Robinson Crusoe on Mars

Intelligently imaginative sci-fi version of the Defoe classic, in which an astronaut and his monkey are stranded on Mars, and later joined by the humanoid slave of an alien race. Haskin and producer George Pal provide the same excellent camerawork and special effects that marked their earlier War of the Worlds and Naked Jungle (the hostility of the Martian landscape is spectacularly evoked in California's Death Valley); but here, harnessed to a surprisingly faithful rendition of Defoe's conception, the result is an economical, subtle study both of Crusoe's will to survive, and of the hesitant growing friendship between the astronaut and his futuristic Friday. Most remarkably, Haskin avoids sentimentality even when dealing with the monkey, such is the assured sensitivity of the film.