This apparently made a great impact on the directors who came to fame in the 70s and 80s, and indeed one of them (Tobe "Texas Chainsaw" Hooper) did a remake in the 80s that sank like a stone, although I have an abiding memory of seeing it on the sign outside the Exeter cinema), so in the spirit of Cozy Horror I thought we'd check it out. Overview: parts of it dragged, and it seems to have been made very much on the cheap (there's a lot of military stuff going on that appears to be complete stock footage, and none of the rooms people are in are furnished beyond a chair and a table), it genuinely holds you in its grip for most of its run time, and you care about the main characters, despite one of them being a child actor of not the highest echelon (who apparently appears in the remake having not acted in decades). If you step back and think about it for even a second, it's a pretty blatant piece of Cold War propaganda, but they say that about Invasion of the Body Snatchers (with which this has close parallels) and that has never affected my enjoyment of that movie.
The film is unusual for a science fiction film because of its limited use of locations. The poster for the remake is very telling, because it's a picture of a hill with a glow coming over it,
and indeed, all of the action of this film takes place in a sort of sand pit just over the hill from the main character (the boy, David MacLean - I would guess he's around 10)'s house. The film begins with his alarm clock going off in the middle of the night so he can look through his telescope at some particular astronomical phenomenon, but unfortunately it also wakes his father, who comes in to tell him off, but being a scientist himself, gets caught up in looking through the telescope until the mother of the family comes to tell them both off. All of this is very good-humored, which is important for later. Anyway, David actually does get in bed and go to sleep, only to be woken an hour or so later by a storm and a green glowing flying saucer landing just over the hill. We see what David doesn't, which is that the saucer somehow burrows under the ground, leaving no visible trace. He tells his dad, who goes to investigate... and doesn't come back. He is not back by breakfast time the next day, so his wife calls two police men to come and investigate. They trot along and find his flashlight and one slipper, before they are SUCKED UNDER GROUND. The mother is just starting to get really worried when pop shows up back, only he's completely sullen-faced and very peevish, and even slaps David (very realistically), which gives him a clue something's wrong, something that is confirmed when he sees a little x-shaped scar on the back of his neck. (See the similarities with Body Snatchers?) The cops come back and are similarly zombie-like, so David runs off to try to tell somebody. While he's doing that we see the father taking the mother off over the hill...
Other creepy events: the neighbors have mislaid their young daughter, but then she shows up... changed. Meanwhile, somebody has lit a fire with gasoline in the basement. And when David goes to the police, the chief is similarly changed. He instructs the desk sergeant to lock David up (!) until his parents show up to pick him up. The desk sergeant is a nice, caring fellow, and can see David is freaked out, so he calls "Dr. Pat Blake" on the phone to come and see David. This turns out to be a very attractive young woman (Helena "not Bonham" Carter) who will be David's partner in trying to sort this whole affair out. And in fact, when both parents show up (and it's clear that the mother has been "turned")
she claims that David shows signs of polio and can't leave with them. They then telephone David's father's colleague at the observatory and go to meet him. Here he reveals something that has been hinted at earlier, which is that David's dad's work has recently gotten very hush-hush, which is because they suspect Mars of having hidden cities on it, and they've been building a rocket to go to investigate. And it turns out that all the families targeted for zombification (or arson) are of scientists on this project, and all the people currently zombified are out sabotaging various labs and factories as we speak. (Rather gruesomely it is revealed that the little girl dropped dead of a brain aneurysm shortly after completing her mission, and Dr. Blake discovers it's because of the device installed in her brain that exploded. So instantly David panics about his parents (currently off trying to shoot the girl's father, working late in his lab). We see the two cops cornered (this is not one of those films where nobody ever believes the protagonists - surprisingly quickly everyone, especially the military, is mobilized) and they drop like ripe figs from a tree, so the danger is real.
It all builds to a finale where we finally get to see the aliens. There are some rather laughable hench-monsters,
who look like extras from a live-action Dr Seuss, dressed in obviously zipped-up green fuzzy onesies, and a quite novel looking brains behind the operation, who has a human (albeit gold) face (with expressive eyes but no other expressions) and tentacles, and sits in a glass globe and is carted around by two of the henchmonsters.
(The place (which looks very Dr. Who-like - glass bubbly walls,
and you never see the ship) is said to be "crawling" with them, but you never see more than four at a time.) The main anxiety at the end is whether or not Dr. Pat will get chipped.
She's on her front with a descending needle-like inserter for what seems like hours. Then the army have to get out before the charges blow everything sky high.
And then there's a rather confusing ending: David wakes up in bed, apparently having dreamt all this. His parents are themselves again and in bed when he goes to check, so, relieved, he goes back to bed. And then he's woken by the flying saucer landing. WTF? Make up your mind, people.
As I said, this made quite an impression on the Spielberg-era directors, probably because they were David's age when they saw it. And aliens-invading-in-the-neighborhood might have been the inspiration for ET, come to think of it. Perhaps if I'd seen it as a boy in the 50s I would've been more impressed. It's interesting... but it's no Body Snatchers or The Thing.
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