Red Planet Mars (1952)

I actually quite liked the underlying, and quite manipulative, concept of this film. "Cronyn" (Peter Graves) and his wife "Linda" (Andrea King) manage to make contact with Mars and low and behold, there's life there. Not only life, but a fairly benevolent one at that, that promises mankind salvation - quite literally - if they return to the teachings of the Bible and embrace God more fully. When this news reaches the ears of the wider public, mass indoctrination occurs across the world and an infrastructure of zealousness begins to prevail. Thing is, though, is this really a message from Mars at all - or is it a clever ploy by some Earth-bound entity to manoeuvre mankind into a form of pseudo-authoritarian society? The problem here is that the acting and writing are so nondescript that is rather leaves us to use our own imagination all too often. The philosophies offer clear allegory of "Red" = "Soviet" and the worse case scenario for humanity should an "enemy" ever prevail, but the film itself offers us little by way of action or dialogue to engage with or to entertain. Food for thought? Well at the height of the Cold War, then quite possibly - but what potency it had then has long since abandoned ship and we are now left with pace-less example of soundstage verbosity that again makes me wish that if ever aliens do attempt to contact mankind, maybe try those in Switzerland, India or somewhere less dogmatically militaristic.