Celebrity Lobsters Part 1
We recently brought to your attention Lobsters Fit For A Celebrity, which got us wondering about celebrity lobsters. So we decided to arrange a list of popular culture’s most recognizable lobsters, and we plan to bring you a new one every week.
Okay, let’s face it: It didn’t take us long to realize that we’re compiling a list of lobsters in popular culture, and even the most famous among those are fairly obscure.
Considering the relative obscurity of lobsters in popular culture, then, it’s only fitting that we should start our countdown with perhaps the most obscure of them all, the Lobster Man From Mars. As background, we present the following movie trailer:
Despite stars both large (Tony Curtis) and small (Billy Barty), the movie “Lobster Man From Mars” proved to have no legs, which seems appropriate given that, apparently, lobster men from Mars take to the skies in winged flight. Given that lobsters on earth walk in water, it should make sense that a lobster man from Mars should fly on earth…and look like an amalgamation of spare costume parts from the set of H.R. Pufnstuf. But, actually, it doesn’t really make sense at all. Yes, we’re as confused as you are.
Based loosely on Orson Welles’ notion that “a man from Mars” is always compelling theatre, Lobster Man From Mars was dreamt up by three drunken friends on New Year’s Eve, 1977. Combining Welles’ Mars concept with the remnants of their New Year’s eve lobster tail dinner, the trio went to work writing the screenplay for “Lobster Man From Mars.” Portending the timelessness of their project, they completed the screenplay in two weeks, proving for the curious that great art is, well, rarely completed in as little as two weeks.
It then took ten years to find a studio stupid bold enough to produce the epic tail tale of the lobster man…from Mars. And where else would such a film debut but at the legendary Sundance Film Festival? (We just lost a little respect for Robert Redford).
While the movie could hardly be labeled a “classic,” it has, arguably, become a cult classic of sorts, with a dedicated website and, well, okay, fine, it’s not really even a cult classic. But it’s just rare enough for a lobster to play the starring role in any movie, so it certainly warrants mention here.
Surprisingly, the movie does have a plot. Set as a film within a film, The evil “Lobster Man From Mars” is sent to earth to steal air, which is apparently in increasingly short supply on Mars (science be damned). When faced with such a dire, and planet threatening, situation, the only logical thing to do is to send a lobster to a nearby planet to…well, we don’t want to spoil the plot for you but let’s just say that a lone flying lobster might face some difficulties succeeding in such an endeavor. Of course, we would have guessed that the chances of someone selling a screenplay about a lobster man from Mars would seem slim, too, so we might not exactly be reliable odds-makers.
Not thoroughly intrigued by Lobster Man From Mars? Tune in next week as we bring you the next in our series of celebrity famous, uh, lobsters that you might have heard of.
Celebrity Lobsters Part 2 >>
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