The Angry Red Planet (1959)

A rocket ship returns to Earth after mankind's first landing on Mars but there are only two survivors out of the four person crew. The crew's leader (Gerald Mohr) is unconscious and has a strange growth attached to his arm while the biologist (Naura Hayden) has a loss of memory. This is low budget science fiction at its cheesiest. Shot in little over a week (and it shows), the screen goes literally red when they are outside of the spaceship and exploring the planet. Well, that's one way of disguising the painted backdrops passing for Mars or the creepy papier mache creatures right out of a Japanese "monster that ate Tokyo" movie. It wouldn't have mattered in the long run if the movie were at least fun but it's tedious to the extreme. It's a particularly ugly looking movie so I was quite stunned during the end credits when I saw the film was shot by the great Stanley Cortez (THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, NIGHT OF THE HUNTER)! Directed by Ib Melchior. With Les Tremayne and Jack Kruschen.