Bradbury won the Pulitzer in 2007, and is one of the most celebrated authors of the 21st century. He is also remembered for several other popular works, including The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes. His best known novel is Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian study of future American society in which critical thought is outlawed. I can’t recommend TMC to anyone except for absolute Bradbury nuts or those who want to witness just how bad 70s TV could be.Ray Bradbury was an American fantasy and horror author who rejected being categorized as a science fiction author, claiming that his work was based on the fantastical and unreal. TV used to second class or worse, compared to today where TV is where we find some of our most compelling stories.

If nothing else, The Martian Chronicles provides a clear nadir from which television has climbed. “It should be in the Smithsonian”, yeah right.Īnd 5 other Kino film trailers. Faulkner gives spinning this experience the old college try, but it’s clear he knew the production was a forgetable mess. My favorite Martian: a 15 minute interview with the main Martian, James Faulkner. It perfectly captures the terrible music and jarring dialogue. The sets are kinda cool but other than that there’s not much good to report here.īroadcast stereo in DTS format. There’s a ton of grain, even in scenes where you might not expect to have it. It’s 1.33 formatted from the original broadcast. I found nothing redeeming in it at all, and think less of Ray Bradbury’s writing because of this production. It would be perfect fodder for Mystery Science Theater but I doubt even they could stand sitting through five hours of this. Her vapid persona only seems to highlight the rampant misogyny that has come part and parcel with the first hundred years of science fiction.Įd Wood himself could not have made a more scientifically haphazard and unwatchable mess.

The music manages to be both hippy dippy and narcotic induced synth / theremin sci-fi floof.Īnd then somehow Bernadette Peters somehow shows up from out of nowhere, with her boobs barely contained in her dress, and proceeds to ruin whatever screen charm she might have had a chance to show. The editing is worse, lingering way past when the action has happened and often having the camera zoom off onto insignificant and out of focus details. The special effects are 70s TV quality, terrible. I literally spent 5 hours saying “That is so dumb”, “That is a terrible idea”, “Man cocaine had to have had the entire production crew in its grasp”, and “No, they really aren’t going to spend an entire episode showing the first date between the last man and woman on Mars”. I watched all 5 hours of The Martian Chronicles so you don’t have to.

Ray bradbury theater the martian