Villain(s)  Robotic alien creatures

Actor(s):  Darren McGavin, Nick Adams, George De Vries, Michael DeBeausset

Brief Description  Mission Mars (1968) is a low-budget, 95-minute American independent science fiction film directed by Nicholas Webster. It is highly notable for starring Darren McGavin and Nick Adams (in his final film role before his death), blending early space-race realism with pulp-magazine alien tropes.

Plot:
The movie opens with prolonged exposition dedicated to the home lives of three American astronauts. Col. Mike Blaiswick (Darren McGavin), Nick Grant (Nick Adams), and Duncan (George De Vries) spend their final days on Earth saying goodbye to their respective wives and girlfriends. They launch on an 18-month journey to Mars using a mix of real-life NASA stock footage (including Atlas and Jupiter rockets). During the voyage, the film captures daily ship routines—including exercising, relaxing under sun lamps, and a lighthearted moment where Nick sneaks a real pastrami/salami sandwich on board to escape their standard nutrient pellet rations. Tension rises when they navigate a meteor storm and encounter a dark secret: the bodies of two frozen Soviet cosmonauts floating dead in the void of space, confirming a highly classified, failed Russian Mars mission.

Upon landing on Mars, the astronauts are separated from their vital automated supply capsule. When they track it down, they discover its hull has a hole burned through it. Inside, they find a third Soviet cosmonaut (Bill Kelly) standing frozen in suspended animation. They successfully revive him inside the American craft. The planet soon turns hostile as they encounter two distinct alien entities: The Polarite: A bizarre, hostile robotic creature that threatens the crew. The astronauts discover they can temporarily neutralize it by firing energy beam weapons into its singular glowing red eye. The Sphere: A mysterious, glowing alien orb appears nearby. When Duncan approaches the alien artifact, an invisible, malevolent force field drags him inside, killing him.

The alien sphere projects a massive force field that traps the American ship, preventing a launch sequence and rendering their booster rockets useless. The revived Soviet cosmonaut explains that the field can only be deactivated by manually destroying a central disc inside the sphere. Knowing it is a suicide mission, geologist-astronaut Nick Grant volunteers, successfully destroying the disc and freeing the ship at the cost of his own life. Col. Blaiswick and the Soviet cosmonaut launch from the surface together. As they leave Mars behind, Blaiswick receives a transmission from Earth informing him that his wife is pregnant, leaving a bittersweet conclusion of new life contrasting the deaths on the Red Planet. Released in the pivotal year of 1968—the same year as Stanley Kubrick's genre-defining 2001: A Space Odyssey—Mission Mars was criticized for its stark budget limitations and scientific inaccuracies, such as mixing completely different NASA launch vehicles.