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"Of course, academia collects masterpieces and is sometimes uneasy with silliness. . . . But real fans cherish bad movies, too, the frivolous spasms of light on the screen, the ones that led to reckless dreams."
—David Thomson
When I was six years old, I couldn't wait to get home from school each day and watch the latest installment of my favorite television show, a shoestring-budget serial called Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, shown on local after-school kids' TV. Clearly modeled on Buck Rogers, Rocky was an outer space law enforcer who cruised the galaxy in a rocket ship with his female first officer and ten-year old sidekick Bobby searching for villains and meddling in the affairs of inhabited planets. Whether battling the evil queen Cleolanta, rescuing the beautiful princess Juliandra from the machinations of her evil twin sister, or saving the heedless inhabitants of two planets on a collision course, Rocky and his crew could be relied on to triumph over villainy and save the day with their low-tech gizmos and their wits.
The program was my education in the distinction between reality and the movies. I experienced my first screen crush on the lovely Juliandra and learned that reading the credits at the end told me who she was in real life. Seeing her on another TV show playing a different character altogether and reading her name in the credits there really drove home the point that these were actors playing make-believe people, and after that I was always aware of the difference between the actor and the character. Probably the most educational result of the program, though, was when my father told me that we didn't really fly around the solar system in rocket ships, that (at this time) humans had never left Earth and the notion of space travel was wholly imaginary. I was crushed, but I did learn that just because you see it on the screen doesn't mean it really happens in life.
When I watched a DVD of the 1951 science fiction movie Flight to Mars recently, it immediately evoked the wonder felt by the six-year old armchair space traveler watching Rocky Jones. Such pleasure is almost beyond analysis and certainly beyond justification. It might be called guilty pleasure, although only an adult would think of the sensation in such a way. Briefly put, it's a movie-watching satisfaction that cannot be justified on aesthetic grounds, that in fact defies justification of any kind beyond the purely subjective. In this case—as in many similar cases, I suspect—the reaction surely is essentially one of nostalgia, a reaction in which memory completely blends with the present. For the adult it is the equivalent of revisiting that innocent, pre-rational childhood state of mind in which anything that gives mental or emotional pleasure is accepted without thought, on that level of pure sensation in which the thing itself is its own justification.
As its title indicates, Flight to Mars is about the first human expedition to Mars. One thing that makes this movie so enjoyable is that its plot is virtually a template for similar low-budget films of the 1950s about space travel to distant planets. The crew consists of four scientists—the team's leader, Dr. Jim Barker (Arthur Franz, who played the astronomer in Invaders from Mars), a professor, a medical doctor, the female member of the crew, Carol Stafford (Virginia Huston, probably best known for playing the "good girl" Robert Mitchum is engaged to in Out of the Past)—and one non-scientist, a cynical reporter along strictly as an observer, Steve Abbott (Cameron Mitchell). After surviving such perils as nearly being captured by the gravity of the Moon and dodging a sudden meteor shower, they crash land on Mars.
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Although the aliens seem civilized and friendly, we soon learn they have an agenda of their own. The element which powers their civilization, corium (could this be related to the synthetic stuff used to make kitchen countertops in the 1970s?), is running out. The Martians, needing a new home, have decided Earth fits the bill and never having developed space travel themselves, think the space ship that has landed on their planet is just the thing to take them to Earth to launch an invasion. Will the travelers learn the truth about the aliens' scheme from the brainy Martian Alita (Marguerite Chapman) who, with her slide rule and T-square, is helping Capt. Barker in his plans for the repairs while falling in love with him (don't even think about alien anatomy), and her father (veteran character actor Robert Barratt), a pacifist in favor of détente with the earthlings? If they do, will they be able to overcome fuel and weight restrictions and take Alita and her father with them as ambassadors of inter-planetary peace?
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The special effects of the rocket in flight are superior to those of an Ed Wood movie, but that's about the most that can be said of them. On the big screen they must have seemed especially unconvincing. The model used for the rocket ship, however, is splendid—sleek, metallic, and streamlined. It was originally designed for the 1950 film Destination Moon but wasn't used in that film. After appearing in slightly modified form in Flight to Mars, it would later be used in several other sci-fi movies of the 1950s.
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This post is part of the Guilty Pleasures Movie Blogathon sponsored by the Classic Movie Blog Association. For more on the blogathon click here. The quotation by David Thomson is from "When Is a Movie Great?" Harper's July 2011: 35-39.
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