh at a monster that you can escape by walking away at a brisk pace, imagine that there are millions of flesh-eaters that never sleep, never rest, and never stop hunting. A would-be survivor can easily escape one swarm just to run into another one. The novel's plot is directly shaped by the creatures' behavior.

Instead of the shambling horror, the film's menace consists of the newer "fast zombies". While I'm sure that fast zombies can be pretty darned scary too, it's not really an adaptation of Brooks' best-selling World War Z if the creatures that Brooks has painstakingly developed are fundamentally altered.

In the 1990s, a screenplay entitled Hardwired, which told the story of a robot uprising, was shopped around to various companies. It was eventually picked up by 20th Century Fox and, at the studio's insistence, it was altered to include Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robots. The final product became I, Robot (2004) which, although fairly good, has little to do with Asimov's novel.

The cynic in me suspects that, like I, Robot, the makers of World War Z never had any intention to follow the novel's plot and bought the rights to the name for marketing purposes. The fact that Max Brooks never even read the script seems to confirm this.

A Word on the Language
Just like Dan Simmons' Hyperion, which I also enjoyed, World War Z contains a lot of strong language. Like Simmons, Brooks uses it as a distinguishing trait of several of his interviewees. American combat personnel tend to use it the most, whereas swearing is almost entirely absent in the interviews of foreign civilians. Although I recognize that many people speak this way in reality (and I often work with people who swear just as frequently), it still seemed unnecessary. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to readers of science fiction and fans of zombie stories in particular, although I can only recommend it to mature adults who are not easily offended.
A-

The Christmas Tradition Continues

A few years ago I mentioned our family's annual tradition of going to the Hallmark Store and buying ornaments for the Christmas tree. This year, as usual, we put the tree up the day after Thanksgiving and went to buy the new ornaments on Saturday. Although this is our usual time to buy them, we were surprised to find that a couple ornaments we wanted were sold out. Fortunately, the store allowed us to buy the display models (they even had the boxes in their store room) and a crisis was averted.

In 2010 I bought Captain Kirk, who was the first in the series. The next year I got Spock and the year after that I bought Doctor McCoy. Predictably, this year's ornament ended up being Scotty. As fate would have it, Scotty was one of the ornaments that had been sold out. Our theory is that a) the original Star Trek series isn't popular enough to justify stocking a lot of them and/or b) the unusual number of engineers living in our area means that there are a lot of geeks around that want to have the Chief Engineer of the USS Enterprise on their tree.

Having already hung Kirk, Spock, and McCoy on our tree the day before, and being one of those engineers that idolizes Starfleet's "Miracle Worker", I had to get Scotty even if it was the display model. Fortunately the model looked like it had just come out of the box and I went home a happy Trekkie.

Except for our youngest, who still thinks everything that falls into his hands is supposed to go into his mouth, each kid was allowed to choose his or her own ornament (while Bride of Atomic Spud decided that the youngest wanted Spider-Man). Our oldest daughter's choice received my enthusiastic approval:

Our daughter finished The Hobbit last year when I promised to take her to the movies if she read the novel first. She loved the book, loved An Unexpected Journey, and can't wait to see The Desolation of Smaug. When we reached the Hallmark Store there was absolutely no hesitation on her part; she walked directly to the display and immediately grabbed the first Bilbo Baggins ornament she saw.

My wife often worries that our daughter will have a hard time in junior high.

There's No Accounting for Taste (In Movies)

Talk about blog neglect. While the 40K blog has seen relatively regular updates, I've not touched the original Atomic Spud blog in nearly two months. I keep intending to post another May Day Movie Marathon review, but those darn things can take me hours, especially when I've not seen the film in months and have to refresh my memory.

So bad it's good

While on the subject of movie reviews, I started thinking about how irrational one's taste in movies can be. The idiom "there's no accounting for taste" (i.e., people's preferences are often inexplicable) best describes it. While looking over the movies I watched back in late April, it struck me that the films I liked the most varied wildly in tone and quality.

One of my favorites was The Manster (1959) (sometimes called The Split). This bizarre American/Japanese sci-fi film could not be called "good" by any objective standard: the movie is as exploitative as they could get away with in the late '50s, the acting is stiff, the costumes are goofy, and the science is absurd. The Manster seems to go out of its way to make the characters unlikeable while leaving us completely in the dark with regards to their motivations. Despite all this (or maybe because of it), I loved the film.

On the opposite end of the cinematic bell curve is Orson Welles' The Stranger (1946). The movie features Edward G. Robinson as Mr. Wilson; a member of the United Nations War Crimes Commission tasked with hunting down Franz Kindler. Kindler (played by Orson Welles) is a Nazi war criminal who had the presence of mind to ensure that no photographs or any other physical evidence remained behind to identify him. It turns out that Kindler has settled in a small Connecticut town and used his knowledge of history and the ability to perfectly mimic an American Accent to create a new identity as the popular prep school teacher Charles Rankin. Knowing what awaits him if he's caught, Kindler will go to any lengths to protect his secret, even if it means killing the woman he claims to love.

So good it's... also good

The acting is great (as you'd expect from Edward G. Robinson and Orson Welles) and the plot is engaging. Since The Stranger never shies away from the nature or magnitude of the Holocaust, and because Welles is in full cold, calculating sociopath mode, the audience immediately shares Wilson's urgency to bring Kindler to justice. In other words, The Stranger is a genuinely good movie.

So why in the world did I like both The Manster and The Stranger? The only way that I can put it is that the former is so bad that it's good and the latter is simply good. And while I enjoyed both, I'm sure there are plenty of people who wouldn't care for the silly sci-fi movie while having little patience for the pacing of a film from the mid-'40s.

Taste in movies is a funny thing. Every once in a while, a few members of our 40K gaming group get together before the game to watch an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. We've watched quite a few abysmal movies, but few have reached the depths that The Creeping Terror (1964) hits. Yet, as abysmal as this movie is, I've watched it three times. One of our fellow gamers has said that he would rather watch it again than re-watch Twilight (2008). Despite the hatred that my peers have for Twilight and its sequels, I've never had a problem with the two I've seen (at least they're better than The Creeping Terror).

The only way a squad of soldiers can be eaten by the
Creeping Terror is if their guns have a 5' range

Speaking of movies that people loathe, despite the common declaration that it's the "worst movie ever!", I found that Battlefield Earth (2000) didn't even fall into my list of 10 worst films. It was silly but it was fairly entertaining. In fact, my only complaint was that it wasn't nearly as bad as people had said it was.

Even stranger than my interest in b-movies is my disinterest in movies that enjoy a wide appeal. Of course there are exceptions (nearly all of them being sci-fi or fantasy films), but in general I avoid most action movies, comedies, and dramas. (Although if a film has a production date before 1970 I might give it a chance.) For example, a few years ago I finally saw the majority of The Bourne Identity (2002) and the first half of The Bourne Supremacy (2004). While they kept me reasonably entertained, it's unlikely that I'll ever watch either of these movies again, nor do I have any interest in seeing their sequels. Almost as soon as the movies were over, I could barely remember their plots and, other than Jason Bourne himself, I couldn't describe any of the characters. Compare that to the fact that I can recall the storyline of The Brain that Wouldn't Die (1959), It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), or the ever-amusing Fiend Without a Face (1958) even though I've seen each movie only once.

I guess there's no accounting for taste.

A Brief Thought on the Government Shutdown

I've not done a post on politics in a while, mostly because they've become completely uncivil in the past few years. However, I thought I'd throw in my two cents on the government shutdown.

I'll start with saying that my company is directly affected by the shutdown. There is a possibility that, if the shutdown goes too long, the funds that my company is coasting on will dry up and I'll be facing a furlough. Thus, the effects of the shutdown aren't exactly theoretical to me.

I'm not entirely happy that the GOP decided to use the budget as the tool to try to get concessions on the hilariously misnamed "Affordable Care Act". At the same time, I can see why the Republicans think this may be their only real chance to take the ACA head on. The ACA was a ridiculously partisan law that was passed along party lines. As far as I know, the law had absolutely no input from the GOP. Many believe that the GOP's gains in Congress the following election year were primarily caused by the passage of a law that was so unpopular with the American public. Many Republican representatives see their election as a mandate to repeal or reform Obamacare.

What really annoys me is how much the media and others are calling this "the Republicans' shutdown". It's not the Republicans' shutdown, it's Congress' shutdown. The government didn't shutdown because Republicans wanted it to, it shutdown because the GOP wanted to negotiate some concessions. Unfortunately, the Democrats, led by Harry Reid (a ridiculous clown that should have been put out to pasture years ago) were entirely unwilling to negotiate and apparently preferred the tactic of name-calling. Since the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate couldn't agree, the government shutdown.

Here's the problem, Mr. Reid; because we don't live in a single party dictatorship, you have to make make concessions if you want something in return. Our political system was actually designed to work this way to promote moderation. However, you've decided instead to behave like a petulant child since you can't immediately have everything your way. When the Republicans try to do something civil, like offer to fund important parts of the government until a solution can be reached, you scream "no deal!" and then return to lamenting that the GOP doesn't care about furloughed workers. When the Republicans support a bill to ensure that furloughed workers receive back pay when the government shutdown is over, you claim that it shows that the GOP doesn't care how long the shutdown lasts.

Harry Reid's idea of negotiation in good faith

This is why our political system has become so uncivil in recent years. People like Reid don't see the other side as earnest but mistaken, they see them as mustache-twirling villains.

I would argue that this shift in mindset over the past 10 to 15 years is the cause of most of the so-called crises in Washington. When people refuse to accept that their opponents may simply be wrong or just have a different opinion and instead insist that they're actually evil and have impure motives, then you have a recipe for constant deadlock and vicious partisanship.

Warhammer 40K-Related Blog Neglect

Unfortunately, I've been slow in posting more May Day Movie Marathon reviews. Although relatively brief (the last two reviews came in at about 1600 and 1800 words, respectively), the reviews can take me several hours to finish. Much of this is because I'm a bit obsessive-compulsive and re-read and edit the whole essay repeatedly.

I've not been inactive in blogging, though. Since my last Atomic Spud blog post on July 4th, I've posted five times on my Warhammer 40,000 blog, which has become more popular than this blog ever was. During its heyday, the Atomic Spud blog was regularly getting 3,000+ pageviews per month. At its peak in October 2012, the blog received 4,851 pageviews in a single month. It's been downhill from there; nowadays I'm lucky if I get 1,600. Disappointingly, the majority of the pageviews have come from Google's image search and represent people looking for pictures of monsters that appeared in my "31 Monsters of October" series that led up to Halloween 2010. I believe the pageviews dried up because Google doesn't list my images as high up as it used to.

By comparison, the 40K blog reached 5,565 pageviews a couple months ago and is on track to beat that record this month. The army I play, Space Marines, will soon be getting an update and my posts on the subject have become rather popular. The best part is that many visitors are people who are looking for actual content rather than just images. The blog has a number of followers who regularly visit and leave comments. Late one month I even got an email from a follower asking if I was going to be updating the blog soon; I guess he looks forward to blog updates and was worried that I wasn't going to post that month.

Anyway, I hope to post more May Day movie reviews once I've finished these guys:

Obviously there's more to them than just the heads.

My close combat Terminator Squad has taken up much of my free time since early July, which doesn't leave me much time for movie reviews. I expect to have the models done in a couple weeks, after which I'll take a short break before starting another set. Hopefully I'll get in a few reviews during the down time. I still have a hard sci-fi film from the '30s, a living brain movie, a Korean daikaiju eiga, a couple low-budget b-movies, and an Orson Welles film to cover.

May Day Movie Marathon, Part V

Red Planet Mars (1952)

Given its name, I had expected Red Planet Mars to be either one of a number of mission to Mars movies or a Martian invasion film. Well, it turns out to be neither and was actually one of the more surprising movies I watched during the May Day Marathon. There will be spoilers, as usual.

Using an experimental communications device called a hydrogen valve, Chris and Linda Cronyn attempt to make contact with Mars. Telescopic images of the planet show that enormous changes have occurred on the planet's surface in a short period of time, including the melting of huge quantities of ice to fill the canals that crisscross the face of Mars. It seems apparent that an advanced society exists on the planet, but the only response that the Cronyns are receiving is a repetition of their own signals. As the scientist couple and their military backers debate whether or not the signal is an echo of the original or simply a failure to communicate with the Martians, the Cronyns' son suggests that they use pi to communicate. Certainly an advanced race would understand the concept of pi and, if sent the first few digits of the sequence, would recognize the pattern and continue it.

The nature of the hydrogen valve means that the signal can't be intercepted unless someone else has one. In an isolated shack on a snowy mountainside, Nazi war criminal Franz Calder, the hydrogen valve's inventor, has been listening in on the Cronyns. Calder's employer is the Soviet Union, which sprang him from prison in exchange for their own hydrogen valve system. The Nazi scientist has been unable to contact Mars himself, but he has been able to eavesdrop on the Cronyns' signals. Calder's handlers are displeased by the lack of contact with the Red Planet, but they're intrigued by the ability to listen in on the American's attempts. The Soviets are nearly as excited as the Americans when Calder reports that the Cronyns have finally received a response that wasn't merely the repetition of the original signal; a continuation of the pi sequence.

The Cronyns begin exchanging mathematical formulas with the intention of forming a basis for an extraterrestrial dialog. Their first real questions are very simple, but the responses have a devastating effect on Earth and especially the Western world. When the Martians are asked how long they live, the answer is "300 Earth years". Further responses reveal that Mars can feed 1000 beings with a half an acre of farmland and that they harness cosmic energy to run their advanced society. With the realization that Martian technology could make wide swaths of the West's economy obsolete, chaos ensues. Each revelation causes prices to plummet and industries to collapse. Obviously, the Soviet Union is delighted. With their Western adversaries on the ropes, the Soviet Central Committee begins to plan a preemptive strike.

Upset at the effect their work is having on the world, the Cronyns finally ask how the Martians have avoided destroying each other despite the amazing power at their command. Strangely, this question doesn't receive an immediate answer like the others did. Concerned that subsequent responses could make things even worse, the military decides that all further signals received by the hydrogen valve will be sent directly to the Pentagon for translation without being released to the public or the Cronyns themselves. However, when the surprising response to the last question is translated, it starts a debate between the military and the President on whether or not the answer should be revealed. When it's finally released, chaos again follows, but in the Soviet Union.

The Martians say that they took the Cronyns' question to their supreme leader, although the context of the Martian's term "supreme leader" suggests a godlike being. The leader's response: "Seven lifetimes ago you were told to love goodness and hate evil. Why have you denied the truth?" The time frame mentioned (seven Martian lifetimes is around 2,100 years) and the content of the response implies that the Martians follow a Judeo-Christian religion(!) and that the "godlike" supreme leader may be more than just godlike.

Subsequent messages begin to arrive from Mars, each more overtly religious than the last. Franz Calder reports the messages to his handlers faster than the Pentagon can get them to the press. Although the Central Committee attempts to hide these messages from the Soviet people, there are enough concealed radios to get the word out and the Soviet system rapidly begins to collapse. Hating his Soviet masters as much as he does the Americans, Calder becomes more delirious with each message until, one night, his cabin is buried in an avalanche.

As the religious messages restore stability to the Western world, the Soviet Union is restructured and an interim government composed of long-oppressed spiritual leaders is formed. An Earth that was on the brink of nuclear war has finally found peace and Chris and Linda Cronyn are happy to have been a part of changing the world. However, they're disappointed that they've stopped receiving any additional signals. It's at this point that Franz Calder shows up.

Calder survived the avalanche and had made his way to the United States to confront the people who had been using his design. The war criminal pulls out the notebook he had kept in his cabin and gleefully reveals that he had sent the early messages for his own amusement. By timing the response just right and bouncing the signal off the atmosphere, he had made it look like the answers were coming from Mars. But, he admits, it was brilliant of the Americans to start making up their own religious messages to destabilize the Soviet Union. When the Cronyns asked how the Martians had avoided annihilating each other, Calder had intended to answer with "one tribe must hold the power". But when he saw what the religious messages were doing to the Soviets, he decided to keep his handlers in the dark. Although Linda refuses to believe that the latter messages were faked by the President or the Pentagon, Chris isn't so sure. It doesn't matter what either of them thinks, says Calder. The first few messages were faked and there have been no transmissions since Calder's shack and hydrogen valve were destroyed. He's taken the liberty of inviting the press to the Cronyns' lab with the intention of revealing the hoax he had played on the world.

With only a few minutes left before the press arrive, and knowing that the revelation would inevitably lead to war, the Cronyns make a desperate decision. The hydrogen valve is aptly named; hydrogen is a vital element of the device's function and Chris secretly starts to release the flammable gas into the lab while Linda prepares to light a cigarette. The Cronyns' suspicious behavior gives them away and Calder prevents them from sparking the lighter just as another message arrives. Knowing that only another hydrogen valve (or a genuine Martian transmission) could send such a message, Calder fires a gun at the transmitter and blows the Cronyns and himself to smithereens.

When the U.S. President gives the eulogy at the Cronyns' memorial, he announces the Pentagon's translation of the final, incomplete message; "ye have done well, my good..."

Compared to the other '50s sci-fi films I've seen, this one was very unusual. While many of them had religious overtones (e.g., The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)), few were as overtly religious as this one. Additionally, most films that I've seen from this era portray American fears of nuclear war or the spread of communism metaphorically (e.g., Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)) rather than explicitly. What surprised me most about the film was the Cronyns' willingness to kill themselves and Calder to cover up what they briefly believed to be a hoax. Before the final transmission was received and the truth of the religious messages was confirmed, the heroes of Red Planet Mars were preparing to blow themselves up to protect a pious lie. While I expect this kind of thing in the more cynical films of later decades (protection of a pious lie is the whole point of the climax to The Dark Knight (2008)), I certainly didn't expect it in a film from the early '50s.

Although an interesting film, Red Planet Mars has a few weaknesses, several of which I didn't realize until well after seeing the movie. First of all, I found it a bit unbelievable that the "Martians'" response would so quickly lead to an economic collapse. Even if the Western world believed that the Martians could feed 1000 people on a half acre of crops, why would Earth's food prices drop so quickly? Why would so many people think that the Martians would necessarily share that technology with us, that they would do so immediately, and that humanity could implement it at once? Maybe there would be some effect, but I don't think humanity is quite that rash.

The fact that some of the messages were Calder's and the rest were genuine introduces several plot holes. The "seven generations" statement in the first real message is meant to coincide with the time of Christ, indicating that the Martians follow His teachings. However, the film's climax tells us that all the previous messages, including the one saying that Martians live up to 300 years, came from Calder. Did the Nazi simply guess right on the Martian lifespan? Why were the Martians silent during the time that Calder was sending the Americans false transmissions? In light of the fact that only the religious communications were genuine, how was the Pentagon able to translate them using the methods developed to translate Calder's false ones? Why didn't the Martians start their communications with something more basic like "Greetings, we'd like to share an important message with you"?

It's worth noting that the scene before Calder's appearance in the U.S. shows the Cronyn family listening contently to the declaration of world peace on the radio. In other words, it could have acted as a happy and heartwarming '50s movie ending. The apparent finality of this scene, combined with Calder's unlikely survival and appearance in the Cronyns' lab, has caused some reviewers to suspect that the movie's final sequence was a last minute addition. I believe that the plot holes introduced by Calder's claims confirm that the final scene wasn't part of the original plot and was added to increase the drama of the film. All internal consistency goes out the window the very moment the Nazi scientist claims that the first transmissions came from his shack. While it's an affecting scene, and quite possibly my favorite of the movie, it shows a degree of sloppiness on the part of the filmmakers.
B+