Flight to Mars Movie Review

Interplanetary explorers crashland on Mars and find an advanced underground society that looks and acts just like humans, except they've never heard of uranium. Mars leaders help fix the rocket, while secretly scheming to copy its atom-powered design for an invasion fleet. Notable as the first color movie of this genre (two-strip Technicolor), it's still static and uninvolving – Flash Gordon with no flash. Turn down your TV brightness and this talky opus could pass for a vintage radio play. Nice touch: Marguerite Chapman plays a Martian maiden named Alita, in reference to the 1924 expressionist Soviet fantasy Aelita, Queen of Mars.

1951 72m/C Cameron Mitchell, Marguerite Chapman, Arthur Franz, Virginia Huston, John Litel, Richard Gaines; D: Lesley Selander; W: Arthur Strawn; C: Harry Neumann. VHS, Beta, LV MED, IME