Invaders from Mars (1953)
An imaginative and curious boy, David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt), sets his alarm for four o'clock so he can look through his telescope at Orion's Great Nebula. The sound wakes up his parents, Mary (Hillary Brooke) and George (Leif Erickson). George enthusiastically takes a look at the Nebula while Mary tells David to return to bed. At 4:40 A.M. a thunderstorm wakes up David. He looks out his window, sees a flying saucer hovering over a nearby sandy field. It disappears below the horizon. He wakes up his parents to tell them about it. They don't believe him, playing the condescending act of caring mentors humoring a smart kid with too many fancies they don't have time to hear about.
"It was just a dream," Mary tells her son.
He knows what he saw, though. At dawn he gets up and investigates. There's nothing where the saucer apparently landed. Still, uncanny events unfold that morning. After his father takes a look at where the saucer would've landed, he returns home changed. George MacLean looks and sounds the same, but he's cold and at times mean towards his son and wife. For some reason this previously nice man now lacks warmth. He complains of not feeling well, he'll miss work--atypical behavior.
Two cops, responding to reports of a strange light earlier on, check out what should be the saucer's landing site. We finally see what happened to George. A sand flat opens and closes, swallowing up the cops. They later show up at George and Mary's, like David's father lacking affect. David by now has spotted a peculiar mark on the back of his father's neck. The cops have the same mark.
A neighbor girl gets swallowed by whatever it is and spit back out. Previously carefree and sweet, the girl sets a gasoline fire in the basement of her parents' house.
The saucer landed and went underground using some mysterious earth displacement technology.
The savior of the piece proves to be a psychiatrist, Dr. Pat Blake (Helena Carter). David, of course, gets treated like an annoyance deserving temporary incarceration due to his wild stories. Dr. Blake takes his tale seriously insofar as she believes he believes it. Later, confronted by David's parents (taken over by aliens) and by cops also compromised, Dr. Blake realizes the boy's telling the truth.
Bring in the Pentagon!
Army troops, tanks, all the Korean War period death-making weapons technologies minus nukes come into play at the sandy area as the authorities attempt to locate the subterranean ship. Once the military gets in they're confronted by a bewildering maze of walls crystallized through some unknown process. The ship's heart is guarded by robotic beings evidently not alive in any conventional sense. These anthropoid machines can take several pounds of machine gun lead in their bodies before they go down, but that isn't a guarantee they won't get up again.
Dr. Blake nearly gets poked by the neck puncher. David confronts the alien leader, a silent golden head and shoulders with tentacles contained inside a transparent sphere. The thing is mostly expressionless, moving its eyes occasionally. Like the alien in Ridley Scott's Alien, this golden head-thing is a challenge to our empathic abilities.
The reveal on this submerged ship and the golden alien happens late in the movie, an advantage to the overall story structure as suspense builds, the unknown acting on familiar faces and small city environments. Throughout most of the movie is the feeling of something seriously fucked up (especially when the little girl burns her house down). David's alienation from his own previously loving parents would represent a nightmarish scenario for any child--the two adults most trusted of any in the world suddenly become strangers.
The treatment, finally, of the alien invaders is typically U.S. Army-violent. Extermination is the only accepted option. Still, there's a twist at the end. I didn't like it, but I had to accept it. I won't say what it is.
It's a pretty good film from the decade when Hollywood produced a large number of science fiction titles ranging widely in quality. William Cameron Menzies, the director, was also an art director (production designer to use today's term). The look and unsettling otherness of the golden-headed alien by itself makes the film worth watching. It's a bizarre character even now, as it must've seemed to audiences sixty-six years ago. Luce Potter, a little person and Mexican actress, played this alien. Her smallness lent itself to the overall effect, since the sphere surrounding her head is smaller than it would've been had a normal-sized person played the role. David's child stature and small kid head also match the size of this deadly adversary; a further clue to the film's overall meaning.
Vic Neptune
An imaginative and curious boy, David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt), sets his alarm for four o'clock so he can look through his telescope at Orion's Great Nebula. The sound wakes up his parents, Mary (Hillary Brooke) and George (Leif Erickson). George enthusiastically takes a look at the Nebula while Mary tells David to return to bed. At 4:40 A.M. a thunderstorm wakes up David. He looks out his window, sees a flying saucer hovering over a nearby sandy field. It disappears below the horizon. He wakes up his parents to tell them about it. They don't believe him, playing the condescending act of caring mentors humoring a smart kid with too many fancies they don't have time to hear about.
"It was just a dream," Mary tells her son.
He knows what he saw, though. At dawn he gets up and investigates. There's nothing where the saucer apparently landed. Still, uncanny events unfold that morning. After his father takes a look at where the saucer would've landed, he returns home changed. George MacLean looks and sounds the same, but he's cold and at times mean towards his son and wife. For some reason this previously nice man now lacks warmth. He complains of not feeling well, he'll miss work--atypical behavior.
Two cops, responding to reports of a strange light earlier on, check out what should be the saucer's landing site. We finally see what happened to George. A sand flat opens and closes, swallowing up the cops. They later show up at George and Mary's, like David's father lacking affect. David by now has spotted a peculiar mark on the back of his father's neck. The cops have the same mark.
A neighbor girl gets swallowed by whatever it is and spit back out. Previously carefree and sweet, the girl sets a gasoline fire in the basement of her parents' house.
The saucer landed and went underground using some mysterious earth displacement technology.
The savior of the piece proves to be a psychiatrist, Dr. Pat Blake (Helena Carter). David, of course, gets treated like an annoyance deserving temporary incarceration due to his wild stories. Dr. Blake takes his tale seriously insofar as she believes he believes it. Later, confronted by David's parents (taken over by aliens) and by cops also compromised, Dr. Blake realizes the boy's telling the truth.
Bring in the Pentagon!
Army troops, tanks, all the Korean War period death-making weapons technologies minus nukes come into play at the sandy area as the authorities attempt to locate the subterranean ship. Once the military gets in they're confronted by a bewildering maze of walls crystallized through some unknown process. The ship's heart is guarded by robotic beings evidently not alive in any conventional sense. These anthropoid machines can take several pounds of machine gun lead in their bodies before they go down, but that isn't a guarantee they won't get up again.
Dr. Blake nearly gets poked by the neck puncher. David confronts the alien leader, a silent golden head and shoulders with tentacles contained inside a transparent sphere. The thing is mostly expressionless, moving its eyes occasionally. Like the alien in Ridley Scott's Alien, this golden head-thing is a challenge to our empathic abilities.
The reveal on this submerged ship and the golden alien happens late in the movie, an advantage to the overall story structure as suspense builds, the unknown acting on familiar faces and small city environments. Throughout most of the movie is the feeling of something seriously fucked up (especially when the little girl burns her house down). David's alienation from his own previously loving parents would represent a nightmarish scenario for any child--the two adults most trusted of any in the world suddenly become strangers.
The treatment, finally, of the alien invaders is typically U.S. Army-violent. Extermination is the only accepted option. Still, there's a twist at the end. I didn't like it, but I had to accept it. I won't say what it is.
It's a pretty good film from the decade when Hollywood produced a large number of science fiction titles ranging widely in quality. William Cameron Menzies, the director, was also an art director (production designer to use today's term). The look and unsettling otherness of the golden-headed alien by itself makes the film worth watching. It's a bizarre character even now, as it must've seemed to audiences sixty-six years ago. Luce Potter, a little person and Mexican actress, played this alien. Her smallness lent itself to the overall effect, since the sphere surrounding her head is smaller than it would've been had a normal-sized person played the role. David's child stature and small kid head also match the size of this deadly adversary; a further clue to the film's overall meaning.
Vic Neptune
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