Astronauts blast off to explore the moon on Rocketship X-M or "Rocketship eXploration Moon". A spacecraft malfunction and some fuel miscalculations cause them to end up landing on Mars. On Mars, evidence of a once powerful civilization is found. The scientists determined that an atomic war destroyed most of the Martians. Those that survived reverted to a caveman like existence.
It's just a bit too derivative, this film. Lloyd Bridges and his team of astronauts set off for the moon, but en route they are thrown off course and end up landing on Mars. It doesn't take them long to discovers the remains of a substantial civiliation on the surface - a society that looks as if it met a pretty violent end. Further exploration reveals that there are survivors - but are they friend or foe, and can they help our travellers get home? I was never an huge fan of Bridges, and here he and his perfect coiffure go through the motions with little engagement as, to be fair, do the contributions from the dreadfully wooden Osa Massen ("Lisa van Horn") and the usually more charismatic Noah Beery Jnr, ("Corrigan"). It is short, the pace is not bad and there is enough of a story to keep it watchable, it is just the acting, effects and the dialogue that are pretty unremarkable.