Robinson Crusoe on Mars - Film Review - Afternoon Film

The movie ‘Robinson Crusoe on Mars’ fall into my lap this afternoon a bit of a classic and was on Film 4 so I had my afternoon sorted. As a bit of fantasist/daydreamer and I often fantasised about being marooned, be it a shipwreck or lost on a planet in space.

This film is based of course on Daniel Defoe's classic novel.

In this film two astronauts are surveying the surface of Mars (played by Paul Mantee and TV Batman's Adam West, respectively) and are forced to abandon ship along with a monkey to avoid a collision with an asteroid heading directly for them. Kit Draper (Mantee) lands successfully and begins to explore the barren landscape, only to eventually discover that McReady (West) didn't make it but the monkey did and joins our hero in his bid to survive.

The majority of the film is a one-man show, (with monkey) with Mantee carrying it admirably. Luckily, for Draper, he finds a cave and discovers Martian rock gives off oxygen as a by-product. Short on food and water his future looked bleak. His monkey friend would lap up Draper’s meagre supplies of toothpaste food but suddenly lost interest. The monkey was holding out on Draper and after following him found he had is own food source in the shape of a half-plant, half-sausage thingy and a water supply.

With no aliens on Mars, the film needed a baddie so they imported some who were busy mining the planet with human aliens slaves and up steps man Friday (Victor Lundin) who Draper rescues after he escapes. We never see the aliens but for their spaceships darting around the sky. Friday shares his "air pills", which provide oxygen; they gradually grow to trust and then like each other. Although freed Friday was still connected to the aliens via bracelets on his wrists. The aliens eventually locate Draper and Friday and attack them and force them to flee north through the underground Martian canals.

They eventually surface near the polar icecap. Exhausted, freezing, and nearly out of the air pills, they quickly build a shelter. The alien spacecraft returns, tracking Friday by his bracelets. Draper succeeds in cutting off Friday's bracelets shortly before an orbiting meteor crashes into the ice cap; the resulting explosion and firestorm melts the ice and snow.

Later, Draper detects an approaching spaceship. He fears it is the returning aliens, but is relieved when his portable radio picks up an English-speaking voice. Draper and Friday watch a descending rescue capsule. Of course, the 'science' behind it all is a load of bollocks, but it is refreshing to see it being taken seriously, and not ignoring it for the benefit of telling an easy story.

My Rating