Princess of Mars

John Carter, his life hanging by a thread on Earth, is teleported to a far-away planet where he plays a pivotal role in its destiny.

This is a very low budget production, loosely based on the plot of Edgar Rice Burroughs's 'John Carter of Mars'. This movie contains a load of actors you have probably never heard of, uses some low budget SFX (like many such movies) and indeed the budget for the whole film was allegedly about 1/1000th that of the Disney effort that came out three years later, 'John Carter', which covers much the same ground.

Well you would expect this to be a Christmas cracker novelty of a film by comparison with the Disney effort and in truth yes it shows, it shows all the time and in every way. But having said that it isn't a thousand times worse as a film.

I thought the rehash of the central character was quite a bold move, and there were some quite good scenes in this film. Yes the SFX is pretty cheesy in places but it doesn't really detract heavily from the film. The plot doesn't always follow in a well structured fashion and the emphasis (not to mention screen time) is probably somewhat misplaced. Diehard ERB fans will obviously be appalled and will call it a travesty, and those who have no familiarity with the storyline will undoubtedly be wondering what the heck is going on half the time.

However those with a loose grasp of the ERB story and suitably low expectations may spend a pleasant 90 minutes watching this film which does contain a few genuinely good bits in it.

I give it five out of ten because it is not (well not quite) half bad, and for the money they had it is arguably quite good.

I've gotten through half of Princess of Mars. Not sure I can do the 2nd half. It's not that it's bad--in fact it's OK as far as super low-budget fantasy flicks go (I love the old Amicus Burroghs flicks with Doug McClure). They only used a few of the original story elements, but I guess putting six arms on Tars Tarkus or red body paint on all the "humans" would have been cost prohibitive. But what's up with casting Traci Lords as Deja Thoris, the princess? Even if you're kind in your estimation, Lords is well over 40. Not bad looking for a woman her age, but certainly not a good enough actress to make you forget that she's WAY too old for the part. I just couldn't go on with the film once she became a big part of it because I couldn't' stop thinking how virtually ANY young Hollywood actress would have been more watchable. In fact just about any woman who works at a Hooters would have been more watchable! I don't want to sound age-ist, but if a female actress of marginal acting ability is going to be running about in a skimpy outfit for over an hour on screen, she'd better be super-exceptionally hot for her age or young enough for it not to matter. I mean, really--did anyone rent this because they saw the name Traci Lords? And I want to reiterate--this is not a personal attack on Ms. Lords. I just don't think she's doing herself, or us, justice by still trying to be "the hot young chick." And Deja Thoris should be a hot young chick.

I'm glad I didn't read the bad reviews of this before deciding to watch it for free on Tubi. The dialogue was a lot better than I'm used to finding in low budget films such as this. The acting wasn't as bad as I expected either but wasn't up to the script. It isn't by any means a good movie. The film loosely follows Burroughs plot line. Unfortunately, The Tharks only have two arms, but I can see having more than two, whether prosthetically or with CGI would certainly have killed the budget. Unfortunately, the special effects of John Carter launching and riding the flyer are about the same level at Witchy-Poo riding her suped up broom on H. R. Pufnstuf. And the machine that keeps the air clean on Mars is not coincidentally a central air conditioning unit. That made me laugh. Thank masks are actually pretty well done. People who complained about the ending plainly never read the Burroughs books. The person who said the movie asset on a planet other Than Mars didn't either, because the planet is Barsoom, Burroughs' Martian name for Mars. So, a lot of the people who reviewed this film aren't familiar with the source material. As someone who read all the books in the series, I enjoyed this film for what it was, a really low budget take on the series. Unlike the makers of John Carter, I think the smartest thing these film makers did was call this film, Princess Of Mars, which is how I found it. You know immediately what it is.

It's just not too clear where the movie makers were trying to go with this adaptation of the Edgar Burroughs story. At first glance, it looks to be a tribute to the style of old drive-in sci-fi features, where an intrepid astronaut pioneers unchartered space. Along the way, our space hero will bravely fight giant creatures, duel bad guys, establish friendship with the Martian locals, romance a blonde alien, bring about peace between warring tribes, overthrow a despot, and so on.

They give us all that old school sci-fi stuff, but there's no cohesion to anything. The "plot" is just a parade of unlinked chapters. The story is modernized, which is a mistake. Yes, everybody knows the Rovers have found nothing up there, but who cares? Keep the naive retro feel of a mysterious and foreboding Mars. That was the fun of the source material. But now, the action doesn't even occur on Mars! The 19th century soldier turned Spaceman Spiff has been redone as a Gulf War Marine, and sports millennial tattoos. The Princess herself is Xena Warrior Princess one moment, and helpless fairy tale princess the next.

Still, those Martian green celery-head guys were lovable (even though you can see skin poking out from beneath the masks). The indigenous bug creatures, and the fights against them, are amusingly cheap, yet done with gusto. Overall, an amateurish film, but has a bit of odd charm to it.

I'd read some pretty brutal stuff about this flick and was happy to find an entirely competent and often clever b-movie. Admittedly, I was a huge Edgar Rice Burroughs fan as a kid, but I'm not sure that didn't prime me to dislike the movie.

It wasn't a big budget movie, but I think the money they had was well spent. The special effects were not the center of the film but they didn't detract from the story either. The acting was surprisingly unembarrassing and I personally found the dialog very good. The updating of the story was subtle and funny.

One of the other reviewers said this isn't the film we were waiting for, and I suppose that' right. It is, though, the film we got. All in all, it struck me as a sincere labor of love that did credit to the memory of Burroughs himself, the master of the pulps.