Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Rexanne It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

utgard14 Radio transmissions believed to be from Mars turn out to have quite different origins in this intriguing Cold War-era sci-fi film that seems to be polarizing today, if IMDb is anything to go by (and I wonder). Peter Graves does a good job but Herbert Berghof steals the show as a former Nazi now working for the Russians. Andrea King is pretty annoying as the hysterical wife of Graves' character. The rest of the cast is solid. I like this movie because it's interesting with a unique plot. It's talky, yes, but that's not inherently a bad thing. It's a thought-provoking movie with some historical interest, not just a special effects spectacle. Because it has political and religious elements, it will trigger Certain Types. If you are one of those, gird your loins before watching.

Hitchcoc Peter Graves, looking like a poster boy for the Gestapo, is about as dull as a fifty cent knife. He's married to a tiresome, whiny woman who complains constantly. I won't go into the science (which is so vacuous and imprecise as to be laughable) because this is a rallying point for the McCarthyites of the early fifties. Science is actually the enemy here. The message is to go back to the caves and wear sandals. Did you see any black people in the movie. Did you see any Hindus or Native Americans. Apparently the Martians had a copy of the King James Version of the Bible. They suddenly began to speak in Thees and Thous in their messages. The concept of this film rolls along nicely. Peter and his wife are blamed for the destruction of the Western economy. This in itself is ridiculous. Since the Martians never do any more than talk. In the end we know why. Did the people who made this film think the world stupid? I guess when you see the workings of Tailgunner Joe at the hearings, we kind of know an answer to this question.

dougdoepke Apparently, 1952 was the year the Big Guy finally got broadcasting rights in the US. Because movies like The Next Voice You Hear (1952) and this one managed to put God in direct communication with us mere mortals courtesy the Hollywood hotline. Of course, it really helped when the Big Guy enlisted on our side against the godless commies, while His Presence also helped clean up Hollywood's image as a commie harboring red nest. You might even call His intervention a godsend for the film industry.Actually, this 90-minutes is to effective propaganda what the sledgehammer is to the fly swatter. At least, its companion movie (The Next…) had the good sense to avoid the obvious, like crude stereotypes. On the other hand, this concoction has no such inhibitions. Commies are uniformly beasts, Russian peasants are uniformly downtrodden, and Americans are uniformly thoughtful. I don't know what Soviet propaganda was like at the time, but it couldn't have been much cruder than this.I will say the movie is well mounted visually. In fact, the skillful complexity of some of the visuals clashes with the simple-mindedness of the script. On the whole, I wish I could say this propaganda piece is nothing more than a clumsy Cold War artifact. But it's not. Unfortunately, it feeds into that current sense of smug self-congratulation that goes by the popular meme of American exceptionalism.

Robert J. Maxwell No sense carrying on about this movie.One of the Hollywood moguls once said that if you want to send a message, call Western Union. The producers, director, and writers didn't take the advice because they've put together a movie that is an insult to the intelligence and taste not only of all human beings but all primates, all the way down to lemurs and tarsiers and marmosets. Maybe lower still. A platypus might bristle.Peter Graves, tall, robust, handsome, is an American electronic specialist who manages to contact Mars by radio and begins to get messages in return. The Martians, it seems, have no need for oil or any source of energy other than cosmic. (The energy industries implode all over the world.) The average life span on Mars is 300 years. (Doctors jump out of windows.) They can feed a million people from food grown on one acre of ground. (Commodities fall through the floor.) But then, with the global economy in collapse, the messages begin to get spiritual, so to speak. The Martians begin babbling about their Supreme Leader and his sayings, which, it develops, are from the sermon on the mount.I'll cut this short to spare you some of the pain I experienced while watching goggle-eyed as this execrable piece of trash unrolled on the screen.The world's population now believes in God and begins going to church. (Cue the bells and the heavenly choirs.) The good folks of Russia rise up to worship on their own, are mowed down by cackling Soviet soldiers, but overthrow their government and establish a theocracy in pursuit of world peace.There's a twist or two at the end that no power on Earth, or on Mars either, could get me to reveal, so I'll just finish by saying Graves and an arch enemy perish in a hydrogen explosion, for which I was grateful since it meant the end of the movie was at hand.I often hear that there are some movies that are so bad, they're good. "Plan 9 From Outer Space" is often given as an example. So is John Wayne's "The Conqueror." Such claims prompt me to ask, "Has anyone ever actually sat through any of this junk?" If so, and if they've found it rewarding, they should definitely catch "Red Planet Mars."