Invisible Invaders

Spooky little horror film that had tentacles which reached far and wide. Many other filmmakers may have taken a dip in this cinematic pool. Don't snicker. Checkout the walking stiffs in business suits staggering around the countryside. Remind you of anyone? The last survivors--holed up in some sought of army bunker--predict a future bird flick. The clash between scientists, civilians and the military is always a staple of the action genre. There may be others, but I would have to watch it again. I first saw this on Creature Feature back in the 70's. It spooked me out to the degree that I swore off this type of movie until Chiller Theatre came on later that night. I came across it again about a dozen years ago when it turned up on New Year's Eve. Weird. Someone's idea of a joke? Recently, I bought it in tandem with another John Agar film called Journey to the Seventh Planet. John Carradine stumbles around as one of the corpses and does very well. Some of the extensive stock footage defies logic. A plane crashes into a marked bulls-eye on a hillside. It looked like a military training ground. The invaders are defeated with the simplest of weapons. They usually are.

Invisible aliens stationed on the moon have had enough of Earth's atomic tomfoolery. So they use reanimated dead bodies of humans to let the nations of the world know they mean business, delivering an ultimatum that Earth better surrender to them or else! Now a group of people gather together in a bunker laboratory to work on a way to defeat the invisible invaders while zombies lurk outside.

Edward L. Cahn directed this campy and cheap sci-fi movie with a muddled anti-nuke message. The special effects are poor with an overuse of stock footage and a monotone narration (one of the staples of no-budget sci-fi flicks back in the day). Still, Cahn produces a reasonable amount of atmosphere and it kept my interest throughout. The short runtime helps. It stars washed-up stars John Agar, John Carradine, and Robert Hutton, along with Jean Byron (of Patty Duke Show fame) and venerable character actor Philip Tonge. Other reviewers have pointed out that the movie might have inspired Night of the Living Dead. Whether that's truly the case or not, I don't know, but it is certainly something for movie buffs to chew on. Not a particularly good picture but fun in its way. Fans of '50 sci-fi will like it more than most.

Invisible Invaders (1959)

** (out of 4)

Incredibly silly film about an invisible alien who comes to Earth to once again try to wipe us all out. Thankfully for us humans Maj. Bruce Jay (John Agar) is on hand to try and save us. INVISIBLE INVADERS has the reputation of being one of the worst films ever made but I think that's a tad bit too harsh for a number of reasons. The biggest for me is that it's hard for a 66-minute movie to be the worst ever made because the filmmakers are at least smart enough to not keep giving us stuff to make the movie run longer than it should. The 66-minutes actually go by rather fast for the most part and this is always a good thing. Another thing this film has going for it is that we're given some familiar names that cult and "B" movie fans are going to know. Agar certainly looks a bit tired here but maybe he just wasn't feeling good during the production. He's at least entertaining and has no problem carrying the film. John Carradine appears briefly at the start of the picture and while he's certainly not reaching the levels he did in THE GRAPES OF WRATH, it's still fun seeing him. Jean Byron plays the female/love interest and does a nice job as well. Robert Rutton is also in the cast and adds some charm. The special effects are pretty bland as usually we just gets piles of dirt "moving" to show us the invisible creature or we get branches moving. These certainly aren't groundbreaking but at the same time they could have been a lot worse. There's some stock footage used throughout with the funniest bit happening when a plane crashes, due to the aliens, but the stock footage is from a test run and you can see the "X" mark to where it's supposed to hit.

Invisible invaders arrive in invisible spaceships and warn Earth they can and will take over the planet in three days. To do this they take over the bodies of the recently dead. Sound familiar? Well hold on because this 1959 thriller got here before PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE (1959), LAST MAN ON EARTH (1962), and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968). John Carradine picked up a quick paycheque playing Dr. Karol Noymann, a scientist killed in a lab explosion who becomes the first one resurrected by the aliens. (Interesting enough "Karol Noymann" was also the name of a scientist in the 1957 sci/fi'er THE GIANT CLAW directed by Fred F. Sears. Coincidence?) Air Force officer John Agar and spineless scientist Robert Hutton spend way too much of the 66 minute movie fighting over who gets to fall in love with femme physicist Jean Byron. The briefly seen alien invaders look suspiciously like the title monster in IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE; and since Edward L. Cahn directed both pictures it is highly likely that he did not want to waste a chance to re-use the costume. Many movies ask us to suspend our disbelief but this one demands we leave all logic outside before we enter the cinema. The aliens, via Mr. Carradine, inform us that they invaded the moon 20,000 years ago and destroyed the civilisation living there. They have also managed to make everything on their planet invisible, which probably means they spend a lot of time bumping into things. The destruction of Earth is accomplished by stock footage from action serials and newsreel footage of real life disasters. B-movie fans will note that Hal Torey, playing a farmer killed by Agar in self defence and then returned to life as an invader, proved such a memorable figure that MTV exploited his image in commercials and on t-shirts for much of the late 1980's. Also showing up briefly is Chuck Niles who played the mad hunchback in Jerry Warren's memorable TEENAGE ZOMBIES. John Agar had fought monsters before in TARANTULA, THE MOLE PEOPLE and many others. He finally became a monster himself in the rarely seen 1962 thriller HAND OF DEATH. Robert Hutton would soon meet up with THE MAN WITHOUT A BODY (1959) and THE SLIME PEOPLE (1963). For all it's low budget short-comings this is a fun film; just the sort to make a Saturday afternoon enjoyable.

I have to admit this was fun to watch despite how ridiculously silly it was or maybe because of that. This isn't a zombie movie in the modern sense, but a sci-fi alien offshoot of the mind-controlled zombies out of the voodoo genre. It's a big slice of black & white American cheese all the way which seems to use a lot of disaster stock footage for invasion scenes that involve conventional sabotage, but it manages to be pretty entertaining anyways.

The director also made 50's sci-fi movie "It! The Terror from Beyond Space" (which helped inspire lots of trapped on a spaceship with a creature film, including "Alien") and the swimming zombified sailors guarding buried treasure film "Zombies of Mora Tau" (which I still haven't seen yet as of writing this review).

THE PLOT: A scientist ditches out on his gov't job because he opposes nukes. A fellow scientist killed in an experiment walks up to his house and has a chat with him, but its not his friend. It's an alien who is none too happy with where out technological advancements are headed (reaching nuclear technology and space travel) and the threat they could pose to their outer space alien race and they want us to surrender or die (this was a common sci-fi plot thread back in the day). They are apparently invisible as are their spaceships awaiting us at their hidden base on the moon and the aliens can take over corpses and walk around in them sabotaging our planet. It's a race against time for the scientists to find a method to combat the alien menace before the walking dead breach the military bunker.

It doesn't have a lot of the elements of modern zombie films like gut munching or turning from being bitten (though the aliens will inhabit your body if you are killed), but it's kinda fun and has some good silly quotes. So bad you might think it's good 50's sci-fi fun.