Verdict
Summary
Mixing post World War II American optimism with McCarthy-era paranoia and fear by using science fiction as camouflage, Invaders From Mars is still a highly effective film, especially since it’s told from a child’s point of view.
Plot:
Martians invade a small American town, and only a little boy knows it.
Review:
A boy named David (Jimmy Hunt) wakes up with a start in the middle of the night and he looks out his window and sees the impossible: A spaceship lands behind the hill just outside of his house. He wakes his parents up, but they chalk it up to a bad nightmare. The next morning, his dad takes a walk outside in his pajamas and disappears for hours. Police investigate. The dad comes home, but he’s … different. The police officers are also … unusual. When David’s dad hits him across the face (in a shocking scene) for a minor slight, we know – and David knows – that he’s not himself. David spies a small puncture wound in the back of his dad’s neck. The police officers had the wound as well. David flees home and tries seeking help from the police station, but the captain at the station also has the wound, and everyone seems to have been altered. Luckily, a child psychologist takes notice of David’s panic and mistrust of his parents, and she withholds him from his parents. She believes his story, despite how outlandish it is. They have another ally: a scientist who takes their side, and when he sees firsthand with his telescope that people are disappearing in a hole in the ground outside of David’s house, he takes the next step by calling the military. When the military shows up with their jeeps and tanks, it seems like World War III is about to start in small town America, but what no one could have expected is how David’s stories are not just true, but worse than they imagined! Martians are putting mind control devices in the necks of Americans, and they’re doing it fast, and the only way to stop them from turning the entire world into mind controlled slaves is to blow up their subterranean spaceship and by some miracle get out alive!
Mixing post World War II American optimism with McCarthy-era paranoia and fear by using science fiction as camouflage, Invaders From Mars is still a highly effective film, especially since it’s told from a child’s point of view. The movie is incredibly colorful and scary, and it has one of those “Is it just a dream or a nightmare?” type of endings, but it’s thrilling, exciting, and very frightening. It’s similar to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which came a few years later, but this one is more chilling because of it’s innocent, childhood point of view. Director William Cameron Menzies did a remarkable job designing and directing the film.
Ignite Films has just released a stunning looking Blu-ray edition of Invaders From Mars, and I can’t imagine this film ever looking or sounding as good as it does here. With bright, vivid colors and sound, the transfer – a 4K restoration – is gorgeous and blisteringly beautiful. Packed with bonus material, including interviews and segments such as alternate material and a 20-page booklet, the package is essential to film collectors. I watched the on-camera interview with star Jimmy Hunt, who relates some fun stories about the making of the film. There’s also a 4K edition of this film available to own.
