Robinson Crusoe on Mars
Encyclopedia
Robinson Crusoe on Mars is a 1964 Techniscope
science fiction film
retelling of the classic novel
by Daniel Defoe
. It was directed by Byron Haskin
, produced by Aubrey Schenck
and starred Paul Mantee
, Victor Lundin
and Adam West
. It was released on DVD
for the first time as a special edition from The Criterion Collection
on September 18, 2007.
) and Colonel Dan McReady (Adam West
) are the crew of Mars Gravity Probe 1. When they reach the planet
, they are forced to use up their fuel to avoid an imminent collision with a meteor
. With the ship now stuck in orbit, they have no choice but to eject to the surface, the first men on Mars. McReady is killed in the landing. Draper is stranded, with only a monkey named Mona for company.
He finds a cave for shelter. Then, he figures out how to obtain the rest of what he needs to survive. First, he burns some coal-like rocks for warmth and accidentally discovers that heating them gives off oxygen. This allows him to refill his air tank and move around in the thin atmosphere. Draper then constructs a crude sand clock that sounds an alarm to awaken him for a needed dose of oxygen. Later, Draper notices that Mona keeps disappearing periodically and that she is uninterested in the dwindling supply of food and water. He gives her a salty biscuit, but no water; when Mona gets very thirsty, he lets her out and follows her to the underground pond she has found. As a bonus, there are also edible plant "sausages" growing in the water.
As the days grow into months, Draper slowly begins to crack from the prolonged isolation. He watches helplessly as his ship, an inaccessible "supermarket", periodically crosses the sky. Without fuel, the ship does nothing when he orders it by radio to land.
One day, while walking about with Mona, Draper notices a rock standing in an unnatural position, as if deliberately planted as a marker. He looks at the ground around it and sees bones. He brushes away at the soil to expose the skeletal remains of a hand in a black bracelet. He digs up the rest of the skeleton and determines that the creature was murdered, as the skull is charred. Frightened, he signals his ship to self destruct to remove all signs of his presence.
Just in time as it turns out, as Draper sees a ship descend and land just over the horizon. At first, he believes it to be a rescue ship from Earth. In the morning, he heads towards the landing site, only to see an advanced alien craft in the sky. Realizing his error, he approaches cautiously and sees slave labor being used for mining. One of the slaves (Victor Lundin
) escapes, running into Draper. The alien ships blast the area as the two flee. The stranger has black bracelets on his wrists just like the one Draper found earlier. That night, they witness the aliens blast the mine area and depart. When they investigate, they find the dead bodies of the other slaves.
Draper names his new acquaintance Friday, after the character in Robinson Crusoe
, and starts teaching him English. In return, Friday shows him "air pills" that provide oxygen. They gradually grow to trust and like each other.
After a while, the aliens return, tracking Friday by his bracelets. The aliens blast the castaways' hiding place, forcing Draper, Friday and Mona to flee through the underground Martian canals
. They eventually end up at the polar icecap
. Exhausted, freezing and nearly out of air pills, they build a snow shelter
"just like the Eskimos." Draper finally succeeds in cutting Friday's bracelets off. A meteor crashes into the ice cap, creating a firestorm and melting the snow.
Just then, they track an approaching spaceship. At first, Draper believes it to be the enemy again, but then their radio broadcasts a human voice. Draper identifies himself, and a lander comes down to pick up Draper and his companions. The credits then roll as Mars recedes in the background.
scenes were filmed in Death Valley National Park
, California
, at Zabriskie Point
, Ubehebe Crater
, and the Devil's Golf Course
.
The alien mining ships are very similar in design to the Martian war machines in the 1953 version of The War of the Worlds
. It is unclear whether they were recycled props
or new models. Byron Haskin also directed the earlier film.
These ships are often confused with the aliens' space craft, but this is incorrect. Draper sees a single ship land and depart. The ships that repeatedly blast away at the planet's surface are apparently the aliens' version of mining equipment.
In Ib Melchior's original screenplay, Friday was from a planet called Yargor in the Alpha Centuri star system. Much of Friday's Yargorian dialogue was fully scripted in his "native tongue". For the film, however, Victor Lundin altered the lines to a dialect mirroring Mayan phrases and terminology. For example, Friday says that Mars is called "Huehuetenango" in his language. Huehuetenango
is a city in Guatemala. Ib Melchior worked on a prior science fiction film, the low budgeted Journey to the Seventh Planet.
When the aliens are seen directing the mining operations from which Friday escapes, they are wearing spacesuits similar to those worn by the astronauts in George Pal's 1950 film Destination Moon
. Director Haskin and Pal collaborated on a number of science fiction films throughout the fifties and sixties.
, the other by Victor Lundin. Lundin wrote the song "Robinson Crusoe on Mars" to perform during his highly popular science fiction convention appearances. It became so beloved by fans that he recorded it for his 2000 album Little Owl. A music video for Lundin's song was created by the Criterion Collection in 2007 for the DVD release of the film.
Techniscope
Techniscope or 2-Perf is a 35mm motion picture camera film format introduced by Technicolor Italia in 1963. The Techniscope format uses a two film-perforation negative pulldown per frame, instead of the standard four-perforation frame usually exposed in 35mm film photography...
science fiction film
Science fiction film
Science fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that are not necessarily accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception, and time travel, often along with futuristic...
retelling of the classic novel
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...
by Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe , born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson,...
. It was directed by Byron Haskin
Byron Haskin
Byron Conrad Haskin was an American film and television director. He was born in Portland, Oregon.He is remembered today for directing 1953's The War of the Worlds, one of many films where he teamed with producer George Pal. In his early career, he was a special effects artist, with a number of...
, produced by Aubrey Schenck
Aubrey Schenck
Aubrey Schenck was a film producer from the 1940s through the 1970s. In the 1930s, Schenck, a nephew of Joseph and Nicholas Schenck, was a practicing attorney in New York City. He wrote a story and submitted it to 20th Century Fox, with whom he had business and legal connections, and they agreed...
and starred Paul Mantee
Paul Mantee
Paul Mantee is an American film and television actor.Mantee was born Paul Marianetti in San Francisco, California...
, Victor Lundin
Victor Lundin
Victor Lundin is an American character actor who often bills himself as the first Klingon on the original Star Trek. He is also a singer / songwriter and has two albums to his credit.-Biography:...
and Adam West
Adam West
William West Anderson , better known by the stage name Adam West, is an American actor best known for his lead role in the Batman TV series and the film of the same name...
. It was released on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
for the first time as a special edition from The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection is a video-distribution company selling "important classic and contemporary films" to film aficionados. The Criterion series is noted for helping to standardize the letterbox format for home video, bonus features, and special editions...
on September 18, 2007.
Plot
Commander Christopher 'Kit' Draper (Paul ManteePaul Mantee
Paul Mantee is an American film and television actor.Mantee was born Paul Marianetti in San Francisco, California...
) and Colonel Dan McReady (Adam West
Adam West
William West Anderson , better known by the stage name Adam West, is an American actor best known for his lead role in the Batman TV series and the film of the same name...
) are the crew of Mars Gravity Probe 1. When they reach the planet
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
, they are forced to use up their fuel to avoid an imminent collision with a meteor
METEOR
METEOR is a metric for the evaluation of machine translation output. The metric is based on the harmonic mean of unigram precision and recall, with recall weighted higher than precision...
. With the ship now stuck in orbit, they have no choice but to eject to the surface, the first men on Mars. McReady is killed in the landing. Draper is stranded, with only a monkey named Mona for company.
He finds a cave for shelter. Then, he figures out how to obtain the rest of what he needs to survive. First, he burns some coal-like rocks for warmth and accidentally discovers that heating them gives off oxygen. This allows him to refill his air tank and move around in the thin atmosphere. Draper then constructs a crude sand clock that sounds an alarm to awaken him for a needed dose of oxygen. Later, Draper notices that Mona keeps disappearing periodically and that she is uninterested in the dwindling supply of food and water. He gives her a salty biscuit, but no water; when Mona gets very thirsty, he lets her out and follows her to the underground pond she has found. As a bonus, there are also edible plant "sausages" growing in the water.
As the days grow into months, Draper slowly begins to crack from the prolonged isolation. He watches helplessly as his ship, an inaccessible "supermarket", periodically crosses the sky. Without fuel, the ship does nothing when he orders it by radio to land.
One day, while walking about with Mona, Draper notices a rock standing in an unnatural position, as if deliberately planted as a marker. He looks at the ground around it and sees bones. He brushes away at the soil to expose the skeletal remains of a hand in a black bracelet. He digs up the rest of the skeleton and determines that the creature was murdered, as the skull is charred. Frightened, he signals his ship to self destruct to remove all signs of his presence.
Just in time as it turns out, as Draper sees a ship descend and land just over the horizon. At first, he believes it to be a rescue ship from Earth. In the morning, he heads towards the landing site, only to see an advanced alien craft in the sky. Realizing his error, he approaches cautiously and sees slave labor being used for mining. One of the slaves (Victor Lundin
Victor Lundin
Victor Lundin is an American character actor who often bills himself as the first Klingon on the original Star Trek. He is also a singer / songwriter and has two albums to his credit.-Biography:...
) escapes, running into Draper. The alien ships blast the area as the two flee. The stranger has black bracelets on his wrists just like the one Draper found earlier. That night, they witness the aliens blast the mine area and depart. When they investigate, they find the dead bodies of the other slaves.
Draper names his new acquaintance Friday, after the character in Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...
, and starts teaching him English. In return, Friday shows him "air pills" that provide oxygen. They gradually grow to trust and like each other.
After a while, the aliens return, tracking Friday by his bracelets. The aliens blast the castaways' hiding place, forcing Draper, Friday and Mona to flee through the underground Martian canals
Martian canals
For a time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was erroneously believed that there were canals on Mars. These were a network of long straight lines that appeared in drawings of the planet Mars in the equatorial regions from 60° N. to 60° S. Lat., first observed by the Italian astronomer...
. They eventually end up at the polar icecap
Planum Boreum
Planum Boreum is the northern polar plain on Mars. It extends northward from roughly 80°N and is centered at . Surrounding the high polar plain is a flat and featureless lowland plain called Vastitas Borealis which extends for approximately 1500 kilometres southwards, dominating the northern...
. Exhausted, freezing and nearly out of air pills, they build a snow shelter
Igloo
An igloo or snowhouse is a type of shelter built of snow, originally built by the Inuit....
"just like the Eskimos." Draper finally succeeds in cutting Friday's bracelets off. A meteor crashes into the ice cap, creating a firestorm and melting the snow.
Just then, they track an approaching spaceship. At first, Draper believes it to be the enemy again, but then their radio broadcasts a human voice. Draper identifies himself, and a lander comes down to pick up Draper and his companions. The credits then roll as Mars recedes in the background.
Cast
- Paul ManteePaul ManteePaul Mantee is an American film and television actor.Mantee was born Paul Marianetti in San Francisco, California...
as Commander Christopher Draper - Victor LundinVictor LundinVictor Lundin is an American character actor who often bills himself as the first Klingon on the original Star Trek. He is also a singer / songwriter and has two albums to his credit.-Biography:...
as Friday - Adam WestAdam WestWilliam West Anderson , better known by the stage name Adam West, is an American actor best known for his lead role in the Batman TV series and the film of the same name...
as Colonel Dan McReady. West would later become famous as the star of the television series BatmanBatman (TV series)Batman is an American television series, based on the DC comic book character of the same name. It stars Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin — two crime-fighting heroes who defend Gotham City. It aired on the American Broadcasting Company network for three seasons from January 12, 1966 to...
. - Barney, the Woolly Monkey as Mona the monkey
Production
Many of the MarsMars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
scenes were filmed in Death Valley National Park
Death Valley National Park
Death Valley National Park is a national park in the U.S. states of California and Nevada located east of the Sierra Nevada in the arid Great Basin of the United States. The park protects the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and contains a diverse desert environment of salt-flats, sand dunes,...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, at Zabriskie Point
Zabriskie Point
Zabriskie Point is a part of Amargosa Range located in east of Death Valley in Death Valley National Park in the United States noted for its erosional landscape...
, Ubehebe Crater
Ubehebe Crater
Ubehebe Crater is a large volcanic crater of the Ubehebe Craters volcanic field in the northern half of Death Valley, in Death Valley National Park, California.-Geography:...
, and the Devil's Golf Course
Devil's Golf Course
The Devil's Golf Course is a large salt pan on the floor of Death Valley, located in the Mojave Desert within Death Valley National Park in eastern California....
.
The alien mining ships are very similar in design to the Martian war machines in the 1953 version of The War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds (1953 film)
The War of the Worlds is a 1953 science fiction film starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson. It was the first on-screen loose adaptation of the H. G. Wells classic novel of the same name...
. It is unclear whether they were recycled props
Theatrical property
A theatrical property, commonly referred to as a prop, is an object used on stage by actors to further the plot or story line of a theatrical production. Smaller props are referred to as "hand props". Larger props may also be set decoration, such as a chair or table. The difference between a set...
or new models. Byron Haskin also directed the earlier film.
These ships are often confused with the aliens' space craft, but this is incorrect. Draper sees a single ship land and depart. The ships that repeatedly blast away at the planet's surface are apparently the aliens' version of mining equipment.
In Ib Melchior's original screenplay, Friday was from a planet called Yargor in the Alpha Centuri star system. Much of Friday's Yargorian dialogue was fully scripted in his "native tongue". For the film, however, Victor Lundin altered the lines to a dialect mirroring Mayan phrases and terminology. For example, Friday says that Mars is called "Huehuetenango" in his language. Huehuetenango
Huehuetenango
Huehuetenango is a city and a municipality in the highlands of western Guatemala. It is also the capital of the department of Huehuetenango. The municipality's population was over 81,000 people in 2002...
is a city in Guatemala. Ib Melchior worked on a prior science fiction film, the low budgeted Journey to the Seventh Planet.
When the aliens are seen directing the mining operations from which Friday escapes, they are wearing spacesuits similar to those worn by the astronauts in George Pal's 1950 film Destination Moon
Destination Moon (film)
Destination Moon is an American science fiction feature film produced by George Pal, who later produced When Worlds Collide, The War of the Worlds, and The Time Machine. Pal commissioned the script by James O'Hanlon and Rip Van Ronkel...
. Director Haskin and Pal collaborated on a number of science fiction films throughout the fifties and sixties.
Songs
Two songs were inspired by and named after the movie. One was sung by Johnny CymbalJohnny Cymbal
Johnny Cymbal was a Scottish born American songwriter, singer, and record producer who had numerous hit records, including his signature song, "Mr...
, the other by Victor Lundin. Lundin wrote the song "Robinson Crusoe on Mars" to perform during his highly popular science fiction convention appearances. It became so beloved by fans that he recorded it for his 2000 album Little Owl. A music video for Lundin's song was created by the Criterion Collection in 2007 for the DVD release of the film.