The Wizard of Mars (1965)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Best movie ever!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

"The Wizard of Mars" is a rather boring low budgeted film. I watched it mostly hoping it was at least interesting when it came to the parallels to "The Wizard of Oz" but sadly this didn't pan out at all.The film begins with a space ship crashing onto the surface of Mars. There are several men and, surprise, a lady. Their biggest problem is that they only have a very limited supply of air and so they leave their vessel in search of some way to survive. This search makes up the bilk of the movie and, sadly, it never gets interesting or the least bit like "The Martian"...it's just a cheaply made film with dull characters (despite the supposed Oz parallels). Even for bad movie buffs, this film has little to offer...it's not even enjoyable on a camp level.

OK, OK, it's a bad movie: plot holes, continuity errors, and awful acting. I remember seeing this for the first time on a Saturday afternoon, as a time filler, when I was a preteen. (Remember when you could only get 3 channels?) I purchased this film on video a few years ago, and watched it again, several times. There were possibilities that were never utilized.*Spoilers ahead* The idea of time standing still, for instance. In the narration, we're told that everybody's watch had stopped. We don't find out why till the conversation with the Wizard: the Martians had stopped time for themselves, and so affected the astronauts. After finding themselves back on the ship, they realized they were 2 minutes overdue on their check-in. The men have 4-5 day beards, so they must have been on the planet. It seems that the Martians, now that they could control time again, had not only sent them back to the ship, but sent them back in time, too. Why? We are not told. A bit of mystery to liven up the dull plot. I give it 2 stars for the cool music, and for the attempt at showing time manipulation.

Four astronauts crash land on Mars and struggle to escape. Their antics are incomprehensible and boring. No one dies in this thriller, yet the female astronaut talks about all the dangers present. This movie tends to remind one of a documentary more so than a sci-fi adventure or action flick. The movie will put you asleep if you're not careful. There are many mistakes made in this movie. The astronauts talk about their oxygen running out, yet at times running around without their face shields on exposing themselves to the atmosphere. There is another scene where the female astronaut(Dorothy) says there is no life. She says this to a group after they pass by a tree. One of my favorite parts is the rifle with unlimited ammunition. This astronaut shoots at these poor helpless aliens floating in the water(cheap looking plastic segmented white worm props). He doesn't even hit one of them even after firing 15 to 20 rounds at a range of two feet. Another great part in this movie is the stage hands leg moving the time machine pendulum back and forth. He is up in the rafters in the ceiling. I can't believe they didn't edit that out. John Carradine climax's the movie with a 20 minute dissertation on history and life.When this movie is done, you wonder, "What's the point of this movie?" I can't believe I bought this movie. I purchased it as "Horrors of the Red Planet". The box it came in described this movie as an intergalactic war movie. Obviously they never watched it. This movie is awful and boring. I rank this up in my top 10 worst movies of all time.

I bought the video originally because the box said that Lon Chaney and John Carradine were in it. Well, Lon was nowhere to be found and this flick is not part of his filmography. However, John's head was in it, so that's no lie! The box art was also exciting-looking as it proclaimed the flick was titled "Horrors of the Red Planet." Well, its really "Wizard of Mars," but I would have called it "The Insomnia Cure of the Red Planet." "Wizard" resembles a large budget student film of wannabe filmmakers who must have been using this production for practice and who may (or likely did not) go on to better things. An amateurish looking drywall "spaceship," Death Valley-style desertscape, Carlsbad caverns, and what looks like a warehouse set the scene. Our band of high school play dropout explorers land on Mars and discover an ancient civilization replete with aliens housed in tubes (that have mud packs for makeup) and eventually the alien disembodied "Wizard" image of a John Carradine (desperate for work). The Wizard's "city," as depicted in miniature, looks like an aquarium castle, with a sun shining over it as if with a flashlight shot through a bedsheet in a darkened room. I could go on for several paragraphs with descriptions about the almost scene by scene mistakes of logic, science, bad acting/script/staging, etc...ad nauseum. Perhaps thats why I find this film so fascinating...it has so many mistakes, its an adventure to find them. Only the atmospheric photography in a few scenes and the sci-fi-weird music was really of note.