Invasores de Marte

After reading many of the comments regarding this movie, I am somewhat amused to see how many have forgotten that there was life before CGI computer effects.

"Invaders From Mars" is still potent in the most valuable way, and that's imagination. The storyline, which owes a great deal to "The Wizard of Oz" in it's final moments, has deep psychological effects which still resonate today. If it wasn't so effective, people wouldn't still be discussing it after nearly fifty years.

CGI effects have dumbed down movies to nothing more than computer-effects orgies, relying on a "gee-whiz" factor that ultimately comes up empty in more than a few cases (the big-budget "Godzilla" leaps quickly to mind here). IFM was originally set to be a 3-D movie, which was ultimately scrapped for budgetary concerns. William Cameron Menzies, the director, used the original sets which had been designed to force perspective. The resulting film, which throws the objectivity to a child's point of view has fascinated viewers for years. Menzies did the best with what he could afford, and the visual results are still gripping even today. Yes, the film has it's flaws, but we need to consider the making of IFM in its historical context. Menzies was an Oscar-winning art director (for "Gone With the Wind", no less). Also consider his work on "Thief of Bagdad" with Sabu, one of the most beautiful color films ever made. IFM shows the same visual excitement (referred to by some viewers as "garish"), but rising above it's badly slashed budget to gain a foothold in popular memory.

It's sad to think that the work of a real artist will be dismissed simply because he worked in an era where technology hadn't swallowed vision.

This one scared the hell out of me when I first saw it as a kid; I remember them showing it in the evening on BBC2 back in the 1980s. Looks like a lot of other reviewers were similarly traumatised. Watching it now, as an adult, it's easy to laugh at what is a shoddy, low budget production. Scenes are repeated, special effects are wobbly to say the least, the aliens are silly rather than menacing, and the paucity of the production is apparent in every respect.

And yet...there's something oddly menacing about this film. It's partly the Cold War paranoia-inspired plot about nice, ordinary people being taken over by a sinister foreign menace. Interestingly, this is the earliest version I've seen on that theme, predating INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS by a couple of years. The paranoia is cloying and really raises the hackles, even as an adult, and even allowing for the cheesy over-acting of the child star.

The more overt aspects of the story, which take place towards the climax, are also profound, and in this case the imaginative nature of the production outweighs the budgetary constraints. That alien leader, little more than a head in a goldfish bowl, is oddly disturbing and an image that's stayed with me for my whole life. It's easy to forgive the problems in a film like INVADERS FROM MARS when it contains such classic, timeless material and I do think this is one of those '50s-era B-movie alien invasion classics.

This movie scarred the hell out of me back in 1953 (I was 9 years old at the time). However, I don't ever remember seeing the 3D version. In fact, the booklet that came with my new DVD said that the limited number of 3D cameras weren't available for use when IFM was originally made, due to a number of other 3D films being made at the same time. The negative was instead shot on the new single strip Eastman film.

Anyway, the movie was quite effective in creating a creepy and alien world in which a young boy could escape to on a Saturday afternoon. I enjoyed the story, and really didn't care about the mediocre special effects. In fact, because the story was obviously a dream, the soft focus shots and cheezy effects made it all the more surreal. I might also add that beautiful Helena Carter became my first dream babe! LOL.

Sorry Bruce Cook (an earlier reviewer), the actor who played David in IFM was named Jimmy Hunt.

One of the most memorable SF films from the 50s. For anyone who was a kid in the 50s or 60s, just say "the movie where people are sucked into the sand", and everyone instantly knows which movie you mean. Those scenes are unforgettable, as are the scenes of the Martian Intelligence, and the image of the nurse about to receive the mind control device. And that haunting, otherworldly choral sound! Probably the most brilliantly eerie vocal sound ever made for a movie. Unfortunately, many people won't be able to look past the low budget 50s production values, but there's some great work here. William Cameron Menzies was a genius at production design. Check out the nightmarish forced perspective of the path leading to the sand pit, and the police station. A must see.

Invaders From Mars is, arguably, a cult classic. William Cameron Menzies, of "Gone With The Wind" and "The Thief of Baghdad" and "Things to Come" fame puts his artistic expertise to work in creating a world of impending doom, seen through the eyes of an 11 year old boy.

It is because of this point-of-view that lends a nightmarish quality to a struggle this boy encounters when he tries to convince the authorities that a spaceship landed in a sandpit behind his house.

The sense of "something's not right" with Mom and Dad starts as the boy's parents are sucked below the sandpit into the evil arms of the Martians, made into zombie-spies, and returned to the surface. The boy's fear mounts when local police and even high-ranking military fall prey to the Martians' mind control.

Through the assistance of a well trusted astrophysicist and a school psychologist the boy convinces the local Army base to make a beach head in the boy's back yard... and the battle to return the boy's parents and the villagers to normalcy begins. Eventually, the boy and the psychologist confront the Martian intelligence (midget Luce Potter as a convincing body-less head with tentacle-like arms in a glass sphere). In a poor "race against time" sequence in which the little boy and psychologist are rescued from the spaceship before it blows up, the film reaches its climax to the cacophonous din of artillery explosions, and Raoul Kraushaar's eerie, disharmonious a capella choir.

Many criticize the poor production values, the over use of stock footage, the idiotic costumes, and the fact that the film had TWO endings (one popularized in Great Britain, one here in U.S.A.).

Yes, I agree that production and set values were cheap (green condoms to represent molten rock "bubbles" in the tunnels and obvious zippers in the velour-like jump suits of the Martian slaves, to name a few.)

Nevertheless, Menzies applies forced perspective to his sets, and the skillful use of background mattes to lend an unearthly tone to the scene Remember folks, this is 1953... a time when Communism infiltration and subordination of Mr. and Mrs. Joe America was the chief "fear of the day". There are few other films of that period that deftly portrayed this paranoia so aptly as "Invaders From Mars"

If one overlooks the "rough" edges of its obviously low budget, one can still appreciate the helplessness, fear and mistrust the little boy develops as his parents and others are turned into "tools of the Martians". Is it truly a nightmare, or did it actually happen? The viewer is left to make that choice.