Flying Disc Man from Mars

Flying Disc Man from Mars (1950)

Mota is a Martian representative, who has come to impose interplanetary law on the Earth (which has become too dangerous); opposing his authority is Kent Fowler, who resists the alien plot, without understanding its details.

Date of release
1950-10-25
TMDB
4.9 / 10 (9)
Runtime
2h 47m
Genres
Action, Science Fiction
Director
Fred C. Brannon

Casting

Interesting facts

Flying Disc Man from Mars is a 1950 Republic Pictures 12-chapter black-and-white science fiction adventure film serial, produced by Franklin Adreon, directed by Fred C. Brannon, that stars Walter Reed, Lois Collier, Gregory Gaye, James Craven, Harry Lauter, and Richard Irving. Disc Man is considered a weak example of the serial medium, even compared to other post-World War II serials. In 1958 Republic edited the serial's 167 minutes of footage into a 75-minute feature, released under the new title Missile Monsters.

Production

Flying Disc Man from Mars was budgeted at $152,640, although the final negative cost was $157,439 (a $4,799, or 3.1%, overspend). It was the most expensive Republic serial made in 1950.

Disc Man was filmed between August 21 and September 12, 1950, under several working titles: Atom Man from Mars, Disc Man from Mars, Disc Men of the Skies, Flying Planet Men, and Jet Man from Mars. The serial's production number was 1709.

This is not a sequel to Republic's earlier serial The Purple Monster Strikes, although the villain Mota wears the Purple Monster costume from that serial.

The flying disc aircraft from Republic's King of the Mounties is reused for this serial (note that the Japanese rising sun logo is still visible), and most of the shots of it in flight are taken from that serial. In some shots this flying wing footage is from Republic's Spy Smasher serial (used in chapter three of Disc Man), where the tail fin is missing (the flying wing was built for Spy Smasher, and the tail-fin with rising sun insignia was add…

Other stock footage from several earlier Republic serials was reused to pad out Disc Man in order to lower its production costs. This includes the rocket crash from The Purple Monster Strikes, a car chase from Secret Service in Darkest Africa, and various scenes from G-Men vs. the Black Dragon.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended