Invaders from Mars

Invaders from Mars is a 1953 classic Sci-FI movie from director William Cameron Menzies which was released in the USA.

The film starts with a young boy sleeping in his bed when he is woken up by a loud crashing noise and a green beam of light, a spaceship. The boy tells his father who is very intrigued by his sons story. He waits till the early morning and strolls to large desert like sandpit at the bottom of the garden. He vanishes and re-appears hours later acting very peculiar. David, the young child, has a very strange feeling that his father is not himself, or not him at all. David begins to notice strange things going on throughout the town so he comes up with a conclusion that people are being possessed by an alien force which use the humans as drones.

This is a great perspective shot which has been taken from the movie. The boys father lures his mother into a trap, the sandpit at the bottom of the garden awaits her. 

The film has a very steriotypical approach on the great American ways of life and how they approach everyday situations. It seems that their little surburban towns are a perfect place to harbour an alien force determined to cause havoc for the human species. One of the things that made me laugh about this movie was this American way of approaching a situation people knew nothing about. All the evidence that they had to back up their theories of aliens living amongst the a small dessert at the back of a young families garden was a young boys word.

Above is a film still taken from the movie after the young boys father comes back from the sandpit. He has no emotion in his face, no passion, but only the same plain gormless look. This scene is quite disturbing for the young boy because this is when he begins to see a dramatic change in his fathers mannerisms.

When Phil started the introduction about this film, he said that the first half an hour were the most important of the movie because this was the most uncanny of the film. Throughout the first half an hour of the movie it was very suggestive. People falling through the sand, appearing to have vanished for good but some how miraculously turning up many hours later. If i hadn't of seen the first five minutes of the movie which had shown the spaceship it would have made me a bit more curious into what was beneath the sand.

As the film came to an end it became more clear what was beneath the sand. From being very suggestive, the film took a more drastic turn and revealed the cause of the problems the town had been faced with. Throughout the film you were faced with a suspicion, a curiosity. Now before your eyes was the cause of the problem, and alien head in a glass bowl. To me this was rather comical. I had sat through a long period of the movie wondering what it could be beneath the sand and found myself rather disappointed. What they should have done was kept you guessing. Maybe the characters got down into the sand but never found a trace of what was under it, that way the audience would have been  left thinking after the film.

Just thought I would add this image into this post to show the process in which the aliens took control over their subjects. A small incision into the neck should do it. 

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Even after the 1953 classic Sci-Fi movie they couldn't resist a remake, so in 1986 director Tobe Hopper released a newly improved version. 

Whilst having a look at the trailer, I can see that the director went through a process to use as much special effects as possible. Unlike the original, this movie exceeds in its special effects but strays away from its uncanny theme. Look at the trailer and decide for yourself. One of the things that stood out for me was when the space ship crash lands into the pit. In this remake it reminds me of a crazy disco with the most extreme amount of strobe lighting I have ever seen.

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Just at the end of the post and I just want to point out that there have been thousands of rip offs and remakes of this particular movie. Even though all movies do not look the same, they tend to borrow ideas from the originals.