THE ANGRY RED PLANET

THE ANGRY RED PLANET (1959). Director: Ib Melchior. 

"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

For some reason Amazon Prime Video has two versions of this movie. This is supposed to be the "original" version but scene for scene it is exactly like the other version Amazon offers -- there are no differences at all. Angry Red Planet is talky and slow at first, but once it gets going it is quite entertaining and the various monsters are a lot of fun. The story is actually pretty good but it needed a much better director. Former hoofer Mohr comes off, as usual, like an aging make-out man and his presumptuousness as regards to Iris -- whom he calls "Irish" -- is amazing. Reportedly Hayden thought Mohr was "quite arrogant and nasty." Hayden largely appeared on television, and attempted a comeback in her final 1969 film The Perils of P.K. where she played a stripper hoping to snare a name actor to appear with her in a film. Hayden did get the likes of Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Heatherton, Louise Lasser and others to appear with her, but one viewer described the film as making "Glen or Glenda seem like Citizen Kane."  

Verdict: The wonderful bat-rat-spider -- which once had its own model kit -- is alone worth the price of admission. ***.  

REFORM SCHOOL GIRL

Gloria Castillo

REFORM SCHOOL GIRL (1957). Director: Edward Bernds.       

Donna (Gloria Castillo) has an unfortunate home life living with her miserable Aunt Rita (Claire Carleton) and her lecherous, leering uncle (Jack Kruschen). No wonder she decides to go out for a ride with Gary (Wayne Taylor). Unfortunately the driver is Vince (Edd Byrnes of 77 Sunset Strip), and the car they're in is stolen. Throwing Gary and his own date, Josie (Luana Anders), out of the car, he takes off for a wild ride with a resisting Donna, and runs over and kills a man. Frightened of Vince's retaliation, Donna refuses to tell the cops who the driver was, and is sent to reform school, where things, are, if anything, even worse. 

Edd Byrnes and Ralph Reed

Donna finds herself in the Hastings School for Girls, run by Mrs. Trimble (Helen Wallace). There is also a teacher named David Lindsay (Ross Ford), who is doing research on the tough lovelies but who is unlikely to inspire romantic feelings in any of them. Donna earns the enmity of some of her fellow inmates, including Roxy (Yvette Vickers, who looks like crap in this). Things get worse when the devious Vince has a lady pal call the police pretending to be Donna, and she gives Josie's name to them -- Josie winds up at the Hastings School herself and with the help of the other girls, who hate snitches, decides to get even with Donna. Donna's only friends are Ruth (Jan Englund) and Jackie Dodd (Ralph Reed), a nice boy who sneaked inside the gates to go on more than one date with her. Vince forces Ralph to show him the way inside, but Ralph may have other plans. 

Yvette Vickers and Ralph Reed

Reform School Girl is a modestly entertaining flick with a good lead performance by Castillo [Invasion of the Saucer Men]. Vickers [Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman] is typically zesty, most of the other gals play with vitality, Edd Byrnes overacts a bit but is sufficiently nasty, and Ralph Reed makes an appealing "good boy" to counterbalance Byrnes' snake in the grass. Sally Kellerman has a small role as nasty, violent Marcia; she seems to literally tower over the other girls. Bernds also directed High School Hellcats. 

Verdict: "Chicks" in the hoosegow. **3/4.