Could any space flick be worse than The Angry Red Planet? Yes, it could. The script for the disaster at hand is so dopey and disjointed that it could have been scrawled out in crayon by a classroom of third-graders, each child submitting a short scene that teacher then patched together, helter-skelter. As for the actors, some of them are without doubt competent. They've exhibited this in other movies. But, here, with such dipsticky dialogue, no one could ever know. It makes it easy to understand why Tom Conway turned to drink and died broke. The story starts with a big strike against it: twelve characters with little to distinguish most of them. There are nine white guys, two women--Swedish and Japanese--and a Nigerian man whose accent never sounds West African and sometimes slips into Southern American. The hatch is scarcely secured when the inter-ethnic squabbling and recriminations start. Didn't these people get acquainted before blasting off in a rocket? From the amorous behavior of the females with two of the males, one would think so. But maybe there's something in the air--or lack of it. There must be some air, even on the moon, since the spacesuits don't have visors. The ship itself, with its bare-bones instrumentation and lack of even a beep or buzz, must be of such advanced technology that it all but runs itself. But, no, that can't be right. The teen math whiz has to use paper and pen to calculate a path through a meteor shower. The medical personnel has to struggle with wrap-around blood pressure cuffs--which they obviously don't know how to use. The only recorder on board--oh, forget it. There are, in addition to the dozen humans, two cats and two monkeys in plastic cases, two parakeets in a traditional cage, and one spaniel on a leash. The boy genius tells them they've been brought along to see if they'll mate on the moon. In the doggie's case, the answer is probably no. One silly circumstance follows another, but maybe the most asinine is that involving a screen-scrolled message from the Moonmen. Although it's somehow known that they communicate only telepathically, they have chosen to relay a series of repetitious, somewhat hieroglyphic-looking symbols. One crew member decides that the writing looks Chinese (it doesn't) so the Japanese woman is told to translate. She does, without a hitch. Now, who but a very young child could make such an assumption?
Review of 12 to the Moon
