Invasion of the Animal People

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.

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".

Actually it's a Swedish-American collaboration. A spaceship (that looks VERY much like a meteor) crashes in Northern Sweden before the eyes of some Samis. Some people, including the young geologist Erik Engström and the American Dr Wilson, travel up to a village in the vicinity to take a look at the ship - and Dr Wilsons beautiful niece Diane. At about the same time the aliens (who never speak, but sound kinda like synthesizers) release their pet - a hilarious, 3 metre high, furry monster with ridiculous teeth (you've got to see it for yourself). I guess you get the picture. Without spoiling any of the fun I can say that the rest of the story involves wrecking of Sami villages, a totally uncalled-for nude scene (well, almost) , and a love affair (WHO could it be between?). This is a 50's monster turkey with real class, it has all the cliches and very few dull moments. If you watch it until the end, you get to see a visual effect that is BY FAR the worst one I've ever seen.

Invasion of the Animal People (1962)

* (out of 4)

A brief introduction to director Jerry Warren who is the worst in my opinion. Warren would buy foreign movies, cut out the dialogue scenes and then add newly directed scenes so that he could then sell the movie off as his own. These added scenes usually have nothing to do with the "original" movie scenes surrounding them but that can sometimes add to the charm. This film was originally a Swedish production called Terror in the Midnight Sun but Warren chopped it up, added a few scenes with John Carradine and had him serve as the narrator. A spaceship crashes in the mountains and out gets a huge, hairy creature who stalks some scientists. The look of the creature is certainly dumb enough to get a few laughs but this doesn't happen until the final ten minutes and what follows that is pretty hard to get though. Slow, boring, stupid and simply badly made. The added scenes are equally poor. However, it must be said that this is still a lot better than Warren's Attack of the Mayan Mummy and Frankenstein Island.

On the DVD I rented there were two versions of the same movie, Horror in the Midnight Sun, and Invasion of the Animal People. Although these are quite different, IMDb has these listed together as Rymdinvasion i Lappland. Horror in the Midnight Sun was a fairly decent movie. It's another low budget B movie from the late 50s. A lot of these have their problems and Horror in the Midnight Sun is no exception but it is an entertaining movie. It was also interesting to watch a movie of this genre that is Swedish/American made. It's a Swedish version of a B Sci/Fi monster movie. I'm glad I watched it. It was nothing special but still decent. Invasion of the Animal People was not as good and by itself would be a mess. When seen after watching Horror in the Midnight Sun, it does show how a movie can be cut up, pieces spliced in and the movie changed. Watching to see what and how the film was changed was the only thing I found interesting with Invasion of the Animal People. If you're really into 50s Sci/Fi B monster movies, you should take a look at Horror In The Midnight Sun but if you only have a chance to see Invasion of the Animal People, don't bother.