Rocks filled with oxygen so you can breathe. Sausages that come up out of the ground. Secret Interstellar Native Americans. And a monkey in a spacesuit. It’s just about the best science fiction movie EVER.
It was fully fifty years ago (Wait, check that: yes, 1964: FIFTY YEARS AGO) that a miracle came to local theaters around this great land of ours: the story of two astronauts and their faithful monkey who make it to the planet Mars in a ship that looks, frankly, like it was built on a B-movie Hollywood back lot — because it was! — only to have one of the ‘nauts, the future Batman, die horribly and leave Paul Mantee, who would one day boss Cagney and Lacey around, stranded all alone on the Red Planet.
How will he survive? How could he?
Basically: he couldn’t. No way. Read The Martian if you want to see how it would really go. But back in 1964, when we were still struggling with a President’s death and our first out-of-control war in history, we needed Commander Kit Draper to survive…even if that meant creating the most ridiculous un-science-y plot in history, not to mention a galactic slave-trading racket that would give him his “Man Friday” at just the right time.
For those who were kids (of any age) in that era, Robinson Crusoe on Mars hit a sweet spot shared by only a few other classics of the time — The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, maybe a couple of others. And while those other classics have been lionized, iconicized, even remade, RCoM has languished in obscurity.
Until now. Now you can see it for ‘free’ if you’re already a Neflix subscriber. And yes, it’s stupid, and yes, it’s over the top. And it’s also full of hope and determination and the goddamn American Dream that we can do anything if we just put out minds to it.
And of course if we have rocks that breathe, sausages that come out of the earth, and monkeys in spacesuits. Those help, too.
