Red Planet Mars

Suburban scientist Chris Cronyn and his wife Linda contact Mars with a hydrogen-powered radio transmitter created from the confiscated plans of captured Nazi criminal Franz Calder. After seeing a fellow scientist's photographs of rapidly changing weather conditions on the planet, Chris is convinced that Martians exist and are utilizing atomic power to control their environment. At home, Linda, fearing the dangers inherent in contacting a superior race, explains to Chris that every woman is frightened that her children will be sent to war, or worse. Chris dismisses her fears, arguing for the necessity of scientific progress. They transmit another message while, unknown to them, an escaped Calder works on his identical hydrogen transmitter in a laboratory hidden in the Andes. Calder is interrupted by Gaspardin Arjenian, the Kremlin official who aided his escape and now supports his research. Calder, who cares only about besting the Americans who "stole" his research and perfected it while he was in prison, reveals that he cannot contact Mars, but can spy on the Americans' Mars transmissions. Thrilled, Arjenian promises Calder continued backing. Soon after, Chris summons Admiral Bill Carey to help with his experiments. When they wonder aloud how best to elicit a response from the Martians, Chris's son Stewart suggests broadcasting the beginning of the mathematical formula for pi to see if the spacemen will finish it. They finally receive a positive response, and within hours the news of the message has spread throughout the world, engendering Mars mania. Chris's fame grows as the Martians then communicate that they live to be 300 years old and farm enough food from one acre of land to feed one thousand Martians for one year. This last fact panics the farm industries, whose stock crashes. Next, when the Martians state that they use only atomic energy, the mining and oil industries fold, and within days, the Western economy collapses as banks around the world close. In Washington, Secretary of Defense Sparks informs Bill that the lab must be moved to the capital and all messages kept top-secret. Although the Russian government has used the advance information from Calder to plan an attack on the weakened Western world, the American president refuses to start a preemptive war with Russia. He is about to order Chris and Linda to disable the transmitter when the most recent message, a response to the question of how the Martians employ such a destructive energy force without hurting one another, comes through. The Martians state that the "Supreme Leader" has declared that Earthlings were told thousands of years earlier to love goodness and hate evil, but have failed. Linda, realizing that this refers to The Sermon on the Mount, insists against Chris's advice that the message be broadcast. The President agrees, and over the next few days, this and all subsequent peaceful religious statements from the Martians are heard throughout the world. Russian peasants, listening on contraband radios, tear down posters of Lenin and Stalin and begin to form small church enclaves, even as Kremlin soldiers attempt to gun them down. Finally, the people gain enough strength in numbers to take over the government. In the Andes, Calder drinks more and more, and one day his hut is destroyed by an avalanche. Soon, Chris hears that the new head of the Russian church has declared an era of world peace. Chris tells his baby Roger that his real accomplishment lies in his children, the new world's legacy, then goes to the laboratory with Linda. Just as they transmit one more message, however, Calder appears and reveals that he wrote all of the messages himself and plans to announce the hoax to the press, thus destroying the new peace. Linda, noting discrepancies between Calder's comments and the actual received messages, insists that the Martians really did intervene, but Chris notes that no messages have come through since Calders' transmitter was crushed in the avalanche. Linda then watches as Chris secretly fills the room with explosive hydrogen, and urges him to light a match, thus sacrificing themselves for the sake of world peace. Just as Chris takes out his lighter, however, a message comes in from the Martians, and a despairing Calder shoots at the screen, causing the lab to erupt. Days later, the President broadcasts the first words of the last Martian message, which was interrupted by the blast: "Ye have done well, my good..." As he interprets the rest of the Biblical passage, which states that God's faithful servants have created a monument of world peace, church bells ring across the world in honor of Chris and Linda.