Escape from Mars

ESCAPE FROM MARS is a low rent TV movie that feels hopelessly out of its depth when trying to portray a convincing picture of astronauts visiting Mars. It's a very typical, predictable kind of movie in which the storyline feels drawn out. We see the astronauts as they say goodbye to their loved ones, as they take off, as they travel through space, as they land on Mars, and then the inevitable escape.

The problem lies with the script, which presents these characters as the most boring people imaginable. There are no psychos on board, nobody loses control, instead they're all involved in cheesy family dramas and sentimental tripe. This should be a tense thriller that sees the crew battling technical issues and the like but for the most part the emphasis is on the non-existent human drama.

It doesn't help that the cast members put in the most routine performances imaginable and that there's an almost entire lack of incident so that the viewer is left twiddling his or her thumbs and waiting for things to kick off. Sadly, they never do.

Don't go out of your way to watch this movie. If your bored and nothing else is on, it might be a decent gamble.

Of if you like really predictable bad sci-fi with mediocre actors.

That's what I would say if this movie had any redeemable merit whatsoever!

First, the good things: ....

Now the bad things: The acting was subpar, even for television. The script looked like they were winging it. The conflict did little to interest me, which doesn't say much for the lulls in the movie. The idea was completely unoriginal. Even the credits looked pasted together.

I'll elaborate. The conflict. I didn't feel, even for a second, any ounce of satisfaction or grip from anything this movie tried. Anything the movie attempted to do was undone by stupidity, and any progress the conflict made to the situation or the story was resolved in about five minutes, and everything was back to normal.

The characters were two-dimensional. None were distinguishable from the others in anything except for their jobs (one was a designer--that's all I could recall). Their character qualities were shifted around and changed so often, they had the consistency of water. I couldn't tell one character apart from any other aside from their looks, and even then I had a hard time.

How about the idea? It's been done to death. Mission to Mars and Red Planet both came out around the same time (maybe a little later) and both were by far this movie's superior.

This movie was just junk. You will NOT be satisfied, even if you're investing only your time. Avoid this at all costs. In fact, burn the copies you DO find. I don't want this movie EVER going around again!!! Possibly the worst thing I've seen. And I've seen bad.

For a low budget movie I didn't think this one was all that bad. I've seen worse, in fact I used this film to try to wash the horrible taste of Star Trek Insurrection out of my mouth. Compared to that, this is Dickens stacked against Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

However I am willing to admit that Escape from Mars has a few flaws. First and foremost the budget for special effects was about $6.50 plus what they could find in the change slot of local phone booths. This is probably what led most science fiction fans against this film. We're used to fantastic specials which create a real visual treat. To have that missing really hurts the film.

The second flaw is that the story, however realistic, is now standard for anyone who has read anything from the hard science genre. Whoever wrote this has obviously read Robinson and Bova as well as checked the NASA site every now and then. So I guess my complaint is that there were few surprises or new stuff.

Third is that the whole thing is shot on video which makes everything look cheap, like a news room set. There is little which looks realistic and one can feel a bit ripped off by the sets they have although I did notice a few nice touches in the background.

What saved this film in my opinion was the acting. Every actor in this film did a sterling job despite the problems. Many of us are used to some atrocious over-acting which is enough to make Jack Palance proud and me nauseous. Ironically it is the faults of this film which allow viewers to see what a hard job acting is. With limited special effects and poor sets you can see what normal actors see when they work. The large temptation is to over act but the entire cast bring out believable, human performances which is why I gave the film a 7.

When you compare this movie with Mission to Mars, in which Peter Outerbridge also appears, one sees that this product isn't that bad. First of all special effects, there arent' really any and I didn't miss them, but then I don't watch movies for special effects, I watch for human interactions and story. One effect plot device did bother me, on the way to Mars the ship (an oversize space shuttle)has these gyro appendages which spin, on the way back we don't see them being deployed (the originals were jettisoned when the reached mars) and I wondered why out and not back.

The acting was better than I expected, the actors just didn't have a of story to work with and the video made for a cheap look. Despite the flaws, I liked the people (although the Russian Casanova scene was very gratuitous and it certainly was more watchable than Dr. Who. It was nice that someone gave the concept a better budget and "remade" it as Mission to Mars, but in the end this one had as much story and was a better movie because it wasn't as pretentious. Of course the latter had more special effects than a Britney spears concert . . .