Film/DVD opinions

Spoilers!

I've seen the film at least once in the past on TV, probably in a butchered time-shortened/edited version and of course before being restored like this new version out. Here's some of my impressions. The film is dated in many respects but I always try to adjust for the time/era the film came out somewhat while viewing older films. The restored print does look very good. I think even for 1964 the scientific knowledge about Mars precluded many things we see in the film from occurring. I liked a lot of the production design and the Death Valley filming location . They did a good job in conveying an alien world. The special effects of the human space ship zooming across the screen wouldn't have been so bad if they had toned down the awful sound effects, and while I liked the look especially of the alien craft (seemingly borrowed from War of the Worlds) their flight motion was too wacky and repetitive. Okay I'm in a nitpicking mode I didn't understand the scattered, fan-shaped pattern alien death ray/blasters creating much smaller radius clean circular impact craters either. But audiences back then were more forgiving of this stuff. It also seems that yet again another race of aliens are remarkably human-like.

I can't help it but the overriding notion in my head while watching this 1964 space film was how much four years later Kubrick's 2001 totally changed how space was rendered and seen to movie audiences. Not to mention of course the TV series Star Trek in 1966. RCOM now seems like one of the last of its type. But putting aside the modern day perspective RCOM was a pretty imaginative-looking film altogether though of course the screenplay was a space version of Defoe's story. There were just too many holes in the screenplay, unbelievable and fortunate circumstances that Kit was involved in to continue surviving on the hostile planet.

The film is an interesting time capsule and reasonably entertaining but I don't think anywhere near the best of the sci-fi films. It pales in comparison to truly ahead of their time and bigger budgeted films such as Forbidden Planet or War of the Worlds or This Island Earth. I agree with what a poster said about it that it's more of a desert-survivalist story than a sci-fi one. Plus Kit seems to benefit on a lot of things conveniently falling into his lap rather than from his own creativity or inventiveness. Okay he did come up with that banging alarm clock contraption but my god it would have awoken the dead.