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 "Considered by many to be the definitive Cold War science-fiction film."
There's a thunderstorm and a boy sees a flying saucer land in a field. Nobody
believes him and the unseen aliens take control of the townspeople. They talk
up director William Cameron Menzies' resume as art director on Gone With The
Wind and Things To Come. They close by claiming that this one is "a
surrealistic nightmare that's impossible to forget!" 1953, 78 minutes, VHS
This is one of the classic alien invasion movies from the 1950s, sporting all
the things you could want from such a film. You've got paranoia, Cold War
overtones, domestic bliss with trouble brewing just below the surface, a sexy
doctor, some martians, and a brisk 78 minute running time (always leave'em
wanting more). Little David is a child of the 50s. He's into spaceships and
planets like today's kids are into dinosaurs and body piercings. It's a dark
and stormy night, with thunder and lightning flashing through his window. He's
wakes up at 4:00 a.m. to look at something in the night sky when he sees
something
strange land just over the hill from his backyard at the local sand pit. The
UFO promptly sinks into the earth. David wakes up his parents and in the
scariest scene in the movie, the mother looks right as with full make up on.
Even though it's four in the morning she's wearing enough lipstick so that it
appears as if sees wearing those fake wax lips you see around Halloween. Run
David, run! His parents don't believe him (how come parents never believe when
their kid says they saw a flying saucer land in the local sand pit?) But his
father
George goes out over the hill to investigate. He works at some secret
government plant and needs to inform his bosses if anything strange occurs
nearby (like a flying saucer landing in the local sand pit). The next morning,
George has not returned so his wife phones the cops who show up and say
something like, "you know how those scientists are." Then they go over the
hill to investigate and are swallowed up by the sand. George reappears at the house, but he's not the same. He scowls and is very
grouchy with his wife and David. He also talks in this deep monotone that
practically screams, "aliens have taken control of my body!" David notices a
wound on the back of his father's neck and asks his dad what happened to him.
George backhands David to the floor, but his mother walks in before George can
powerbomb the nosey little brat through the kitchen table. The cops return and
it's obvious that they've met the same fate as George. David watches the area
where all of these things are occurring and sees the neighbor girl, Cathy get
sucked under.
George then tells his wife that he wants to show her a little sumthin sumthin
over the hill at the local sandpit. Maybe these martians can teach her how to
properly apply her make up. David, being the busybody he is rushes over to
Cathy's house to squeal on her for hanging out with the martians, but then
Cathy shows up and sets the house on fire! David decides he needs to call his
buddy at the local observatory to get some help, but his pal isn't there.
David can't get anyone to believe that his dad has changed and eventually goes
to the police. The chief has been taken over by the martians and has David
locked up until his parents can come and take him home to beat him. Before
they arrive, a doctor shows up. David sees right away that she's quite the
tomato and starts telling her his story. Since she's good looking, she's
sympathetic to David's plight, but then David's mom shows up. She's dressed in
black and still hasn't figured what to do with foundation and blush and you can
tell she's just a commie, I mean martian lackey. Dr. Tomato refuses to let
David go home with his parents, because it's obvious that they're unfit.
George is mad and sweaty and his wife is dolled up like Bozo in mourning. As
luck would have it, Dr. Tomato knows the exact same local astronomer as David
and calls him for a hookup.  Dr. Tomato and David meet the geek-astronomer at the observatory and he
immediately launches into some convoluted explanation of what the martians are
up to. Somehow it involves synthetic humans called "mutants" that the martians
created. The martians somehow know that we are building atomic powered rockets
to send into space to defend ourselves against alien attacks or something, so
they've dropped in on us with their mutants and their mind control to put a
stop to it. Now, I never did figure out how the astronomer surmised all of
this from little David's tale of his parents being crabby, but I guess that's
why he's a scientist and I'm just Joe Twelvepack in my trailer watching Wheel of Fortune. The army is mobilized once everybody sees George chuck the general in charge
of the rocket project into the sandpit. The little neighbor girl, Cathy dies
and an autopsy is done. Dr. Tomato finds a martian brand implant in her neck
that is used to control the person, then kill them. The martians then blow up
the rocket plant. At this point, I was wondering just what the heck was going
on, because these stinky martians were pretty much running roughshod over us.
First they compromised our mothers and fathers, then they got our rockets.
What was next? Apple pie? But since this was the 1950s the US Army was still
seen as the solution to any problem so the tanks roll in and surround the local
sandpit. Explosive charges are set off and a hole is blown into the ground
below. The army folks jump in and find the martians have left that location.
Using good ole American knowhow they cobble together a MartainDetector and go
off
to hunt those dirty dogs down! As you might have guessed, it is about at this point that David and Dr. Tomato
get sucked under the ground and taken prisoner by the martian mutants. The
"mutants"
are these tall guys that look like they're dressed up in green velour pajamas
and they bring the prisoners in front of the head martian who is some
sliver-faced dude that is mostly all head and some tentacles and sits in a
transparent globe, kind of like an autographed baseball. In classic movie
fashion, they force Dr. Tomato down onto a table so that they can give her an
implant. The army and the mutants are chasing each other through the tunnels
the martians have made in the ground with their ray guns and eventually, the
astronomer finds Tomato and rescues her. The army sets off some bombs and the
martians try to hightail it out in their spaceship. Everyone runs to the
surface and watches as the ship explodes in mid-flight above the local sandpit.
Before it exploded, we saw little David running as fast as itty-bitty legs
could carry him, all the while visions of everything that had happened
throughout the movie played out in his mind, in dreamlike fashion. At this
point, the reaction you have is, this crazy little dude is having
a waking nightmare! Then he wakes up! It was all a dream! His parents tell
him he better get his ass back to bed unless he needs some more backhanding and
he does. Then he hears thunder and sees lightning flashing into his bedroom
and looks out the window to see a flying saucer land over the hill in the local
sandpit. Then the phrase "The nightmare becomes reality!" appears on the
screen! Okay that last bit with the cool catchphrase technically didn't happen
in this movie, but it did occur in City of the Walking Dead (some of you may know it under the title Nightmare City), a completely pathetic Italian zombie movie, that will of course be reviewed
once Anchor Bay gets off its can and releases the DVD.  Invaders From Mars transcends its origins as a alien invasion movie. becoming a
metaphor for pretty much everything this country was obsessed with in the
1950s. The rapid industrialization after WWII led to people leaving their
communities and migrating all across the country to new jobs and industry. No
longer did we necessarily know our neighbors and this extended to our own
immediate family. Children didn't necessarily know that their father was a
farmer or a fireman or whatever. Now they worked at factories, producing parts
for machines and when their fathers got home, they either didn't want to talk
about what they did or they couldn't talk about it. Additionally, there was
the strain to maintain the facade of domestic tranquility that just doesn't
exist in real families. Are the real monsters here the martians or the parents
that David no longer knows? The father who is suddenly hitting him and the
mother who stands idly by while it transpires? He runs away from the abuse
and tries to tell adults he thinks he can trust (the police), but no one will
listen to him until he finds a sympathetic doctor. She's beautiful because
this society equates beauty with kindness and understanding (Glinda the good
witch of the west!). David doesn't hate his parents, he wants them to go back
to the way they were, he wants them to get help and get better. I think the
fact that he dreamed all of this is perfect because dreams simultaneously
confuse and simply things. You have the whole martian angle to mask the pain
of directly dealing with the abuse. The solution in his dream is such a simple
one, it's child-like. His parents have mistreated him because of some implant
someone else put there. There is no blame assessed to the parents and it's
easy to put things right again (remove the implant). Just like a kid would
want. What about when he wakes up and things seem to be starting again? He's
back in the real world now. In the real world, things aren't fixed and
problems aren't solved nice and neat like in a science fiction movie. Problems
are ongoing and difficult and if David knows what's good for him he'll just
runaway! Heck, I'm no shrink, maybe David will turn out like the Menendez
brothers. The spectre of child abuse is only one of the themes this movie hits
on, but I think they're all related. Things are not always what they seem to
be, even the perfect family (country?) has its nasty little secrets. There
are things in the world trying to take
everything you hold dear from you and it's all you can do to keep those forces
at bay. This movie is great and you can just see the
times reflected in it perfectly, from the paranoia that we were losing the
space race to the Russians to the fact that the commies could be living next
door or in our bedroom, we were frightened that our friends and family could be
plotting against our country and by extension, ourselves. This was a time,
when I
think the Untied States felt its very existence was threatened by forces from
within and without and this movie reflects those fears perfectly.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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