In honor of my father-in-law, a retired professor of astronomy, this week we will spend exploring our solar system in movies. Today we voyage to the red planet Mars. Princess of Mars is currently available on instant Netflix.

PASS: Princess of Mars (2009) – NR – Not rated by the MPAA.

“After a devastating enemy ambush leaves soldier John Carter (Antonio Sabato Jr.) fighting for his life, he awakens to discover that the experimental treatment designed to save him has inexplicably transported him to Mars. On the red planet, Carter finds himself endowed with extraordinary powers — and in the middle of a feud between warring alien races. Traci Lords also stars in this sci-fi adventure based on the novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs.”

The first thing anyone should know about Princess of Mars is that it comes from The Asylum. The Asylum makes most of the incredibly awful movies that premiere on the Syfy channel.

A side digression. While the name change from the Sci-Fi channel to Syfy is almost universally derided, I applaud it. The channel has gotten so far away from actual science fiction that the re-branding actually serves to save the Sci-Fi handle. I understand both horror and fantasy intersect science fiction to a certain degree but Ghost Hunter “reality” shows are not science fiction and WWE? Seriously what were they thinking? anyway /rant mode off.

Normally Asylum does its best to ripoff current titles in a timely fashion. To siphon off some of the mega box office of Transformer and Transformers 2, they made the unbelievably awful Transmorphers and Transmorphers 2. Riding the internet buzz for Snakes on a Plane, they released Snakes on a Train. Their answer to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls (thus riffing on the antecedent to Indiana Jones, the Crystal Skull, and the earlier Temple of Doom).

The bizarre part is that while this is (loosely) based on an established property, the reason that this appears to have been greenlit is that Disney is preparing John Carter of Mars for a 2012 release (based on Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs). Expect an Asylum release of their John Carter of Mars in 2012 (or perhaps Cohn Jarter of Mars or John Carter of Venus).

Every and I mean every Asylum movie that I had seen prior to this would have rated an AVOID. They are uniformly awful with the worst CGI imaginable, atrocious dialogue, lazy plotting, and either recognizable actors or at best one or two completely down-on-their-luck, one-note wonders.

Thus when I rate this film a PASS, you may consider it overwhelming praise.

Since we already know that Mars does not have the kind of life that Burroughs wrote about, they call this Mars 216 which orbits Alpha Centauri.

The basic plot has all kinds of holes but they keep the plot moving. by the ten minute mark, we are already on Barsoom/Mars.

Antonio Sabato Jr. is fine as modern day sniper John Carter who finds himself transported to Mars. I love that a human being can be downloaded onto a 16 gig flash memory stick that I can get at Wal-Mart. He gets many chances to show off his pecs and abs but not so much the actual acting.

Traci Lords looks extremely long-in-the-tooth as Princess Dejah Thoris. I feel bad calling her old on her 42nd birthday. She certainly stays in good shape but it is hard to think of a 42-year-old as the young Princess from the Mars series of books.

My favorite character from that series is here as well. Matt Lasky plays Tars Tarkas. He does quite well for being completely covered in makeup and prosthetics. Unfortunately he does only have the two arms and not the six that Tarkas had in the books.

Anyone who treasures the original novels will probably be howling in anguish at the liberties taken here but this actually turns out to be a somewhat fun low-budget film.

Back in the 70s when they made the cheesy The Land that Time Forgot and At the Earth”s Core, I had always hoped they would adapt the John Carter of Mars books.

That is not to say this is a good film. It most definitely is not. The effects are serviceable – which makes them leaps and bounds better than most Asylum offerings.

So I have to rate this a pass but it is the best Asylum offering to date. This does seem to be the modern equivalent of the old The Land that Time Forgot.

Speaking of which, Asylum has also made an adaptation of The Land that Time Forgot.