...and whether or not that's a good thing is totally dependent on your taste in old movies.
"Cave Women on Mars" is a throwback to sci-fi adventure movies of the 1950s. As such, it has everything you'd get if you just watched one of those movies, with a few in jokes added, and a computer generated effect or two. It doesn't add much to the genre, doesn't tell a terribly new story and doesn't have a whole lot of laugh out loud moments. My wife, who sat it through it twice (once only hearing it as she worked in another room) because I fell asleep on the first viewing thought it was a pretty good movie. I found this interesting since her exposure to the genre it's based on is mostly through walking in on me watching some old movie on DVD or Amazon. She may have liked it even more than I did because to her some it was "fresh".
Don't expect a lot of impressive F/X, they would be out of place. In fact, I feel like the rocket looked like it was CG in some shots, when it should have a been a model. I low detail model to really fit into the look they were going for with this black and white homage to 50s science fiction movies.
If you can't sit through old Flash Gordon Sequels, think there's too much blowout in movies like my own "Onyx Origins" or feel like rubber suited monsters belong in the past and only the past, this movie isn't for you. If you have seen every 50s, 60s and 70s drive-in movie you can get your hands on and just want more, then you're the reason this movie and others like it exist.
The cast is mostly capable, but some of the attempts at mimicking 50s style stiff acting go too far to the point of being annoying more than funny. Some of the jokes are references to 80s pop sci-fi, so you'll need to be a fan of that too in order to catch them.
The movie checks most of the boxes for a space travel flick meant to be from the 50s:
1. Minimalist Spaceship set.
2. Rocket powered ship
3. Astronaut jumpsuits with stripes and shoulder pads (these costumes were particularly spot on)
4. Attractive women on Mars who find Earth Men fascinating, masculine and mysterious.
5. A Gorilla with Horns
6. Oversized Communicators. ( I would have liked to have seen a three foot long antenna on one of these though )
7. Things that go "Zap".
8. Talk of radiation.
9. A Matte Painting
10. Short skirts.
It also has one or two things we wouldn't normally expect to see until the mid-late 60s, but that were necessary for moving the plot along with the small cast:
1. A talking computer.
Actually, that may be it. I feel like I'm missing something. This actually bridges the horned gorilla appearance in Flash Gordon to the One in Star Trek pretty well.
What it could have used to round it out:
1. Dinosaurs. Stop Motion or somebody's pet lizard blown up to monstrous proportions. (Don't glue fins or horns to them. It's not necessary and a bit uncomfortable for the lizard, I imagine). Stock footage would have been cool here too.
2. A random Rubber spider or giant insect.
3. Giant mushrooms or some other bizarrely sized fruit that if brought back to Earth could end hunger. (Maybe that's more 60s I'm thinking of)
4. Gold, diamonds, oil or some other thing that makes our brave characters rich by sneaking just a little back to Earth.
So there you have it. A movie worth watching if you're addicted to the genre, want to get the whole genre condensed into one film or need a few laughs with your scientifically inaccurate science fiction.
Currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
"Cave Women on Mars" is a throwback to sci-fi adventure movies of the 1950s. As such, it has everything you'd get if you just watched one of those movies, with a few in jokes added, and a computer generated effect or two. It doesn't add much to the genre, doesn't tell a terribly new story and doesn't have a whole lot of laugh out loud moments. My wife, who sat it through it twice (once only hearing it as she worked in another room) because I fell asleep on the first viewing thought it was a pretty good movie. I found this interesting since her exposure to the genre it's based on is mostly through walking in on me watching some old movie on DVD or Amazon. She may have liked it even more than I did because to her some it was "fresh".
Don't expect a lot of impressive F/X, they would be out of place. In fact, I feel like the rocket looked like it was CG in some shots, when it should have a been a model. I low detail model to really fit into the look they were going for with this black and white homage to 50s science fiction movies.
If you can't sit through old Flash Gordon Sequels, think there's too much blowout in movies like my own "Onyx Origins" or feel like rubber suited monsters belong in the past and only the past, this movie isn't for you. If you have seen every 50s, 60s and 70s drive-in movie you can get your hands on and just want more, then you're the reason this movie and others like it exist.
The cast is mostly capable, but some of the attempts at mimicking 50s style stiff acting go too far to the point of being annoying more than funny. Some of the jokes are references to 80s pop sci-fi, so you'll need to be a fan of that too in order to catch them.
The movie checks most of the boxes for a space travel flick meant to be from the 50s:
1. Minimalist Spaceship set.
2. Rocket powered ship
3. Astronaut jumpsuits with stripes and shoulder pads (these costumes were particularly spot on)
4. Attractive women on Mars who find Earth Men fascinating, masculine and mysterious.
5. A Gorilla with Horns
6. Oversized Communicators. ( I would have liked to have seen a three foot long antenna on one of these though )
7. Things that go "Zap".
8. Talk of radiation.
9. A Matte Painting
10. Short skirts.
It also has one or two things we wouldn't normally expect to see until the mid-late 60s, but that were necessary for moving the plot along with the small cast:
1. A talking computer.
Actually, that may be it. I feel like I'm missing something. This actually bridges the horned gorilla appearance in Flash Gordon to the One in Star Trek pretty well.
What it could have used to round it out:
1. Dinosaurs. Stop Motion or somebody's pet lizard blown up to monstrous proportions. (Don't glue fins or horns to them. It's not necessary and a bit uncomfortable for the lizard, I imagine). Stock footage would have been cool here too.
2. A random Rubber spider or giant insect.
3. Giant mushrooms or some other bizarrely sized fruit that if brought back to Earth could end hunger. (Maybe that's more 60s I'm thinking of)
4. Gold, diamonds, oil or some other thing that makes our brave characters rich by sneaking just a little back to Earth.
So there you have it. A movie worth watching if you're addicted to the genre, want to get the whole genre condensed into one film or need a few laughs with your scientifically inaccurate science fiction.
Currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
Oh, the film's score is, like the costuming, spot on, right down to the retro audio quality.
ReplyDelete