Invaders from Mars **** (1953, Helena Carter, Arthur Franz, Jimmy Hunt, Leif Erickson, Hillary Brooke) – Classic Movie Review 2371

Director-designer William Cameron Menzies’s much-loved landmark 1953 sci-fi fantasy favourite stars Jimmy Hunt as David MacLean, a small-town American kid who sees a flying saucer land in the marsh outside his house. But, of course, nobody believes him!

Leif Erickson plays the kid’s dad who eventually goes to investigates and comes home with a strange demeanour – he’s now weirdly sullen and rude. Then other folks who go to investigate the flying sauce fall into the sandpit and begin acting like him.

Young David knows that aliens are taking over the bodies of humans. He finds some much-needed serious help from lady doctor Pat Blake (Helena Carter) and brilliant astronomer Dr Stuart Kelston (Arthur Franz), also the film’s narrator. They find the aliens are green creatures with insect-like eyes. But there’s also a leader with a big head, shifting eyes and tentacles. Hillary Brooke plays David’s mom.

The movie that unfolds is a stylish, entertaining and vividly creative semi-classic greatly enlivened with its inventive sets, John F Seitz’s imaginative cinematography, its eerie score and unsettling atmosphere. It is one of the best and most influential of the Fifties alien invasion and abduction movies made during the era’s communist scare sci-fi movie boom.

This is the very first space invaders film to be shot in colour (the Cinecolor process) and it was designed, though alas not filmed, in 3D. It was shot on the new single-strip Eastmancolor negative. Cinecolor Labs then produced the trailers and release prints in the three-colour Cinecolor process.

Seitz said that the film was planned in great detail to be filmed in 3D but that the last minute it was discovered that no camera was available. All of the sets were constructed at Republic Studios to be shot in 3D. 

Raoul Kraushaar’s unique music score consists of an ethereal, rhythmically wavering tonal composition sung in unison by a choir. It is used as both a sound effect and as the scenic score associated with the Martians. The eerie sandpit choir chant was done by a choral group of eight men and eight women, enhanced with echo in post-production.

Richard Blake’s screenplay is based on the story by John Tucker Battle, who was inspired by a dream told to him by his wife.

There are two versions, and the second British release version is undoubtedly superior. The original US release version runs 78 minutes and, annoyingly, and far too cosily, ends with the kid having dreamt the entire story.

A new ending and additional scenes were added after objections from British distributor Rank. Parts of the film were re-edited, and a straightforward climax was substituted for the original ending. New scenes were filmed several months after the US release, including one showing the destruction of the Martian flying saucer in the sky when the Army’s charges finally explode. The 80-minute British release also includes a re-shot, greatly expanded planetarium scene.

The Special Edition was released on DVD for the film’s 50th anniversary in 2003.

The Martian leader Intelligence enclosed in glass is played by female Luce Potter, though the character is a male in the movie. For many years she got letters from fans telling her how much she had scared them as kids. She was one of the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz.

The special effects department used condoms to create the bubbles on the walls of the underground tunnels. Menzies filled 12 notebooks with charcoal sketches depicting every scene he planned to shoot but they disappeared just days before principal photography.

It was remade as Invaders from Mars by Tobe Hooper in 1986 for Golan and Globus’s British Cannon studios, with Karen Black, Hunter Carson, Timothy Bottoms, Louise Fletcher, Bud Cort and Jimmy Hunt, the 1953 film’s boy hero, now as the police chief.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2371

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com