The Wizard of Mars

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Wizard of Mars
Directed by	David L. Hewitt
Produced by	David L. Hewitt Joe Karston Gary R. Heacock
Written by	Armando Busick (story) David L. Hewitt
Starring	John Carradine Roger Gentry Vic McGee Jerry Rannow Eve Bernhardt
Music by	Frank A. Coe
Cinematography	Austin McKinney
Editing by	Tom Graeff
Distributed by	American General Pictures Inc.
Release date(s)	1965
Running time	85 minutes
Country	USA
Language	English
Budget	$33,000 (estimated)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Wizard of Mars is a 1965 low budget science fiction film takeoff of L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz written and directed by stage magician David L. Hewitt. The title character is portrayed by John Carradine, who gives a lengthy monologue as a projection near the end of the film. The film centers on four astronauts--Steve (Roger Gentry), "Doc" (Vic McGee), Charlie (Jerry Rannow), and of course, Dorothy (Eve Bernhardt), shown aboard ship wearing Silver Shoes--who dream they are struck by a storm and encounter the Horrors of the Red Planet (one of the film's video retitlings), and eventually follow a "Golden Road" to the Ancient City where they encounter the title character, who is the collective consciousness of all Martians.

Thematically, the film is very similar to John Boorman's Zardoz (1974), in that it deals with an immortal community longing for death.

[edit] Retitlings

In the early 1980s, the film was not only released on video by NTA Home Video (an imprint of Republic Pictures) with its title intact, but also as the aforementioned Horrors of the Red Planet in 1988 by Genesis Home Video and later by Burbank Video and Star Classics Home Video in the LP mode. The latter topped the cast list with Lon Chaney. This probably resulted from a confusion of this film and Hewitt's Doctor Terror's Gallery of Horrors, which also included Carradine, Gentry, and McGee in its cast. Also in the early 1980s, Regal Video Inc. released both of these films under the misleading title Alien Massacre in identical packaging. It is not clear why both films were deliberately retitled eponymously, as the films were retitled on-screen as well as on the cover. John Carradine's credit says "John Carradine as", which makes the retitlings rather ludicrous. Alien Massacre came close to replicating the original font and starry background, while Horrors of the Red Planet is in small letters on a completely black screen, with a jump that suggests it was done with a linear editor.