Today we watched two films that had bad flights. Snakes on a Plane had a plane full of snakes. Mean, bitey snakes. Some guy sees a creep beat a man to death with a bat. The bad guys see him and, in a series of poorly written scenes, chase him onto a plane. Samuel L. Jackson is the FBI agent escorting him to testify. Some of those scenes didn't make any sense but I was champing at the bit to get to the snakes. They were hiding in the cargo hold, all their cold blooded fury locked away in a time bomb. Boom! It's motherfuckin' snakes on a motherfuckin' plane. It a slaughterfest for a while as one bad thing after another happens to the passengers and crew of the plane. People are dropping left and right, the plane looses power, then the pilot is killed. The first people to get it are a couple having sex in the bathroom. Is that a cliche? Maybe, it's certainly not very new. Then a guy gets bit while having a pee in the other bathroom. He gets bit right on his own personal snake. Is that irony or what? Yeah, I don't know either. Sam Jackson was his usual action self. Most performances were ok, nothing too demanding. The script didn't give the actors too much to work with, and you've seen the bits before, they just weren't on a plane full of snakes. The effects were good and bad. The snakes didn't look too real at times, some of the other effects were better. I did like when the 22 foot Burmese python, named Kitty by the crew, who had swallowed the asshole guy earlier in the film, was sucked out of the plane. That made us laugh. That guy had tossed a dog at a snake to save his life. It didn't help for long. Guess that was some bad movie Karma. I wasn't sorry to see it and was glad it came from Netflicks. I'm not sure I need to see it again. People seemed to complain about it alot on the IMDb where it scores a 6.5.
No one complains about Flight To Mars on the IMDb where it gets a 4.6. This 1951 space travel film is slightly below average, especially when you look at the special effects. But people, like me, like these old 50's SF films, and are more forgiving. A group puts together a rocket ship and crew to take us to Mars. There's a science guy played by Arthur Franz, and his finance Virginia Houston, a middle aged science guy, a reporter and a older science guy. Cameron Mitchell plays the reporter and he keeps hitting on Virginia. Her relationship to the science guy isn't going very well, so there's a lot of soap mixed in with our space opera. And it doesn't make me feel very clean. The team have some problems on the flight and they crash into a Martian mountain. Luckily the snow cushions their landing. Some Martians in colorful space suits find them and take them to their underground city. Martian science guys in fun costumes are enlisted to help rebuild the ship. Secretly the Martians are plotting to capture the ship and use it to seed a fleet which they want to use to take over the Earth. They are running out of resources on Mars and they need to get some more. Rather than ask for help one faction wants to take it by force. One of the science guys falls for a local gal, leaving Virginia free to take up with Cameron. The Earth men find out about the plot and escapse with the Martian gal and her dad. The movie stops when the ship blasts off. I did like some of the sets and the director had some interesting shots. Worth seeing if you like this sort of thing. The story is sort of based on a Russian novel by Count Aleksei Nikolayevich (Alexei) Tolstoy. The novel was made into a Russian silent film called Aelita in 1924. The Martian woman Arthur Franz falls for is named Alita. You can see it on YouTube in 9 parts. In Aelita the costumes of the Martians are pretty fun and the sets on Mars are really great. Very impressionistic. The story is dull at times. Still it's free. Can't beat that.
Comments