The Angry Red Planet (1959)

Let’s do some retroactive projection: The Angry Red Planet was released in November 1959, making it the very last Sci-Fi monster movie of the fifties, the decade where the form flourished. There would be more films approximating that style made in the sixties, but the space age obsessions that animated them, both the exaggerated optimism and the equally exaggerated fears, would be gradually replaced with new ones as the genre film business moved on. Completely unintentionally, this movie serves as a sort of denouement for the decade’s monster movies—so, now that we’ve put The Angry Red Planet in the hot seat, what does it have to say about the whole mess? As it turns out, it’s a lot of the same things these movies had been saying since the beginning of the decade.

Caltiki – The Immortal Monster (1959)

One could easily classify Caltki as an Italian rip-off of The Blob—which it is, but there’s more to mine here than just that. At least from a historical perspective, it is significant as an early work by cinematographer/director Mario Bava, whose stylistic horror and cult films in the sixties and seventies (like Black Sabbath, Blood and Black Lace, and Planet of the Vampires) are highly influential the world over—apparently, the primary credited director of this, Riccardo Freda, intentionally abandoned the film before finishing it so Bava could take over and get more credit, although how much of the final product either of them directed is still up to some debate. So, what we have here is a rip-off of The Blob that is low budget, Italian, and shot by one of the masters of heightened atmospheric horror—a combination that, even if it doesn’t elevate it to the highest of highs, still leads to a fifties monster movie that goes places you wouldn’t expect a fifties monster movie to go.