The Wizard of Mars

Four astronauts crash-land on the surface of Mars, where they encounter strange lifeforms; travel by land and by raft; and arrive at an ancient city. All while a narrator drones on, and "eerie" sound effects intone.

THE WIZARD OF MARS is a silly sci-fi epic, loosely based on THE WIZARD OF OZ. Indeed, the female astronaut's name is Dorothy, and there's even a "golden road" to follow. John Carradine puts in a cameo as the title character (aka: a histrionic, floating head). His ultra-melodramatic speech seems endless!

If ye be fearless amidst atrocious "acting"; unflinching in the face of brain-drilling "dialogue"; and plot is of no real importance to ye, then enter herein...

This movie is terrible!! A few astronauts crash on Mars, and wander around for about an hour (with very little dialog). After watching these guys wander around they follow a yellow brick road to a castle full of cheap frozen martians. There they meet The Wizard of Mars, played convincingly by John Carradine's dissembodied head. Then John Carradine starts talking for about 5 hours and helps these astronauts get home with some weird clock-thing. Other than that, I can think of absolutely nothing to say about this movie other than don't watch it.

But, on the other hand, if you've only got 80 minutes to live...watch this movie. It will feel like an eternity.

Hewitt's "Gallery Of Horrors" is one of the great "so bad it's good" funny films, and his really stupid "Monsters Crash the Pajama Party" is inept but a lot less amusing. so the genuine qualities of "Wizard Of Mars" caught me off guard. It's video title "Horrors Of The Red Planet" is actually a lot better and more fitting. I hate to get into a fight here about the obvious merits of MST3K, who did not even do this movie, but it would have in fact been a bad choice for the show, as the film does have a strange, hypnotic effect that goes along with the clumsy flubs one expects from a Hewitt film. The film has a dream like quality, and it's strange story seems, yes, an interesting forerunner to "2001".

Three of Hewitt's "Gallery Of Horrors" stars (Carridine, Roger Gentry, and Vic McGee) are back. McGee does the best work of his career, even toping his

sleazy ganster in Ed Wood's "Sinister Urge." Opps, there I go. Actually, Vic McGee is a terrible actor who appeared in a handful of grade Z films, but his work here is somehow moving. See, this movie just won't let you make fun of it. I don't know if the actress is overdubbing her own voice, but they should have found a better one to use(the whole movie is overdubbed). In any case, see this film. It's right up there with "Creation Of The Humanoids" in the strange department.

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.

I remember seeing this movie as a kid on the "Sunday Afternoon" movie on the local station in the late 70's, but I couldn't remember the title. I knew it had to be from the 60's so IMDb helped me narrow the possibilities. The key was I remembered the astronauts finding a "Golden" road under the desert, so the "Wizard" title grabbed my eye.

A Google search brought some web sites that fully describe the movie and show screen shots.

I am a bit disappointed now that the actual movie does not live up to my memories of it. I remember it being kinda spooky and strange, but now it seems really stupid.

I would like to see it again, too bad there doesn't seem to be a DVD yet. I wonder if it is on any movie compilation set of "B" movies.

Paul