The Martian Chronicles (1950), which was retitled The Silver Locusts in British release, is Ray Bradbury’s most famous work. The Martian Chronicles is actually a collation of various short stories that Ray Bradbury had published throughout the 1940s and should be considered more of a book of stories set around a shared venue than a full novel. (The nature of the Martians often changes throughout, for instance). The Martian Chronicles has however become a classic both for Bradbury’s elegiac evocation of a Mars of fantasy (as opposed to scientific reality) and its images of a lost culture being destroyed by uncaring humans – a regular theme that runs through Bradbury’s work is how humanity banally or selfishly misuses the wondrous. The Martian Chronicles is one of the genuine classic works of literary science-fiction (even though Bradbury interestingly denies it is a work of science-fiction).

A film adaptation of The Martian Chronicles had been touted since at least the late 1950s. The major problem seems to have been how to turn a collection of stories into a single film. This mini-series adaptation was eventually greenlit amidst the big science-fiction boom that came in the aftermath of Star Wars (1977). The script was given to Richard Matheson, a genre veteran who has written a number of classic genre films and books. (See below for Richard Matheson’s other genre works).

Richard Matheson’s script cuts and changes various of the stories from Ray Bradbury’s book. Notably, some of the less cinematic and more difficult ideas have been cut – like Usher II about a man who has built a castle with elaborate traps designed to kill a group of book censors; There Will Come Soft Rains, which is more a prose poem than a story and concerns an automated house that continues on in the aftermath of the nuclear holocaust – and crucially features no human characters; while Way in the Middle of the Air goes because its theme – African Americans welcome Mars for freedom from lynch gangs – had become dated by 1980. I always liked the The Earth Men story concerning the second expedition who are shot when they are thought to be telepathic hallucinations from a mentally ill Martian and was a little disappointed to see that it has also been excised for reasons unclear. The mini-series also adds one of Bradbury’s Mars stories that does not appear in The Martian Chronicles (and instead comes from The Illustrated Man) – The Fire Balloons concerning Father Peregrine’s meeting with the Martian spirits.

The most notable feature of the mini-series has been the awkward effort made by Richard Matheson’s script to stretch what is a series of short stories set around a common venue into a single dramatic narrative. This is done by winding Rock Hudson’s Captain Wilder into most of the stories – either by making him the central character or else having him pass through in one way or another. One feels that the mini-series would have worked far better in not trying to tell The Martian Chronicles as a single six-hour, three-part drama but as a series of individual half-hour episodes along the lines of the excellent The Ray Bradbury Theater (1986-92) anthology tv series. (The Ray Bradbury Theater notedly also adapted a number of stories from The Martian Chronicles – And the Moon Still Be as Bright, Mars is Heaven, The Martian, The Silent Towns and Usher II – and did a far better job of telling them).

The unfortunate failing of The Martian Chronicles is not Richard Matheson’s script, which could easily have worked, even despite the ungainly narrative structure. Rather the failing is all due to the director signed to the project – Michael Anderson. Anderson began promisingly in the 1950s with big-budget films like The Dam Busters (1954) and Around the World in 80 Days (1956). However, Anderson’s run with genre films has been disastrous – see the likes of 1984 (1955), Doc Savage – The Man of Bronze (1975), Logan’s Run (1976), Bells/Murder By Phone (1981) and Millennium (1989), as well Second Time Lucky (1984), which may well be one of the worst films ever made. These in all cases suffer from a leaden heavy-handedness and an entirely pedestrian lack of imagination upon Anderson’s part. (See below for Michael Anderson’s other genre credits).

It is hard to say which of the many aspects of The Martian Chronicles is the worst. Michael Anderson’s pace is slow moving and pedestrian. Indeed, in stories like Mars is Heaven, The Martian and The Long Years, Anderson’s ploddingly unimaginative hand causes the respective twist ending of each story to be tipped off well in advance. The special effects are extremely shoddy at times – the mini-series almost entirely shoots itself in the foot from the opening scene of a lander touching down upon the Martian surface, which contains some incredibly poor model work.

It is possible though that the single worst aspect is some of the casting. Rock Hudson does his stolid leading man thing and is completely stiff throughout. That said, Hudson is at least serviceable. Much worse is the agonizingly painful effort at sincerity that comes in Fritz Weaver’s performance as Father Peregrine. Although the worst performance of all is the lunatically hopped-up one given by Darren McGavin. McGavin gives the impression that he had no clue what any of the series was about and decided to play the whole thing for maximum silliness. The most cringe-worthy moment in the series is surely the sight of McGavin decked out in a glitter cowboy suit. The Off Season, Darren McGavin’s one starring story, is not unexpectedly the worst in the show. The model effects when it comes to the race of the sandships are downright embarrassing and the sight of McGavin on the mock-up of a sandship foredeck in his neon cowboy suit pretending to navigate by pulling ropes almost entirely kills all suspension of disbelief.

The other dreadful story in the show is The Silent Towns with Christopher Connelly as a lonely miner who meets the one other person left on the planet in the form of Bernadette Peters. Richard Matheson at least tries to make the story work by tossing out the reasons that Ben had for trying to avoid Genevieve in Ray Bradbury’s short story – she was dumpy and clingy – but the characterization of Genevieve here is equally as sexist – she is a vain, air-headed blonde who is completely obsessed with her looks and expects to be waited on. Moreover, Michael Anderson keeps overstressing her self-absorption to the point that it becomes like a screaming neon red underline and you wish you could grab him by the collar and explain the concept of understatement.

There are times that The Martian Chronicles does work in spite of Michael Anderson’s leaden hand. The series is especially good at capturing the ethereal alienness of the Martians – in bald heads with glittering eyes and no ears; strange costumery that consists of flowing white Grecian robes or a mask that strikingly consists of a giant V with a single eye set in the centre; the strangely fluted handguns; their crystalline houses; and the cities consisting of dolmens carved in stone balls, pyramids and wedge shapes, all shot amid the almost pure white sands of Malta.

Some of the stories have a modest effectiveness, particularly when they are playing with the theme of illusion and identity. One of the best episodes is the adaptation of Mars is Heaven/The Third Expedition, which effectively communicates the puzzling strangeness of the astronauts arriving on Mars to find a perfect simulation of rural smalltown Illinois created out of their memories. I particularly liked the end scene of the story with the townspeople conducting a funeral service and the voiceover explaining how the Martians enacted a ceremony that was alien to them. The other story that works not too badly is The Martian with one lone Martian being torn every which way and transformed into the loved ones of everybody it encounters as it runs through the town.

The principal failing of the mini-series is a mismatch of opposing talents. Ray Bradbury is a writer whose work turns on the soft imagery, the play of a word and rich, often overripe allegory. Bradbury is a nostalgist who pines for a lost culture of the mind – for him, The Martian Chronicles is largely a work about the death of the imagination and its supplantation by the crassness of human culture. Landed with the task of translating Ray Bradbury’s work to the screen is Michael Anderson – a director who never encountered a piece of imagery or an analogy that he didn’t feel needed to be treated with a plodding literalness and explain it away until even the most dense five year-old in the audience understood what was meant.

Other Ray Bradbury screen adaptations include:– the classic atomic monster movie The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) from Bradbury’s short story The Foghorn; the alien invader classic It Came from Outer Space (1953) from his original screenplay; Francois Truffaut’s adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 (1966); the anthology The Illustrated Man (1968); the tv movie The Electric Grandmother (1980); the screenplay for the fine Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) from his own novel; his screenplay for the animated adaptation of the classic comic-strip Little Nemo in Slumberland (1992); the tv anthology series The Ray Bradbury Theater (1986-92) where Bradbury adapted his own stories and hosted the series; the screenplay for the animated children’s film The Halloween Tree (1993); Stuart Gordon’s adaptation of The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1998); and A Sound of Thunder (2005) based on Bradbury’s classic time travel story.

Michael Anderson’s other genre films include an adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 (1955); The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), a political thriller concerning a near-future Pope; Doc Savage, The Man of Bronze (1975), based on the pulp hero; the dystopian sf film Logan’s Run (1976); the killer whale film Orca (1977); the psycho-thriller Dominique (1978); Bells/Murder by Phone/The Calling (1981) about killer telephone calls; the excruciating Adam and Eve softcore comedy Second Time Lucky (1984); the John Varley time travel film Millennium (1989); the tv movie remake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1997); and The New Adventures of Pinocchio (1999).

Richard Matheson is a noted genre screenwriter and novelist. His other genre works include The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) based on his own novel, Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations The House of Usher/The Fall of the House of Usher (1960), Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror (1962) and The Raven (1963), the Jules Verne adaptation Master of the World (1961), the occult film Night of the Eagle/Burn, Witch, Burn (1961), the Corman-produced mortician’s comedy The Comedy of Terrors (1963), The Last Man on Earth (1964) based on his novel I Am Legend (1954) concerning a world taken over by vampires, the Hammer psycho-thriller The Fanatic/Die, Die, My Darling (1965), the classic Hammer occult film The Devil Rides Out/The Devil’s Bride (1968), the historical biopic De Sade (1969), Steven Spielberg’s first film Duel (1971), The Night Stalker (1972) and The Night Strangler (1973) tv movies, the haunted house film The Legend of Hell House (1973) from his novel, the tv adaptation of Dracula (1974), the tv movies Scream of the Wolf (1974), The Stranger Within (1974), Trilogy of Terror (1975), Dead of Night (1977) and The Strange Possession of Mrs Oliver (1977), the time travel romance Somewhere in Time (1980) from his own novel, Jaws 3-D (1983), Twilight Zone – The Movie (1983), and numerous classic episodes of The Twilight Zone, Thriller and Star Trek. Works based on his novels and stories are The Omega Man (1971) from his I Am Legend, the afterlife fantasy What Dreams May Come (1998), the fine ghost story Stir of Echoes (1999), I Am Legend (2007), The Box (2009) and Real Steel (2011).