Invisible Invaders

I have to admit this was fun to watch despite how ridiculously silly it was or maybe because of that. This isn't a zombie movie in the modern sense, but a sci-fi alien offshoot of the mind-controlled zombies out of the voodoo genre. It's a big slice of black & white American cheese all the way which seems to use a lot of disaster stock footage for invasion scenes that involve conventional sabotage, but it manages to be pretty entertaining anyways.

The director also made 50's sci-fi movie "It! The Terror from Beyond Space" (which helped inspire lots of trapped on a spaceship with a creature film, including "Alien") and the swimming zombified sailors guarding buried treasure film "Zombies of Mora Tau" (which I still haven't seen yet as of writing this review).

THE PLOT: A scientist ditches out on his gov't job because he opposes nukes. A fellow scientist killed in an experiment walks up to his house and has a chat with him, but its not his friend. It's an alien who is none too happy with where out technological advancements are headed (reaching nuclear technology and space travel) and the threat they could pose to their outer space alien race and they want us to surrender or die (this was a common sci-fi plot thread back in the day). They are apparently invisible as are their spaceships awaiting us at their hidden base on the moon and the aliens can take over corpses and walk around in them sabotaging our planet. It's a race against time for the scientists to find a method to combat the alien menace before the walking dead breach the military bunker.

It doesn't have a lot of the elements of modern zombie films like gut munching or turning from being bitten (though the aliens will inhabit your body if you are killed), but it's kinda fun and has some good silly quotes. So bad you might think it's good 50's sci-fi fun.

This is one of the dumbest movies ever made - but I still get a kick out of watching it over and over again. First - John Carradine is vaporized in an atomic lab explosion and yet an invisible invader (which somehow has to drag its feet in the sand as it walks) can still take over the body. Second - if someone got on the P.A. at a hockey game today and said the world is about the end, some of the guys in the cheap seats would go up there and beat him up instead of running away. Third - how many times can they use the same scene of the zombies stumbling down the hill outside the army bunker? This movie is so stupid, it's frightening, but for some reason I love it.

Spooky little horror film that had tentacles which reached far and wide. Many other filmmakers may have taken a dip in this cinematic pool. Don't snicker. Checkout the walking stiffs in business suits staggering around the countryside. Remind you of anyone? The last survivors--holed up in some sought of army bunker--predict a future bird flick. The clash between scientists, civilians and the military is always a staple of the action genre. There may be others, but I would have to watch it again. I first saw this on Creature Feature back in the 70's. It spooked me out to the degree that I swore off this type of movie until Chiller Theatre came on later that night. I came across it again about a dozen years ago when it turned up on New Year's Eve. Weird. Someone's idea of a joke? Recently, I bought it in tandem with another John Agar film called Journey to the Seventh Planet. John Carradine stumbles around as one of the corpses and does very well. Some of the extensive stock footage defies logic. A plane crashes into a marked bulls-eye on a hillside. It looked like a military training ground. The invaders are defeated with the simplest of weapons. They usually are.

Invisible aliens stationed on the moon have had enough of Earth's atomic tomfoolery. So they use reanimated dead bodies of humans to let the nations of the world know they mean business, delivering an ultimatum that Earth better surrender to them or else! Now a group of people gather together in a bunker laboratory to work on a way to defeat the invisible invaders while zombies lurk outside.

Edward L. Cahn directed this campy and cheap sci-fi movie with a muddled anti-nuke message. The special effects are poor with an overuse of stock footage and a monotone narration (one of the staples of no-budget sci-fi flicks back in the day). Still, Cahn produces a reasonable amount of atmosphere and it kept my interest throughout. The short runtime helps. It stars washed-up stars John Agar, John Carradine, and Robert Hutton, along with Jean Byron (of Patty Duke Show fame) and venerable character actor Philip Tonge. Other reviewers have pointed out that the movie might have inspired Night of the Living Dead. Whether that's truly the case or not, I don't know, but it is certainly something for movie buffs to chew on. Not a particularly good picture but fun in its way. Fans of '50 sci-fi will like it more than most.

That famous film phrase, actually incorrect by military terms, kind of sums up the way a lot of viewers must feel about this movie. The film isn't that bad in concept, but mistakes, goofs and continuity fluffs drag it down far more than it should be. The acting is standard for the genre. Agar is the predictable Air Force major, in yet another military and science versus the invaders epic. They're all there: the obligatory lead scientist, his beautiful daughter, the cowardly fiancée (who obviously eventually loses her to Agar), plastic commanding general and an assortment of dead brought to life to conquer the world ("Plan 9 From Outer Space" did this bit three years before but didn't get released in 1956 because Ed Wood ran out of money). The goofs include radioactive air that somehow can not get up under a loosely-fitting protective hood; a standard truck cabin that is somehow protected from radioactivity coming inside even when the door is opened and the driver is only wearing a suit; ropes that loop conveniently around a fallen invader lying at the bottom of a pit filled with acrylic; and, oh yes, film footage so old you will wonder which century these invaders came to earth anyway. So there you have it. Over and out. ~