Invasion: UFO

Well Hello!

So you're interested in SHADO. Well I don't blame you, where else can you wear fabulous new synthetic materials, kill aliens and spend the night partying like its the 1970s?

You said that the swinging youth of the 1960s wouldn't be seen dead in the army. There was no way that you would be so square as to cut your hair, replace the tie-die flares with fatigues and cut back on the medallions.

And we listened.

Yes we've created a whole new paramilitary organisation just for the swinging generation. Why not sit back as I introduce SHADO - the coolest bunch of cats outside of the Stones. If you'll excuse me while I change into my beige jumpsuit and matching sideburn accessories... ...now let's hit the road in my SHADOmobile - notice its swooping lines, fins and gull-wing doors that make it a complete pain to park when doing the shopping at Sainsburys'. SHADOmobiles come in all sorts of fabulous colours not found in nature, including metallic brown, surgical appliance pink, ozone-eating green and a shade of yellow that just screams 'fashion'.

Neat!

Welcome to the way-out SHADO headquarters. I have privileged access thanks to my identity chest medallion. A movie studio? So you noticed our cunning disguise! Believe it or not the whole SHADO operation is run out of the basement next to the props cabinet. That room over there? Well that belongs to Commander Straker - a man well accustomed to the peroxide bottle and not too masculine to refuse a little eye shadow.

If you join us I'm sure he'll have you over for a chat, a drink or two and perhaps something else entirely. A medical? Of course there's a medical, SHADO operatives have to be at the peak of physical perfection, you just never know when you'll have to dance 'til dawn.

Let me just make one point clear. SHADO is an equal opportunities employer. We're always looking for top totty to slip into something suitably clinging.

Yes girls, SHADO needs you!

As a new recruit you will start off delivering coffee to our male leads, after you have mastered that task in regulation 9 inch heels you'll be ready to move on to moving pieces of paper from one side of the room to the other all the time looking absolutely fabulous.

At SHADO the sky is quite literally the limit for liberated women! If you master coffee delivery and paper sorting you could be shortlisted for our Moonbase which keeps a look out for intergalactic UFOs intent on spoiling the party.

Don't frown, you won't look nearly as pretty. You're probably thinking that lunar gravity will play havoc with your totally groovy haircut and you'll have to put the miniskirt in the closet. But you're forgetting - this is SHADO, where fashion comes first.

Not only will you be safe from solar flares, laser guns and alien abduction in our super-slinky silver jumpsuits, knee-high boots and metallic purple wigs but you'll be irresistible to those walking adverts for Blue Stratos - the SHADO interceptor pilots. When you're ready to cut a rug the whole ensemble converts to a silver miniskirt in moments! And remember, we don't care if you want to burn your bra - in fact it'll be an advantage.

Still not convinced about Moonbase? Well here are two words to make up your mind.

Inflatable furniture.

Seriously. It's shot like a porn movie, the stories are sometimes dreadful, acting is robotic and even the effects aren't always great. But for a slice of nostalgia back to a period when someone cut the brakecables on good taste and when restraint and decency went through the rails, down the cliffside and exploded at the bottom - UFO is completely unmissable. And Gabrielle Drake is quite stunningly beautiful, why she never became a bigger star is beyond me.

Go on, its Austin Powers versus the Martians.

Invasion: UFO (1974) is a British science fiction movie I recently watched on Tubi. The storyline follows a secret organization who tracks down aliens disguised as humans. The aliens kidnap humans and use them as spare parts for their disguises. Can the organization stop the alien invasion?

This movie is directed by Gerry Anderson (UFO) and stars Ed Bishop (UFO), Michael Billington (The Spy Who Loved Me), Gabrielle Drake (UFO), Wanda Ventham (Sherlock) and Derren Nesbitt (Where Eagles Dare).

The sets, attire, hairstyles, models, spacecrafts and costumes are as cliche as they come but still fun. I did enjoy the toys used in this during the science fiction and space elements. The cast was okay and you do get lost in their depiction of the future. There aren't any really great action or kill scenes unfortunately.

Overall this is a very average addition to the genre that is fun only for those who truly enjoy watching science fiction picture from this era. I would score this a 6/10 and only recommend seeing it under the appropriate expectations.

These days viewers of the 1970 British science fiction show have plenty of opportunities to see the show in its original episodic format. It's readily and cheaply available on DVD and is often streamed or repeated on satellite channels. However that wasn't always the case and that explains this historical curiosity. The original episodes are plainly the best way to watch the show either as a new or regular viewer but this "movie" is important in the history of the show.

Firstly as other reviewers have noted it's vital to establish that this film was made in 1980 and not 1974 or any earlier date. Some other movie versions had been made in Italy and maybe other territories in the 1970s but they were dubbed rather than in the original English and do not follow the format of this film. This is essentially distilled from three episodes - "Identified", "Computer Affair" and "Reflections in the Water" - with much smaller elements of "Confetti Check A-OK", "The Man Who Came Back" and "E. S. P.".

Why was this done? By 1980 ITC - who were responsible for the international marketing of UFO and other shows - were looking for new ways to sell the show to broadcasters and reach the nascent home video market. ITC felt that it would be much easier to sell UFO in a movie format rather than in its original episodes. Movies can be shown as "one-offs" and are often ideal for late-night broadcasting or satellite and cable channels whereas episodes of a series are expected to be shown on a regular basis and can therefore be trickier to schedule. As regards early home video it was also felt - probably wrongly - that viewers would prefer to watch a movie rather than a couple of episodes on a tape but without the others to follow. Bear in mind that in those days home video was almost wholly centred around movies and TV shows were either unreleased or only released in "highlights" or compilations. Tapes were then very expensive and releasing all the episodes of a series seemed inconceivable.

Some shows lent themselves better to the movie format because they had one or more two-part stories that could be easily compiled - indeed some had been sold to broadcasters or cinemas as movies for many years. UFO though had no two-part stories so a movie had to be more artificially constructed by stitching together material from two or more episodes. Predictably the match here is less than perfect and these do not form a coherent narrative. An element of "Confetti Check A-OK" is well-used to link material from "Identified" to show how SHADO was set-up and Straker appointed as Commander before resuming in 1980 with it becoming fully operational. However after the main story from "Identified" is concluded the story of an alien craft landing in Canada is used from "Computer Affair" and there is nothing to link the two events together. There is some logic in using these two episodes as they were the first two produced and share the same core cast along with SHADO capturing aliens and trying to communicate with them but these are similarities in theme rather than narrative. More jarring though is the jump in the last half-hour to material from "Reflections in the Water". This very radical story was produced near the end of the show and not only is it rather different in style but it has significant differences in cast so Alec Freeman who had featured prominently in the first hour then disappears while Paul Foster (Michael Billington) suddenly appears, as does Wanda Ventham as Colonel Virginia Lake. A clip from E. S. P. Is used well to explain Foster's absence but it would still strike viewers as odd that such a prominent character had not featured earlier. The section used from "The Man Who Came Back" at the climax is certainly dramatic but also leaves unresolved an attack on a key SHADO craft. The movie then returns to the climax of "Identified" for a very poignant scene to conclude affairs.

One of the biggest and justified complaints by regular viewers is the replacement of the show's original titles and opening music by new ones of far inferior quality. The show's original titles and music are among its most memorable attributes and could easily have been reused here with perhaps just the original series title modified to reflect the new one. The company that made the new titles - Film-Rite of New York - also produced new titles under the auspices of ITC for movie versions of episodes of the 1970s ATV series Thriller, also utilising new opening and closing music. The new titles for that show attracted a lot of criticism and the ones for Invasion: UFO are certainly a poor replacement for the original ones. Fortunately in the body of the film between the opening and closing titles the producers resisted the temptation to do things like adding their own scenes or visual or sound effects or replacing any of Barry Gray's wonderful music. There is also a saving grace in that the end titles are similar in visual style to the original ones and the original eerie end music is retained.

The film was broadcast in many territories but ironically - or maybe not - one place it seems never to have aired is the UK where UFO was originally produced. Maybe it was felt that as its original home the movie would have been recognised as more out of place in Britain than in other territories where the original show was not quite as well-known. The video was though available here and for a long time it was the only way viewers could see all the episodes used to make it except for "E. S. P." which did get released, perhaps as only few seconds of it were used in the video. Contractually those episodes could not be released on video until a new agreement was made in the late 1990s and all the episodes then became available on tape and later on DVD. Satellite channels also broadcast all the original episodes again and the movie in effect became redundant.

Invasion: UFO therefore now exists essentially for curiosity value. As well as being an extra on DVD releases it was issued on blu ray a few years ago by the sadly now defunct Network label. It's worth watching at least once just to see how viewers used to experience the show back in the 1980s and much of the 1990s. Times change - in this case for the better - but it can be useful to see how things used to be.

In the early 80s, compilation movies of Gerry Anderson TV shows were highly in vogue. Cheap to create and ideal for kidult/holiday programming, numerous shows underwent the process: Stingray, Joe 90, Captain Scarlet, Thunderbirds, Space: 1999...and UFO. Invasion: UFO comprises footage from three episodes (series pilot "Identified", "Computer Affair" and "Reflections In The Water"), along with FX and linking material from a further three ("ESP", "The Man Who Came Back" and "Confetti Check A-OK"). In addition, all-new opening titles are featured and a new music score added.

The story: The year is 1980. Humanoid aliens from a dying planet travel to Earth in pyramidal flying saucers...their mission, to harvest human body organs for transplants. Standing between them and an unsuspecting world is SHADO, a super-secret military organisation armed with futuristic vehicles headed by Commander Edward Straker. After a number of harrowing encounters, SHADO faces its' greatest threat...an all-out alien invasion. As it stands, Invasion: UFO is an OK movie. The different episodes are blended fairly well on the whole, and the choice of said episodes was a good one. However, a rather odd decision was made to throw out the ending to the final segment ("Reflections", with added material from "Came Back" to beef up the climatic UFO invasion), in favour of a 'new' and completely ambiguous conclusion that leaves nothing resolved. On top of the unavoidably episodic nature of the narrative, what you have is a film that lacks any real flow or story drive. Attentive viewers will notice that George Sewell, who plays Alec Freeman, vanishes in the last third of the movie. This is because he left the show halfway through it's run and was not in the final segment...likewise, Micheal Billington (who plays Paul Foster) is absent from the first two-thirds because he was not in the episodes used! (His absence is 'explained' by a short clip from "ESP".) All in all, Invasion: UFO is interesting but VERY uneven...the fact that the individual episodes were essentially halved in order to fit the 100 minutes running time means that most of the stories' emotional content and characterisation are gone. Plot points shown in the deleted footage are raised in what was used, making for a confusing ride in places. Nonetheless, there's plenty of action, very impressive model effects that still stand up well today, gorgeous women in skin-tight catsuits and mauve wigs(!)...and an excellent performance from series star Ed Bishop as Commander Straker. An excellent starting point for those new to the series, but if you've seen the show, forget it...you're likely to see it for the rather tepid hack-job that is is. Spooky, darkly textured and full of the way-out hardware and furious action Gerry Anderson is rightly acclaimed for.

Of course this movie from 1974 was one I had never heard about. And happening to stumble upon the movie by sheer, random luck here in 2024, I opted to give the movie a chance. Sure, I wasn't exactly harboring the biggest of expectations to a sci-fi movie one year older than myself. But still, I decided to give the movie a fair chance and check out what directors Gerry Anderson, Cyril Frankel, Jeremy Summers and David Tomblin had to offer.

As for the storyline in the movie, then I can't claim that I was particularly impressed or overly entertained by the script and storyline that writers Gerry Anderson and David Tomblin put together. But I am sure that a diehard sci-fi fan would be getting a much bigger kick out of watching "Invasion: UFO" than I did.

I don't think I was actually familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list, but that is actually something I enjoy when I sit down to watch a movie. The acting performances in the movie were definitely fair.

I assume that had I watched the TV series I would have been way more well-versed in the characters, locations, events, and such that took place in this 1974 movie.

The music in the movie was somewhat odd. It felt very much off in comparison to the themes and tropes of the movie.

The effects in the movie were actually not bad. Sure, it was clearly obvious that many of the models were nothing more than toy models and being used in a model scale diorama, but it looked quite adequate actually, especially when taking into consideration the likes of the old Japanese "Godzilla" movies and how atrocious the toy models looked in those movies. It should be noted that "Invasion: UFO" was definitely an ambitious project, and it wasn't actually all that poorly executed on the screen. I was genuinely surprised with how they pulled off the effects throughout the course of the movie.

My rating of "Invasion: UFO" lands on a five out of ten stars.