And so the nights once again grow longer. The Veil weakens and the horrors begin to once more scratch at the door. We ask again, do you take the clawed hand on the journey into the dark or hide in the light? Well, I’m reaching out my hand, will you join me on this year’s journey?

Let’s start this year with something fun, a late 1950s sci-fi movie complete with crazy monster designs. Well ok, it’s about 3 but one of those, the Ratbat Spider as it’s called is very memorable in its appearance, to the point they use it on the poster.

Opening up on Earth and in colour, a rarity for sci fi films back then – we are informed that a mission to Mars that was thought lost has been picked up returning to Earth and after suspense they pull one man out of the ship with a strange substance on him as well as the female member of the team of 4 (just making it clear, she doesn’t have weird stuff on her its only the guy… hmm, team of 4 go into space, one woman… wonder if they got hit by cosmic rays?) The events of what happened on Mars are told from the perspective of the female crew member Dr. Iris Ryan played by Naura Hayden.

You get the moments on the rocket to learn a bit about the other members of the crew, though you know only 2 make it back, before they land on Mars. Our first real jump scare is when she looks out the window and sees a strange alien being looking at them, which impressively doesn’t look like a block with googly eyes pasted on his face. No while we don’t see all that many creatures in the film, when we do they are rather impressively done and memorable.

When they are on Mars and out of the ship, the film is essentially black and white, just replacing it from black and white to red and black. This was the main gimmick of the film and why its the angry RED planet.

The stuff on Mars is covered over 3 in film days. They head out, encounter one creature, maybe a shot of the strange alien watching them unseen, then after the main action of the creature, its return to the ship and so on. Main tension comes on the 3rd day as that’s when the ship is under attack by the last monster and as you remember, people haven’t died yet.

The film is enjoyable, wouldn’t call it bad and for essentially having a female lead in an intellectual role is somewhat progressive for its time, plus the monsters are the most memorable part outside of the red effect. I found this on Amazon plus recently having seen it years ago on the old horror channel, so I say it’s worth a check out.

Well that is the first of this year’s terrors done. But join me next time as I work over and over to do something I should have done several years ago.

Rating : 🧙🧙🧙