ALL SCI-FI

[Custer]

Yes, I was joking about the "suitable for showing in restaurants" bit. A restored edition could certainly have some scenes that had been cut out of a previous version, or maybe just a better quality print, with the scratches that one sometimes sees in old copies of movies digitally removed, and a better colour balance. With the Italian version, they might have had the option of using a better American copy, carefully synchronized to the existing Italian dubbed soundtrack, perhaps?

Nice that there are enough fans of the duo in Italy to make the effort worthwhile, anyway.

[Bud Brewster]

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Brent posted this great six-minute YouTube video which shows him creating his replica of the rocket ship from this movie, shown below.




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As a true fan of Brent's creations, it's great to watch the master at work!
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_______________ Abbott & Costello Go To Mars


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bogmeister]

Some refer to this as one of the comedy team's poorest efforts, but if you're also into science fiction (besides being an Abbott & Costello fan), this is an ideal combo.

The duo play their usual doofus characters — they accidentally take off in a space rocket and end up in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.

Since all the citizens are dressed up in bizarre costumes, the two poor shmucks think that they really are on Mars. They also get tangled with a couple of bank robbers. This sequence is actually the better paced portion of the film — and the viewer may think that this is where it all will remain.

But, the story does us one better — they and the crooks get back in the rocket and end up on Venus, where a matriarchy is presided over by a queen (Mari Blanchard) who exiled all males 400 years ago. Lou Costello, as sometimes happens in these comedies, is very attractive to all the females and briefly becomes the new king. There are more inspired sight gags in the final act back on Earth.

BoG's Score: 6.5 out of 10




BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Eadie]

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Art Should Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.

[Krel]

Looking at the photo of the rayguns, they look like they are based on a water raygun from the fifties. They enlarged it, and added a long barrel. I wonder what happened to them after the movie.

David.

[Maurice]

[johnnybear]

Lou's real name was Cristello! Italian I guess?
JB

[The Spike]

Abbott and Costello Go To Mars sees the popular duo tackle a sci-fi theme that was to be so prevalent in the 50s. It's directed by Charles Lamont and the co-star line up features Robert Paige, Horace McMahon, Mari Blanchard, Martha Hyer & Jack Kruschen. The plot sees Bud & Lou as Lester and Orville respectively, who accidentally find themselves on a rocket-ship bound for Mars. However, they actually land in New Orleans during the Mardi Gras and confusion reigns. Then an encounter with a couple of escaped convicts leads to another blast off, to Venus. A planet populated by a bevy of beauties.

They were three years away from making what would be their last film together, but history dictates that the best of the film outings for Bud & Lou were long since past. However, "Go To Mars" and "Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (also 1953) are worthy pieces showcasing the comic talent and irrepressible charm of two fine entertainers. Sure the plot is as thin as some of the sets are for "Go To Mars," but there's enough chaos and comedy schtick to keep the smile on ones face. We get Costello doing an Italian accent -badly, which in turn leads to a slapathon. Then there's stunts with magnetic moon-boots, a triple bed fall down, gravitational larks and Mardi Gras strangeness. There's even a cheeky aside in favour of the ladies (the Venusian female race being contestants of Miss Universe) as the new male arrivals on Venus are compared to beefcake Adonis types on Venusian TV.

Far from their best work but certainly enough good here to shoot down those "worst of the series" tags. 6/10
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The quality of mercy is not strnen.

[Krel]

I guess it was on the old board, but there was a discussion of how the Venusian car was from "This Island Earth", and the TV was the ray machine from "It Came From Outer Space". The space suits are of the "Destination Moon" pattern and appeared in other movies, such as "Gog".

David.

[Bud Brewster]

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Actually that comment is in my initial post which started this thread.

[Pow]

In the summer of 1943 Charlie Chaplin visited Lou Costello.

Lou was a great admirer of Chaplin. Charlie told Lou about an idea he (Chaplin) had for a movie for the comedy duo: "Abbott & Costello On Mars."

The serious classic sci-fi movie "Destination Moon'' was part of the inspiration by Universal Pictures to create a sci-fi film for A&C involving sending the comedy team into outer space.

The Breen Office (censors) were very concerned about the gorgeous Venusian women's sexy attire.

They also wanted an alteration to the balloon scene in the film.

Originally the balloons were to inflate and then burst when Orville (Lou) thought about women. This was too risque and suggestive for the Breen Office.

Instead, the balloons would not inflate as they'd already be filled when they popped.

Beautiful Martha Hyer would go on to star in the Charles Schneer/Ray Harryhausen film based on the H.G.Wells novel "First Men In The Moon."

Jack Kruschen would later appear in another film adapted from the H.G.Wells novel "War Of The Worlds"in 1953 and produced by the legendary George Pall. After that JK was in the 1960 movie "The Angry Red Planet."

TARP was produced by Norman Maurer who was the son-in-law of Moe Howard of the Three Stooges another classic comedy team like A&C.

The budget for A&CGTM was $762,442. This would be considered rather high for a A&C film.

The Venusian car would be recycled and used in "This Island Earth," 1955.

The spaceship cabin was placed in a large wheel mounted on rollers. This allowed the set to spin 360 degrees giving the impression of flight.

Science-fiction was clearly catching on for films as never before at this time.

When Columbia Pictures decided to take a chance on a 3 Stooges feature film it would be "Have Rocket--Will Travel'' that would launch Moe,Larry and Curly Joe off to Venus.

Later on we'd see the comedy team in such sci-fi fare as "The Three Stooges In Orbit" where they battle Martians.

The time travel in "The Three Stooges Meet Hercules."

[Bud Brewster]

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It's hard to understand how the producers of A&C go to Mars could have screwed up this movie so completely!

The gags that Bud and Lou delivered where lame.

The entire Mardi Gras segment was deadly dull.

The scenes of the A&B team on Venus is interesting only because of sets, FX, and hot babes.

And boys didn't got to Mars!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

The Abbott & Costello Book by Jim Mulholland.

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO GO TO MARS is their worst film.

Some good special effects aren't enough to save the film. The futuristic sets on Venus look expensive but the film is so silly and so obviously geared to kiddie matinee audiences that it is almost impossible to endure.

John Grant (a talented and longtime writer for Bud & Lou's films) is credited as one of the writers. This is difficult to believe since nothing of Grant's style of comedy writing is evident in the film.

Abbott and Costello in Hollywood by Bob Furmanek and Ron Palumbo.

Several people, it seems, had the idea of launching Abbott and Costello into space. The first may have been in the summer of 1943, when Charlie Chaplin and his bride, Oona O'Neill, visited Lou. During the course of conversation, Charlie said that he had an idea for an Abbott and Costello comedy with the tentative title Abbott and Costello on Mars.

Years later, the May 21, 1950 New York Times reported that Robert Heinlein, the physicist who wrote Destination Moon, then in production, and Ben Baab, chief of publicity for the picture, had collaborated on a finished script "Abbott and Costello Move to the Moon."

According to the Times, "this one is about a serious scientist (like Dr. Heinlein himself) who is imported to Hollywood to write a technical story on a trip to the moon, and then finds his work 'goes Hollywood' to fit two comedians.

The scientists' ingenuity finds a Machiavellian way of evening the score---by having A&C take off, not in what they think is a sham rocket, but the real thing.

While this story is obviously a publicity gimmick, the film Destination Moon probably did more to launch Abbott and Costello Go to Mars than anything else.

The landmark film instantly created a new genre in Hollywood, and producer Howard Christie and screenwriter D. D. Beauchamp quickly blocked out a story to send Bud and Lou into space. Meanwhile, Universal logged receipt of at least three unsolicited story treatments, including one titled "Strictly from Venus," that attempted to do the same thing.

The sets for the spaceship and the Queen's palace cost $15,000 and $12,000, respectively.

Another budget luxury was dispatching a second unit crew to New York to shoot background footage for the spaceship's wild barnstorming scenes.

At one point, some occupants (they are not specified) became too seasick to deliver their lines in the rotating spaceship set, and the studio nurse was summoned.

Lou's double, Vic Parks, needed more than the nurse while working on the spaceship set. "I went to the hospital three times in one day. They put me in boots, and they bolted the boots to the floor. And they turned the set upside down. Well, all this furniture and stuff in the cabin is falling toward me! And I'm bolted to the floor, trying to duck this stuff."

Go to mars has been unfairly lambasted as the team's worst film. That, of course, is debatable.

Critics harp on the point that even the title is wrong, since the boys actually go to Venus. They fail to get the joke, which is, if Abbott and Costello set out for Mars, being Abbott and Costello, they'd end up on Venus.

There are a few funny gags in the spaceship's flight sequence, including its passage through the Lincoln Tunnel and under the Brooklyn Bridge. Today, we are jaded by the advances in the technology of movie special effects. The flight of this spaceship seems positively prehistoric by comparison, but that is part of its charm.

Arguably the film's funniest scene occurs when the boys and the gangsters escape Earth's gravity and become weightless.

REVIEWS

Variety: "In addition to the comics filling in their laugh chores expertly, the Howard Christie production tosses in a lot of pulchritude to give the picture sight values....So much in the looker department is unusual for an A&C comedic romp.... Charles Lamont's direction keeps the picture moving at all times, while leaving A&C with free reins to hit their laughs hard."

Los Angeles Examiner: "All in all, this Abbott and Costello bit is a touch above the regular mill-run, so help yourself to a piece of corn."

Motion Picture Herald: "Perhaps the story is ludicrous at times. But all this does not deter the comedy stars from accomplishing their task and presenting a pleasant little farce.

[Phantom]

I haven't seen this in years, but I remember trying to stay awake well before the mid-point.

The plot is a hodge podge of familiar A&C material, especially when the gangsters show up.

By 1953, they were played out and their off-screen relationship deteriorating. The attempt to cash in on the popularity of science fiction, just beginning to get started, was sabotaged by lazy writing.

It was a long way down from their golden days at Universal.

Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a better film made the same year, may be despised by A&C fans, but it had the saving grace of Boris Karloff and some amusing routines to keep things moving.
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What Is Essential Is Invisible

[Bud Brewster]

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I'm afraid you're right, Phantom.

It occurred to me that what the producers and writers should have done was send Bud and Lou directly to Venus and then play out the whole story there with the lovely ladies.

Throw in a few bad guys from Mars who are holding Queen Mari Blanchard hostage while they're stealing something valuable (like the Venusian Crown Jewels), and you got a good story.





Bud and Lou befriend the Venusian beauties and help them defeat the bad guys. The grateful space babes and their queen beg the boys to stay on as royalt guests, but the guys decline and return to Earth to report that Mars has intelligent life and Venus has more hot babes than all the cheerleaders in the NFL!





A story THAT good, right at the dawn of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, would be a shoo-in for a sequel.

They could call it, Abbott and Costello Go Back Mars, Except It's Really Venus. (Seriously, that would be the perfect title.) The trailer would have everybody cracking up because of the title alone.

The sequel could even include scenes fo A&C going to Mars with a Venusian fleet in retaliation for the thieves who tired to steal the Crown Jewels. But the Martians would surrender when the realized that planet filled with hot young honeys would be much better friends and enemies.

Our two hereos would be even more famous when the returned to Earth.

Damn, I wish I'd been born in 1930 so I could have been a screenwriter in the early 1950s. I could even star in serial or two.

Like, for example, Captain Marvel!



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)