Invasion of the Animal People

This was a 1959 Swedish/American co-production. In the Lappland of Sweden a meteor crashes. Turns out it's not a meteor--it's a spaceship from another world. For no given reason--a huge, hairy monster comes from the spaceship, walks around, causes destruction and kidnaps a woman who has come with a team of scientists to explore the "meteor". Can anything stop this monster?

And what does it want?

There are lots of things wrong with this film--it has a romantic title song (for a SF feature!!!!); it opens with hysterically lousy special effects showing the spaceship landing; the monster doesn't show up until 50 minutes in (the film is only 70 minutes long); endless skiing footage; lousy acting (particularly Babara Wilson); laughable lapses in logic (note how conveniently Wilson's busted ankle is ignored). Also there's a pointless and fairly explicit nude shower scene which has no bearing whatsoever with the story! Still, it has an intelligent script; it's well-directed; takes place in a most unusual setting; has a very scary-looking monster and moves pretty quick. No classic but interesting.

It came to American in 1962. For some reason producer Jerry Warren destroyed it. He changed the title to "Invasion of the Animal People" (?????) and added John Carradine to the cast (probably for marquee value). Carradine opens up the film with the most insipid speech I've ever heard (it makes next to no sense) and narrates portions of it. Warren added dreadful new footage (badly shot and acted) which added nothing to the story; gave it a really silly new opening (involving Wilson); says it takes place in Switzerland (????); rearranged footage and cut out huge chunks. What is left is a hysterically bad, incomprehensible mess! I believe Carradine later said this was one of his worst movies (he's not kidding). It's known as being a camp classic.

But now BOTH versions are available on DVD. It's more than a little interesting to see how Warren totally destroyed a fairly good movie. It's a good thing the original is now available for people to view. "Invasion" gets a 1 (I wish I could give it a zero) but "Terror" gets a 7. Like I said, no classic but pretty well-done...and how many monster movies do you know that were made in Sweden?

"Invasion of the Animal People," though carrying a 1961 copyright, is actually a 1958 production originally titled "Rymdinvasion i Lappland" (Space Invasion of Lappland), made in Sweden by Hollywood director Virgil Vogel, coming off a pair of marginal Universal entries, "The Mole People" and "The Land Unknown." The arctic setting certainly provides a more interesting backdrop than anything that happens on film, as a trio of aliens burrow into the snow and ice, allowing a solitary creature to escape, approximately 20 feet tall and covered in fur. We only get to see the 'animal person' during the final two reels of an 80 minute feature, actually 9 minutes longer than the original, despite several scenes of exposition shortened and streamlined (Warren's theatrical edit lasted under an hour at a mere 55 minutes). The perpetrator of this 'new' movie was our old friend Jerry Warren, a hustler adept at taking other people's films and making a fast buck out of them, adding newly shot footage of his own that adds nothing but running time. Such was the case here, as John Carradine supplies three minutes of on screen narration to open the film, after which we only occasionally hear his sterling voice propping up the deadly dull proceedings. Warren needlessly begins his version with an abominable 17 straight minutes of new dialogue heavy scenes, utilizing actress Barbara Wilson for proper continuity, so by the time we reach the original footage it's a painless rendition of the unreleased "Terror in the Midnight Sun" (interrupted by only two additional Warren-shot scenes). Gorgeous brunette Barbara Wilson did a fairly daring nude scene in the Swedish version, also a veteran of pulsating pulchritude in "Teenage Doll," "Blood of Dracula," and "The Flesh Eaters." Screenwriter Arthur C. Pierce continued in the genre vein with "The Cosmic Man," "Beyond the Time Barrier," "The Human Duplicators," "Mutiny in Outer Space," "Women of the Prehistoric Planet," "Dimension 5," "Cyborg 2087," "The Destructors," and "The Astral Factor." Jerry Warren deserves some small credit for hardly tampering with what he had, but not for the two additional reels of nonsensical claptrap. Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater aired this Carradine title on four occasions between 1968 and 1971.

Terror in The Midnight Sun (1959), the title I prefer to use, can be summed up thus:

For some, a Viking good time. For others, a bloody waste of time. So bad, it's good some might say, While yet others might suggest It should never see the light of day!

I have seen a lot of obscure films and am pretty sure that this one must have had the lowest budget in making it. There is a man-like creature that is HUGE- he probably stands 40-60 feet tall. Anyway the Eskimo villagers throw fire torches at it.As for the plot- there may not even be one, other than these people go out into the frozen tundra to look for a cheapie spaceship and then end up skiing half the countryside. I do however, appreciate this show's obscurity- there is , as far as I've ever seen, nothing quite like it- It makes "Plan 9 From Outer Space" look like "Gone With The Wind".

If you like watching a bunch of people skiing around, you'll love this. An alien saucer lands in the opening round of the movie, and just sits there for about an hour of film running time before anything else involving it happens.

I saw this on one of those late night live-monster host shows, and the riffs the guy did kept the movie from being pretty boring. There's some scientists that want to see the "meteor" that came down, a romance between a couple who flirt on the ski runs, and some other folks that do a reenactment of the mob scene from Frankenstein. You have to wait a long time to see the creature, a really really big hairy guy with ugly teeth, and his brief scene is pretty campy. Still, I liked the Jolly Neanderthal Giant. As for aliens, they show up only once too, just staring at somebody. (One is seen a couple of times from the back, always watching TV).

Innocently silly and mildly amusing. There's loose ends at the end deliberately left for you to ponder. Or laugh at.