I wasn’t among the very first to be able to watch online movies from Netflix, but I’ve been checking almost every day, and this morning the feature is enabled. The selection of movies is very limited, and playback requires Internet Explorer 6 or 7 with the Silverlight plugin. Firefox isn’t supported, and movies can’t be downloaded.
So what did I pick as my first choice? The Angry Red Planet, from 1960. Why? Because it was directed by Ib Melchior, who wrote the story that became Robinson Crusoe on Mars. The movie is full of profound human insight. For example, the relative merits of girls over radiation risks.
The video transfer of this movie appears to be, at best, 400×300 pixels blown up to 640×480. In other words, it’s lousy. There’s a full screen option, but the resolution doesn’t justify doing that. Because of the way the video is done I can’t get a screen capture without great difficulty, so I took a picture of it with the camera.
How red can an angry planet be, anyway?? For Robinson Crusoe on Mars, instead of Melchior’s simple red filter, Byron Haskin cleverly used the blue of the desert sky as if it were a blue screen, to easily and cheaply insert a red sky.
Netflix is off to a rather tentative start with their “Watch Now” feature. But I’m not going to knock it because it isn’t costing me extra, and it’s certainly a step in the right direction.
Great dialog! Despite my migraine and neck spasms, I’m enojoying dying of laughter. Like Shirley Maclaine in the 1964 movie of the same name “What a Way to Go!”
Now, what if it had been DR. SMITH out there, instead of a buxom 50s B-girl? Think they would have braved the radiation THEN? Remember how mad we got when the Robinsons almost made it back to Earth at the end of Season Two and Dr. Smith was lured outside by that stupid “Lorelie Lee” or whatever her name was? and we were all siding wiht Major West: “Ah, leave him out there!” I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen you really angry, Dougie!