"Women don't have a monopoly on fear."
Dr. Iris Ryan (Nora Hayden) is one of two surviving members of an expedition to Mars, the other being Colonel O'Bannion (Gerald Mohr of Jungle Girl). O'Bannion is unconscious, his arm being digested by an inexplicable material engulfing it. Drugs are used to stimulate the traumatized Iris' memory, leading to flashbacks that show us what happened on the Red Planet Mars. The astronauts -- who also include Professor Gettell (Les Tremayne of The Monster of Piedras Blancas) and technician Sam Jacobs (Jack Kruschen of Reform School Girl) -- discover a strange airless world where nothing seems to move unless it is directed to. Iris is nearly snared by a gigantic, tentacled carnivorous plant; the whole group battles a humungous bad-rat-spider monster with legs that resemble tree trunks; and after spotting a distant city across a lake full of viscous liquid encounter an enormous amoeba that ingests one of them and starts eating away at O'Bannion's arm. The landscape is depicted in "cinemagic," which bathes everything in a reddish tint.
Iris )Nora Hayden) sees a Martian |
Verdict: The wonderful bat-rat-spider -- which once had its own model kit -- is alone worth the price of admission. ***.
No comments:
Post a Comment