What I’m watching: we’re going into a little film historyDate: 9/1/2021 On Blu-ray: “Flight to Mars”
Okay, I know you’ve never heard of this film. That’s okay, but this is one of the best Blu-ray packages I’ve come across lately and it’s worth your consideration if you’re someone who likes to get into the weeds of movie history.
“Flight to Mars” was made in 1951 at the start of the science fiction boom in American cinemas. There were films such as “Rocketship XM,” “Destination Moon” and “The Day the Earth Stood Still” that were all part of this cycle.
“Destination Moon” was a movie that took the concept of space travel very seriously. “The Day The Earth Stood Still” used the science fiction genre as a vehicle for social commentary. Both “Rocketship XM” and “Flight to Mars” were a hybrid. They were essentially adventure films that were set in the concept of conquering space.
“Flight to Mars” was made by a young producer named Walter Mirisch, He had come to lowly Monogram Pictures to start his career. Monogram was a B-movie factory, making westerns, musicals, horror films. The studio was best known for the Bowery Boys series and its Charlie Chan films. He had success producing “Bomba the Jungle Boy” series for the studio, essentially low-budget Tarzan-like movies.
Mirisch managed to convince studio head Steve Broidy to give him additional money to put an additional sheen to their entry into the space travel film. He even got enough money to produce the film in Cinecolor, a cheaper color process than Technicolor.
It paid off very well for Monogram and was indeed the film that started the process of Monogram shedding its reputation and transforming itself into Allied Artists, a studio that by the late 1950s was producing accomplished “A” films with stars such as Gary Cooper and directors such as Billy Wilder.
It’s fascinating to see how the success of a single film was the match that lit the studio’s fuse.
This new Blu-ray package from The Film Detective tells this story very, very well. Not only is the print of the film beautifully restored, the disc has two documentaries that firmly anchor the film in its place in history. There is a commentary track as well and a printed essay about films featuring trips to Mars. The Cinecolor looks great as well.
Now the film itself is fairly juvenile science fiction, especially when compared with a films such as “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” I found it enjoyable. Cameron Mitchell is the star – a newspaper reporter – who goes along with the scientist to record their adventure.
Naturally when they do get to Mars they find a dying civilization, which seems welcoming but has an ulterior motive.
It’s one of those 1950s sci-fi films in which the Martians look like us, speak English – because of our radio broadcasts – and generally look and act like us. All of the Martian women are very attractive and wear mini-skits – because all advanced civilizations have embraced the mini-skirt!
There are very adequate special effects, especially the model of the rocket itself and it’s clear this was a very big step up for Monogram from the Bowery Boys.
With the extras, the producers of this disc have transformed a not-very-well-known 1951 movie into an artifact that tells the story of a studio and that of a young producer.
By the way, Walter Mirisch went on to produce some huge films including “the Great Escape,” “In the Heat of the Night,” and “Some Like it Hot.”
For an intriguing look at the story behind a film, check out this Blu-ray disc.
What I just read: “When Dracula Met Frankenstein: My Years Making Drive-in Movies with Al Adamson”
As long as we are in the weeds, let’s get into a book that shows what it was like to run an independent film studio back in the 1960s, ‘70s and into the ‘80s.
Sam Sherman is another movie lover who cultivated his own interests as a film fan into a career as a producer. Sherman worked frequently with the late director Al Adamson and established Independent-International Pictures.
This book shows, for example, how a producer such as Sherman dealt with distributors in getting bookings for his films. He recounts in detail if a film didn’t attract bookings, he would commission additional footage to be shot – sometime he shot it himself – to make the film more attractive to bookers. Sherman would change the film, change the title, change the advertising campaign to compete in the marketplace.
Sherman would even wait a couple of years and reissue films with different ad campaigns. I have to admire a guy with such audacity.
This book is part history and part instruction manual. If I was teaching a film history class – and I used to for many years at Western New England University – I would use this as a text book. It sheds so much light on a part of filmmaking that has been largely ignored by mainstream film historians.
Were the films Sherman and Adamson made any good? They could be. They could also be some of most outrageous train wrecks I’ve ever seen. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter.
What does matter is this story of determination of two guys who both loved movies, wanted to make movies and did succeed in doing so.
It’s available at online booksellers and directly from the publisher, www.muraniapress.com.
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