Invasion vom Mars

Acceptable , estimable and well-made science-fiction/suspense/thriller in which a kid and military are confronted by an alien invasion . This film , nowadays , has achieved cult stature and with the passing of the years has attained rave reviews . A boy named David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt) tries to stop aliens that came from above and attack from below . As the aliens have taken over his town and are attempting to brainwash its inhabitants . As his parents (Hilary Brooke , Leif Erickson) are zapped by the weird and diabolic creatures . He can't convince the townspeople of this invasion because they've already possessed by the outer beings . As the people fall into a sandpit where martian slaves carry on their fiendish work guided by a malicious mastermind . As David is only helped by Dr. Stuart Kelston (Arthur Franz , also narrator) and the sympathetic Dr. Pat Blake (Helena Carter) . Later on , the boy enlists the aid of Col. Fielding (Morris Ankrum) and his U.S. Marines . The soldiers go under the surface where the Marines encounter extraterrestrials in the tunnels , leading to the powerful alien leader .

The earlier first version loosely based on a story by John Battle results to be a potent lesson how to direct a film in low budget and it holds a subtle but efficient intrigue . Gradual as well as notable built-up suspense is quite superb as when the aliens are shown largely at the ending and to create a real menace . This exciting film packs chills , thrills , guessing , paranoia , absence of all characterization and spectacular FX by that time , though today dated . In fact , the sandpit opening and closing was done by cutting a long slit in a piece of heavy canvas and inserting a large funnel . And including stock footage , as it shows tanks being loaded onto train flatcars that were actually WW2 M10 tank destroyers and by the time of this film were superseded by newer models . Chilling tale of an alien invasion , this is a nice thriller/SciFi in its own right , dealing with a saucer descends on earth and takes over human beings when they fall into a sandpit . The story is told from the view point of a kid , including a surprising and unexpected finale . Several actors performed the slaves , working in shifts , which meant each performer who did the "walking" for a Martian needed his own custom-made footwear . It is one of the best of the Cold War allegories and a lot of filmmakers cited the movie as a key , influential film in their lives . Colorful cinematography by John Seitz in garish Cinecolor that gives the movie a distinctive , almost muddy look appropriate in particular to the strange underground atmosphere . This motion picture (1953) was well directed by William Cameron Menzies who shows real skill in the way that everyday things are made to carry a sense of menace . Cameron was one of the best production designers of film history and directed a few movies , such as : ¨The Maze¨ , ¨The Whip Hand¨ , ¨Drums in the Deep South¨ ,¨The Green Cockatoo¨ , ¨Thief of Bagdad¨ , and another classic Sci-Fi : ¨Things to come¨ . In ¨Invaders from Mars¨ Menzies provides a punchy suspenseful Sci-Fi in green-and-gold color about some unwelcome aliens . Although it aroused no great attention in its day and despite its commercial and critical failure , it has become a cult classic .

This oddball vintage 50s SF tale is remade 33 years later with similar plot , as a Martian invasion perceived only by one young boy , being directed by Tobe Hooper again with Jimmy Hunt , who played young David MacLean in the original and the police chief in this remake , and Hunter Carson who is the real life son of Karen Black who plays a hysterical school nurse , Timothy Bottoms , Laraine Newman , James Karen , Bud Cort , Louise Fletcher , Eric Pierpoint . This second high-tech outing pays homage to the first retelling but being really inferior to precedent .

This one scared the hell out of me when I first saw it as a kid; I remember them showing it in the evening on BBC2 back in the 1980s. Looks like a lot of other reviewers were similarly traumatised. Watching it now, as an adult, it's easy to laugh at what is a shoddy, low budget production. Scenes are repeated, special effects are wobbly to say the least, the aliens are silly rather than menacing, and the paucity of the production is apparent in every respect.

And yet...there's something oddly menacing about this film. It's partly the Cold War paranoia-inspired plot about nice, ordinary people being taken over by a sinister foreign menace. Interestingly, this is the earliest version I've seen on that theme, predating INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS by a couple of years. The paranoia is cloying and really raises the hackles, even as an adult, and even allowing for the cheesy over-acting of the child star.

The more overt aspects of the story, which take place towards the climax, are also profound, and in this case the imaginative nature of the production outweighs the budgetary constraints. That alien leader, little more than a head in a goldfish bowl, is oddly disturbing and an image that's stayed with me for my whole life. It's easy to forgive the problems in a film like INVADERS FROM MARS when it contains such classic, timeless material and I do think this is one of those '50s-era B-movie alien invasion classics.

Invaders From Mars is one of the best science fiction movies of the 1950's. I have seen this several times and never tire of it.

A haunting atmosphere throughout and a good musical score keep it going. It is shot in glorious colour and the special effects are pretty good despite the low budget.

The acting in this is excellent, especially from young Jimmy Hunt and 50's regulars Arthur Franz and Morris Ankrum are reunited in this as they starred alongside each other in Flight to Mars (1951). Extensive stock military footage doesn't spoil this at all.

I enjoyed this movie very much and it has gained a cult following.

Rating: 4 and a half stars out of 5.

I was seven years old when I was taken to see this movie by my sixty-year old Lithuanian grandmother (to whom it must have made no sense at all). The images in the movie - the big green guys, the melting rock that looked like an explosion in a bubble gum factory, the people falling into the sand pit, the dreaded implant approaching the pretty neck of Dr. Blake, the little silver octopus-like guy in the fishbowl - all replayed themselves in my mind over many nights. I saw it again recently on AMC and can see many of the things that are dated, but can also understand why the movie made such an impact at the time. The concept, especially, of one's parents being taken under the control of evil forces is particularly disturbing to a young child. The music and sound effects, too, are particularly eerie. The almost abstract quality of the set in the police station scene lends it a foreboding quality. I'm ambivalent on how to rate it. It very much shows its age (and they could have shortened the stock army footage of tanks rolling) but has much that gives it a weird sort of drawing power even today. A curiously compelling movie.

Invaders From Mars is, arguably, a cult classic. William Cameron Menzies, of "Gone With The Wind" and "The Thief of Baghdad" and "Things to Come" fame puts his artistic expertise to work in creating a world of impending doom, seen through the eyes of an 11 year old boy.

It is because of this point-of-view that lends a nightmarish quality to a struggle this boy encounters when he tries to convince the authorities that a spaceship landed in a sandpit behind his house.

The sense of "something's not right" with Mom and Dad starts as the boy's parents are sucked below the sandpit into the evil arms of the Martians, made into zombie-spies, and returned to the surface. The boy's fear mounts when local police and even high-ranking military fall prey to the Martians' mind control.

Through the assistance of a well trusted astrophysicist and a school psychologist the boy convinces the local Army base to make a beach head in the boy's back yard... and the battle to return the boy's parents and the villagers to normalcy begins. Eventually, the boy and the psychologist confront the Martian intelligence (midget Luce Potter as a convincing body-less head with tentacle-like arms in a glass sphere). In a poor "race against time" sequence in which the little boy and psychologist are rescued from the spaceship before it blows up, the film reaches its climax to the cacophonous din of artillery explosions, and Raoul Kraushaar's eerie, disharmonious a capella choir.

Many criticize the poor production values, the over use of stock footage, the idiotic costumes, and the fact that the film had TWO endings (one popularized in Great Britain, one here in U.S.A.).

Yes, I agree that production and set values were cheap (green condoms to represent molten rock "bubbles" in the tunnels and obvious zippers in the velour-like jump suits of the Martian slaves, to name a few.)

Nevertheless, Menzies applies forced perspective to his sets, and the skillful use of background mattes to lend an unearthly tone to the scene Remember folks, this is 1953... a time when Communism infiltration and subordination of Mr. and Mrs. Joe America was the chief "fear of the day". There are few other films of that period that deftly portrayed this paranoia so aptly as "Invaders From Mars"

If one overlooks the "rough" edges of its obviously low budget, one can still appreciate the helplessness, fear and mistrust the little boy develops as his parents and others are turned into "tools of the Martians". Is it truly a nightmare, or did it actually happen? The viewer is left to make that choice.