Director-designer William Cameron Menzies’s much-loved landmark 1953 sci-fi fantasy favourite Invaders from Mars is remade by director Tobe Hooper in 1986 for Menahem Golan and Yoram 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.
Hooper’s movie turns out to be a tacky updated Eighties remake of the Fifties cult favourite film about the boy who sees a spaceship land in his back garden but no one will believe him that aliens have taken over his town to brainwash its inhabitants.
Everything looks right and set to go – actors, director – but the movie falls apart early on and the intriguing cast of worthy performers are down on their luck with the script and largely wasted.
In neat casting, Jimmy Hunt, the 1953 film’s boy hero, is now playing the police chief in this version and the boy here is played by Karen Black’s son Hunter Carson. Now that’s scary! Hunter Carson, born on 26 December 1975, is the son of Karen Black (1939–2013) and writer L.M. Kit Carson (1941–2014).
It also stars Timothy Bottoms and Laraine Newman as the boy’s parents, George and Ellen Gardner, Louise Fletcher as Mrs McKeltch, James Karen as General Climet Wilson, and Bud Cort as Mark Weinstein.
Also in the cast are Eric Pierpoint, Christopher Allport, Donald Hotton, Kenneth Kimmins, Charlie Dell, William Bassett, Virginya Keehne, Chris Hebert, Mason Nupuf, William Frankfather, Joseph Brutsman, Eric Norris, Debra Berger, Eddy Donno, Mark Giardino, Dale Dye, Lonny Low, Scott Leva and Scott Wulff.
It is written by Dan O’Bannon and Don Jakoby (based on the story by John Tucker Battle; and the 1953 screenplay by Richard Blake), shot in widescreen by Daniel Pearl, produced by Menahem Golan, Yoram Globus and the original 1953 producer Edward L Alperson, scored by Christopher Young, and designed by Leslie Dilley and Craig Stearns.
RIP Tobe Hooper (January 25, 1943 – August 26, 2017).
© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5996
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