Director: William Cameron Menzies
Writers: John Tucker Battle (uncredited for original story), Richard Blake
Producer: Edward L. Alperson
Cast: Jimmy Hunt, Helena Carter, Arthur Franz, Leif Erickson, Hilary Brooke, Morris Ankrum, Milburn Stone, Max Wagner, William Phipps, Janine Perreau, (uncredited cast members follow) Robert Shayne, Lock Martin, Max Palmer, Luce Potter, Bert Freed, Barbara Billingsley, Todd Karns, Douglas Kennedy, Charles Cane, Walter Sande, Fay Baker, William Forest, Frank Wilcox, Peter Brocco, Richard Deacon, John Eldredge, Charles A. Gibbs, Gil Herman, Bob Herron, Tommy Cottanaro, Pete Dunn, Paul Klott, Harry Monte, George Spotts, Ed Wolfe
One night young David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt) sees a flying saucer land in a sand pit behind his house. His father George MacLean (Leif Erickson) goes out to the area to investigate and disappears. When George returns the next morning, he behaves like a cold and belligerent stranger. David notices a red, X-shaped scar on the back of his father’s neck. The boy is convinced that the flying saucer has some connection to the change in his father. David soon discovers other people in his town are also changed, and he becomes more afraid as he tries to get adults to believe him.
The Flashback Fanatic movie review
Director and production designer William Cameron Menzies is chiefly responsible for this film’s strange vision. Menzies’ ingenuity turned the low budget into an advantage; he used striking minimalism in his set designs. Aside from the close confines of the rooms in David’s home, the sets are surreal. Many of them are so sparsely filled that their space leaves one feeling as exposed and disoriented as young David must feel in his mounting panic. These interiors are furnished with just enough iconic props to represent what a child would notice or remember that should represent a police station or a scientist’s lab. This minimalism is also very effective at appearing alien when the interior of the spaceship is seen. Even the field behind David’s home where the saucer landed and disappeared, as do all the people that go out to investigate it, is another sparse set design that is stark and unsettling.
The characters in this movie are nearly props themselves. We have no more insight into these adults than young David; they are simply authority figures with names and jobs. From a child’s perspective, most adults are authority figures that are either good or bad. Parents, teachers, police, doctors, and all the rest have jobs that occupy most of their time and are none of a kid’s business. Grownups are in charge; they are bigger, smarter, stronger, and make the rules. To a young child, there is much that seems unfathomable and unfair about that position, even in relationship to loving parents.
The greatest terror faced by David is the transformation of his own parents into heartless and intimidating strangers. Leif Erickson, as David’s father George, must have really creeped out all the kids in the audience. The best scene in the film is when George returns home after checking out the flying saucer landing site and has become a volatile brute. His performance is my favorite in this film. He also gave a memorable performance as a nasty lout in the unique Universal Pictures horror movie Night Monster (1942).
Another humdinger of a creep-out-the-kids development is the off screen death of a neighborhood girl about David’s age. Having kids die in horror films is still rather uncommon, but back in 1953 in a kid magnet movie like Invaders from Mars, this must have given the little buggers in the audience a shocking sense of their own mortality.
As if the unthinkable threats of not being too young to die and their parents becoming their enemies were not enough, the kids in the audience are reminded that they have no credibility. Any youngster screaming bloody murder about spaceships and mind control is going to be dismissed as a liar or as having a runaway imagination.
Fortunately for our young hero, a sympathetic cop decides David needs a little chat with the world’s most beautiful psychologist. Helena Carter, as Dr. Patricia Blake, would make any ten-year-old boy ask, “Where have you been all my life?”
Our young hero’s nightmare takes another lucky turn, as it just so happens that Dr. Blake is the girlfriend of David’s astronomer friend Dr. Stuart Kelston (Arthur Franz). She takes custody of David and brings him over to meet with Dr. Kelston. At this point, things start going David’s way. Not only does his astronomer friend believe everything David tells him, but Dr. Kelston also has a load of light-year-long leaps of logic about the aliens and their intentions. Since David has the good sense to pal around with a respectable astronomer, all it takes is one phone call to get the US Army mobilized on the double to take on the Martians in David’s backyard.
Again, every adult character in young David’s life has their part to play in making David’s world work, or, when corrupted, they threaten that world. Once he gains the confidence of the good adults, David is instrumental in helping them try to restore order in his world.
Invaders from Mars proved to be quite influential. It is probably the first '50s sci-fi flick to present that scary gimmick of humans being de-humanized by extraterrestrials. Many more films would follow with humans being controlled by the aliens or replaced with duplicates. Invaders from Mars must have inspired Don Coscarelli’s 1979 sci-fi creeper Phantasm. Tobe Hooper was also a fan and directed the 1986 remake.
While it is a film meant to appeal to kids and scare the jujubes out of them, Invaders from Mars intentionally does for adults what some of the best films do: It makes them dream with their eyes open.
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