Alphabetical Movie - Destination Mars!
Destination Mars! is a parody of Ed Wood style 50's sci fi. Making a movie like that is tricky because you are trying to make fun of something that has become a parody of itself. I mean, try to watch Plan 9 from Outer Space without asking yourself at least once if this movie is supposed to be some sort of joke.
When I'm writing a parody song, the one thing I avoid is writing a parody of a song that is already a parody. Satirizing satire is never easy and almost always fails because you are probably not going to do as good a job making fun of the satire as the original satirist was at making fun of the original source.
Thing is, Ed Wood wasn't actually making satire. He was earnestly trying to make good movies but he lacked the skills to do so. You absolutely can make fun of a movie like that but you'd better do it well.
My first experience with this film was at Butt-Numb-a-Thon. It was introduced as a newly discovered film rather than a parody and we were shown a short documentary about the creation and discovery of the film.
There was something of a disagreement amongst those of us who saw it because the documentary made it crystal clear we were watching a parody and not the real deal. There were those who felt that it was better to watch the movie first and wonder if it was real or not.
I disagreed. I think if you watch a movie you believe to be genuine and it is going out of the way to look badly made, you are going to come away thinking you've just seen a badly made film instead of a well made parody.
Knowing the movie was satire right off the bat, I think the experience was just about perfect. You knew the filmmakers were playing the whole thing very straight but you also knew that they were feeding you a spectacular line of bullshit.
I find the comparisons between this film and The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra are inevitable because they are both doing the same thing. For me, there are two major differences. The first is most people haven't seen Destination Mars because it never got distributed.
The second is that I didn't laugh watching The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. Perhaps it was because the two films are satirizing exactly the same thing in very similar ways and the jokes, therefore, are also very similar. Once I'd seen the jokes in one, I was less likely to be amused by them again.
Whatever the reason, I think Destination Mars! is a far better film simply because it is a smarter parody. It doesn't feel like the movie is constantly winking at me and saying "see what we did there?"
But I have to say - watch the documentary first. That is, of course, if you can actually find yourself a copy.
Next up, I'm going to do a double dip of two strikingly similar Bond films, "Diamonds are Forever" and "Die another Day!"