I picked up a copy of The Wizard of Mars over the weekend. I’;d heard of this 1965 film, but never seen it. It has wonderfully bad dialogue (“Other people go to the Moon. WE had to go to Mars!”) and awful special effects. But I was particularly struck by an odd detail. It’s another case of Guns on Mars.
If you’re going to be on the First Expedition to Mars, one of the things you probably wouldn’t want to bring would be a gun. It has no conceivable use, and it might go off, which would be a Bad Thing in a pressurized vehicle that you don’t want to have leaks in. But, for some reason, even some of the better science fiction films of the 1950s and 1960s about The First Expredition to Mars gives our intrepid astronauts guns. The fact that they sometimes end up with a plausible reason to use them is no excuse – they couldn’t have known that when they were packing for the trip. Robinson Crusoe on mars – Byron Haskin’s 1964 film that is actually pretty good. That Paul Mantee has a gun does this film no favors.
It! The Terror from Beyond Space – the film from which Alien was ripped off. Pretty decent SF from noted SF writer Jerome Bixby, but, boy, is it dated. Smoking cigarettes on a space ship? When they sit down to eat, it’s the women who serve the food? But the worst lapse is that, not only does this second expedition to Mars have guns (so did the first, as they point out), they also carry grenades!! Why? Even worse, they use both the guns and the grenades on board their ship! Angry Red Planet – Okay, in this one it’s a super-scientific Sonic Gun, but it’s still a gun. It’s a good thing they had it, because it turns out to be the perfect thing for killing Woman-Eating Plants and blinding Rat-Bat-Spiders. Unfortunately, it does diddley against Giant Space Amoebas.
and now, of course, The Wizard of Mars features a gun, which they use against the Giant Martian Canal Maggots, and also to shoot off in frustration.
I’ll betcha any money the new film of The Martian won’t feature any guns.
Well, in the novel Mark watches The Dukes of Hazzard on Mars, so it’s possible they’ll show Sheriff Coltrane with one at some point. (The Dukes used bows and arrows.) But yeah, even then guns probably won’t be featured.
That’s just silly. What if you get to Mars and you run into Devil Girls From Mars*? How do you plan to defeat them? Hmmmm? Tell me that, Mister Meacham.
That’s different. The Devil Girl from Mars came to Earth, sol we knew she was there, so we’d have a reason to bring guns to Mars.
Just like in the 1960s Topps card series Mars Attacks!, we knew there were hostile Martians up there, so when we sent the Earth Invasion Force up there they brought guns:
Similarly, in the 1898 unauthorized sequel to War of the Worlds, Garrett Serviss in Thomas Edison’s Conquest of Mars has the titular inventor come up with the “Disintegrator Beam” (the first time that term was used) to counteract H.G. Wells’ Martian Heat Gun, so we could go to Mars and conquer them there.
But in the cases I cited it was our first expedition to Mars, and we had no reason to expect hostility. So why bring guns?
Well, they had guns on Soyuz craft, until 2007 apparently. Granted, it’s not for aliens, it’s for survival in the event of landing in the wrong part of Siberia. But it’s not far-fetched for a spacecraft of the time to have a gun.
In the classic Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, while they are in outer space, Costello fires a gun at one of the bad guys who have stowed away in the rocket ship. The bullet simply drops to the floor, “because they have moved away from Earth’s gravity,” IIRC.
And, despite the title, ‘alien planets’ that rocket ends up visiting are actually Venus and. . . Earth! They land in New Orleans around Mardi Gras time and think the costumers are aliens.
That’s the excuse Heinlein gave for having guns aboard Rocket Ship Galileo, but it always seemed a little too pat. Interesting to know that the Russians actually used the same reasoning.
You sure about that? I remember the scene in Rocket Ship Galileo as using a gas canister, and him switching to a gun for Destination Moon (which was to be made into a movie) because he thought that it would be more familiar to audiences (reinforced by the Daffy Duck short shown in the movie).
Why the incredulity? The Mercury spacecraft carried survival knives for the same reason. I can’t link to it from my phone, but I have seen a photo of Gordon Cooper examining one, in the book We Seven. Granted, it wasn’t a gun but a Bowie knife with compass, fishing line, matches, etc., but the reasoning was the same: a survival tool if the capsule came down in the boonies.
Knives are one thing, guns quite another. You can use knives in all sorts of survival situations that don’t involve hostile people trying to kill you. Gins, on the other hand, essentially assume that people or animals are going to try to hurt you. But the manned missions were VERY closely watched. It’s hard to believe John Glenn was going to have to fight off cannibals. Or man-eating crocagators.
