Angry Red Planet: Top 5 Mars Movies

Based on the Ray Bradbury classic about the colonization of Mars, this sleepy, three-part miniseries for NBC (later packaged as a mercifully shorter 90-minute movie overseas) stars '70s staples Rock Hudson, Roddy McDowall, Bernie Casey, Fritz Weaver, Barry Morse and Bernadette Peters -- and some serious '70-style clothes. Paralleling our Old West battles with the Native American population with the initial resistance by the Martians (including a virus brought by the Earthlings that practically eradicates the Martian population), Bradbury's story contains lofty ideas about war, imperialism and religion, but the script and acting here is the real killer.

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Batman star Adam West, a monkey in a spacesuit and alien ships borrowed from George Pal's War of the Worlds punctuate this otherworldy adaptation of the classic tale. **Spoiler Alert!** After West is killed off in their crash landing, Paul Mantee is Commander Christopher 'Kit' Draper -- the "modern Robinson Crusoe, struggling for survival in a cruel environment." Learning to forage for food and breathe the air by burning strange, yellow rocks, Kit must "face the reality of being alone forever," only to discover slaves laboring for alien mining ships. He helps one escape and naturally names him "Friday," only to face more alien attacks and a deadly meteor crash/firestorm in the Martian ice cap.

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This campy sci-fi relic from the waning days of the '50s cosmic cinema casts Gerald Mohr, Nora Hayden, Les Tremayne and Jack Kruschen as astronauts landing their M-1 Rocket on Mars, only to discover that the red planet is indeed angry, with a deadly, 40-foot "bat-rat-spider" monster, an amphibious, one-eyed, won-ton-soup beast, and giant carnivorous plants lurking around every corner. Perfect for the young kiddies on a rainy Saturday afternoon, this movie would make Ed Wood green -- er, red -- with envy. In Cinemagic!

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Director Brian De Palma, well-known for appropriating Hitchcock's style, turns his attention to Kubrick territory and 2001: A Space Odyssey with this story of an interplanetary exploration gone awry and its doomed rescue mission. Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins, Don Cheadle, Connie Nielsen and Jerry O'Connell turn in admirable performances on expensive sets, but the film is ultimately derailed by a Close Encounters-style ending with a chintzy, CGI alien. The trailer (featuring stirring music from Vangelis' 1492: Conquest of Paradise soundtrack) is much more exciting than this exercise in patience with little payoff. Another Mars movie, Red Planet (starring Val Kilmer and Carrie-Anne Moss), came out the same year and similarly borrowed from 2001, with a HAL-inspired killer robot that was more reminiscent of Hector in Saturn 3.

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One of the best movies set on Mars also happens to be one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's most popular flicks next to the Terminator and Predator films. Based on Philip K. Dick's 1966 short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, Total Recall casts Ah-nuld as Doug Quaid, a construction worker who has recurring dreams of being on the human colonies of Mars. Unable to afford the actual trip, he decides to have false memories implanted into his brain to simulate an exciting vacation in which he's a secret agent – only to learn the hard way that everything he's been dreaming about is true. Oh, and the pyramids of Mars hold an ancient secret that men are willing to kill to protect.

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Are audiences excited about movies that take place on Mars? If box office numbers could talk, the answer would be a resounding, "Meh," thanks to such big-budget disappointments like Mars Needs Moms and Mission to Mars. That's one of the key reasons why Disney's new, big-screen spectacle is simply called John Carter, rather than John Carter of Mars. The perception is that Mars in the title = box-office poison.

Based on the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs pulp novels, the action of Disney's John Carter takes place on the planet Barsoom (aka Mars, for the rest of us), and in the spirit of his otherworldly adventures, here are five arguably cool, campy and questionable flicks that take place on the angry red planet.