The Invisible Enemy

The first manned expedition to Mars lands, but all contact is lost, three years later a second expedition goes up, led by Major Merritt and Jack Buckley. Buckley makes it his mission to discover what happened to the first crew.

A real space chiller, more than average shades of horror about this one, and it worked very well, for the time this packed in the scares, I bet this caused a few sleepless nights.

Shades of Dune and Doctor Who, this seemed like a highly original episode, way ahead of its time. I keep expecting the standard in this second series to drop off, it hasn't.

Very good performances throughout, Adan West of course stood out. Rudy Solari did a fine job also, no complaints here.

Production wise, they did a very fine job, I thought the sand monsters looked very good, they definitely looked menacing, great job on a relatively low budget. Dated now or course, just remember this goes back all the way to 1964.

7/10.

Parts of the plot are similar to the movie TREMORS. Unfortunately, for the story to work, the trained military crews of the space flights have to be even more dumb than the simple and humorous main characters in that very entertaining movie. I found it really tough to enjoy seeing this episode again after many, many years because the characters behaved do stupidly, in spite of their very simple and logical orders to always stay in sight. I kept wishing the writer had tried a little harder to set up the dangerous and scary situations without having certain people in the story be so dim-witted. A potentially interesting idea that just wasn't handled very well.

The first manned expedition to Mars has successfully landed, and the two-man crew explores the surface of the planet when something goes horribly wrong, and all contact is lost. Three years later, Earth tries again, this time sending a four-man crew to re-investigate, when tragedy strikes again, and two more men are lost. Major Merritt(played by Adam West) and Captain Jack Buckley(played by Rudy Solari) discover the true nature of the mystery, voracious sand sharks that may prevent them taking off again...Paper thin story with outdated science(an atmosphere on Mars?) still manages to be entertaining on a Halloween-viewing level. Not to be taken seriously of course, but watchable.

A spaceship from Earth is sent to look into the possibilities of colonizing Mars. The two astronauts however are attacked by an unseen entity and disappear. Three years later a new expedition of four men is sent led by Adam West to discover what happened and find the remains of the old ship. As figured, they start getting knocked off one by one by the same unseen enemy, however they soon make a shocking discovery of who or what is attacking them. This is a pretty ok episode that I loved to watch especially when I was younger. Watching it know it's easy to see its faults, as a lot of what's happening could probably be avoided by the characters who are supposed to be trained military astronauts not making stupid decisions. The creature on display however is pure 50s b movie gold and is why this is getting the rating it is as it's pretty much the only memorable thing about this, that and of course starring a young pre-Batman Adam West. The original short story this was based on sounds a lot better than how this turned out, and after finding out the script was re-written multiple times it's not surprising.

Just like in a Friday night chiller thriller movie, astronauts are getting killed off one by one by some odd looking sand monster(s) It's not too bad, but it is oddly casted. Adam West plays the lead and at times he sounds like the straight man in a comedy routine. It's Batman vs monsters who live in the sand!! Ted Knight is also oddly cast in this. It was hard to take Ted Baxter serious. Anyway, it's worth a watch if you like those "getting killed one by one" type horror movies.