This movie is, without a doubt, bad. The story is told in a flashback. A spaceship has returned to Earth from Mars, and one of the survivors recalls what happened. A substantial portion of this narration concentrates on the journey, I suppose to attempt some degree of characterization. The four astronauts are an old scientist type guy, a spunky young scientist type gal, a fat guy from Brooklyn who reads dime store novels about space aliens and is overly affectionate to his weapons, and a stereotypical cool headed hero type guy. Of course a love affair ensues between the hero type guy and scientist gal, while the Brooklyn guy tries to be funny. It is all done with absolutely horrid acting and bad dialogue filled with every cliche in the book. The hero guy sounds a lot like Humphrey Bogart, interestingly enough, and if you close your eyes and imagine Bogart saying the lines, it can be quite funny.

When they land on the planet, they go exploring and find all manner of flora and fauna, including a giant bat/spider thing and a giant amoeba which engulfs their ship.

Outside the ship, everything appears to be red, since they are on Mars. But the effect isn't as simple as putting a red filter over the camera lens. I really don't know how they did it, but there are strange distinctions made between shadow and light, and it is oddly blurry. It is actually pretty interesting to watch. In fact, most of the time I was concentrating on this effect rather than watching what was going on.

Basically they explore, try to leave, find out they can't, explore again, and escape the planet two crew members short, and with one crew member infected with an alien disease. There is one important part of the story that the survivor can't tell, however, because she fainted when it happened. A message from the Martians was made to the crew of the spaceship. Luckily it was recorded. What is this message that the movie has been building up to? Simply that the Martians do not want them to come to Mars again. After discovering this, the movie ends. That's it -- it's over. I must admit I was pretty surprised with this ending, not with the revelation itself (the fact the Martians didn't want them there was obvious), but because the movie just ended at that point.

I think this movie is pretty entertaining. The red effect is somewhat interesting, and there are several different odd creatures to look at. If all else fails, you can always insert famous Bogart lines into the dialogue for fun.

Turkey rating: 4 turkeys.