Robinson Crusoe on Mars

Last night I watched a film on Netflix. A film so bad I was compelled to watch it until the bitter, rather abrupt end. The film was called Robinson Crusoe on Mars. And yes, it is every bit as bad as it sounds. The first thing that lured me to watch this evil film, aside from the absurd title that is, was the fact that it stars Adam West. I though "Hey, if Adam West is in it, surely it can't be that bad?" temporarily forgetting of course how dire the original Batman series actually was.

But I can put your minds at rest. Any fears you may have of having to sit through an hour and a half of Mr West's bad acting are unfounded. Adam West dies within the first ten minutes, presumably realising what a steaming turd he had signed up for. So the other bloke turns out to be the main character that we follow. There's another guy in a loin cloth a bit later on and a monkey. No, I'm not making this shit up.

So basically Adam West, the other guy and the monkey are on their way to Mars. Not to land there, but to do some other sciency type stuff. They have to take evasive action to avoid a big fiery ball thing and end up using up their fuel. So they descend to the Martian surface in their individual escape pods. This being the point where Adam West dies in an off-screen crash landing.

The other guy survives and finds a cave to take shelter in. One of the most annoying things was that he kept turning the oxygen supply to his space suit on and off, presumably to conserve it (yeah, that'll work). But then he discovers the rocks that he's been burning to keep warm release oxygen (well of course they do). And later still he realises that he doesn't need his space suit at all, and only needs to take a "boost" from his oxygen tanks every hour or so because of the "thin" Martian air.

So he goes for a wander and finds the remains of Adam West and (annoyingly) a very much still alive monkey. So the guy and the monkey shack up together in the cave. I can't even remember the monkey's name now, but rather disturbingly the guy keeps calling it "baby". Hey, that was Adam West's monkey!  Has this guy no shame?

Rather inevitably the monkey discovers water and food. Water in the form of pools (which the guy goes swimming in of course) and food in the form of plants with pods that contain sausages. I thought at this point it couldn't really get any more absurd. Sadly I was mistaken. Over time the guy makes the cave more and more homely and he seems to have a pretty easy life.

One day the guy sees something flying in the distance and thinks it's someone come to rescue him. It turns out to be several alien ships who are firing on some people in loin cloths who are digging on the surface below. The aliens are using the people in loin cloths (who I guess technically are aliens too) as slave labour to mine Mars for something or other (we're never told what). One of the slaves breaks free and runs towards our friend and his monkey. So our friend and the monkey have a new, if rather mute companion. Our friend decides to call his new companion "Friday" (no, really) and he sets about trying to teach him English. Sadly the alien ships can track Friday because of the non-removable bracelets he is wearing. So the guy, the monkey and the loin cloth man have to leave their nice, cosy cave and go on the run, deeper into the caves of Mars.

They eventually decide to head towards the polar ice cap for more water. At this point the guy manages to saw through Friday's bracelets so that the aliens can no longer track him. Shortly after another ship appears. They are fearful that the aliens have returned again, but no, it's the rescue party from Earth. Hooray!  The End. No, it really does end that abruptly. Sadly it didn't end abruptly enough for my liking.

This film is slow. And I mean REALLY slow. When you consider that what I've described above takes place in a film that's just ten minutes shy of two hours long, I think you'll get the idea. The thing that was most annoying for me is that there seemed to be no thought of making this film even remotely based upon scientific fact. But I guess the title of the film pretty much informs you of that already. When you consider this film was released in 1964, just five years before we landed on the moon, and just four years before 2001: A Space Odyssey, I think they could've done a better job.

Having said all that, I was compelled to watch it until the end. And if I'm honest, I'd probably watch it again at some point. The special effects, while not being all that special were good for the time. Towards the end they did seem to use some stock footage of volcanoes and blizzards, but that's to be expected of a low budget film like this. Clearly this heavily weighed towards the fiction end of the science fiction genre. I guess this film is more Robinson Crusoe in another setting rather than Robinson Crusoe on Mars. It's certainly not like any Mars I've seen. But hey, give it a watch. I don't want to have suffered alone.