Invaders from Mars (Menzies) BFI Blu Ray and Ultra HD.
William Cameron Menzies was the supreme art designer in Hollywood during the 1920’s and 1930’s. Menzies’s ability to create an arresting spatial look for his films raised him to the status of an auteur. He was, along with Van Nest Polglase, one of the few production designers to be billed, rivalling the director, in large credits over a film. Menzies’s own career as a director is uneven but Things to Come and Invaders from Mars are undoubtedly his finest films.
Invaders from Mars was rushed into production and released just before War of the Worlds in 1953. Both are alien invasion films. But Invaders from Mars is very much from the viewpoint of a young boy. The film unfolds like a comic book both frightening and enchanting. It’s the Cold War era where in the parochial small town comfort of the American Dream you could be body snatched and mind controlled.
David (Jimmy Hunt) witnesses a flying saucer land in a sandpit area near to his home. David tells his scientist father George (Leif Erikson) and he investigates. When he returns he’s undergone a change of personality and acts like a menacing zombie. Other people start disappearing into the sandpit and then reappear to act in a highly aggressive manner. This is a Martian invasion by creatures able to internally control human beings. David convinces government official Dr. Blake (Helena Carter) and astronomer Dr. Kelston (Arthur Franz) that this is a real threat to humanity. And the military is brought in to combat the invaders.
Invaders from Mars has justifiably been praised for its technical marvels: atmospheric lighting, expressive quasi-surreal sets, heightened camera angles, colour filtering within a beautiful Eastman colour frame and haunting music. Stephen Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Joe Dante saw the film when they were children and absorbed its visual information that went on to influence their adult filmmaking careers. However the legendary Stanley Kubrick isn’t mentioned.
I realise that Kubrick never wanted 2001: A Space Odyssey to be a space monster movie but at one point he must have watched SF material like Invaders from Mars and ignored it only to be have been unconsciously influenced by their bug-eyed power (I’m thinking of the Invaders creature that’s meant to represent the height of Martian intelligence: its silent, large, almost Buddha like head, with shifting eyes and tentacles for arms, enclosed in a sealed off glass container as possibly being an inspirational trigger for the idea of the looming foetus star child of 2001).
Yet for me it’s not the special effects that are the most disturbing feature of this film but a brief moment of domestic physical violence. When the now alien possessed George returns home he warns his son David to never talk of what he’s seen. Then he delivers a back handed slap to David’s face. It’s brutal, cruel, shattering and for me one of the most powerful moments of unexpected violence in all cinema. The formerly caring (arguably over idealised kind father) at the beginning has become a monster far more threatening than the Martians in green suits. George is an untrammelled evil force. And when his wife Mary (Hillary Brook) becomes his monstrous partner we experience two chilling horrors intent to tear up their family, community and hence the American dream.
Unfortunately the story line of the parents isn’t fully realised. Most of the other victims of the sand pit takeover are destroyed by the Martians once they’ve been captured by the police or army. George and Mary are apprehended but not destroyed (Why, I’m not sure) to be operated on (never shown) in hospital and returned to normality. But I missed their nasty behaviour which was so malevolent in the earlier scenes. You feel that Invaders from Mars set up an Invasion of the Body Snatchers idea but dropped it as this was more of kid’s movie – an exciting family entertainment for an audience that wanted their very fifties paranoid fears of invasion to be dispelled.
The distributors asked for a longer version of Invaders from Mars to fit its programming times. So we have old army manoeuvres footage that’s dramatically dull and mere padding. And the European market wanted a different ending, that the army footage be replaced with a later filmed (not by Menzies) scene of David and Dr. Blake being given an observatory lecture about probable life forces and energy in the cosmos. That is arch and clunky. It and the alternative ending are available as extras on this disc. I can live with that other ending but is the American ending really a cop out?
We usually groan at the thought that the invasion has only been a bad dream. But Menzies and his scriptwriter leave open the fact that this might be a reoccurring nightmare, though not of the quality of its all happening again horror of say Dead of Night. David’s exclaimed “Gee, Whizz” at the appearance of a flying saucer allows boyhood optimism and wonder to triumph over ET and domestic ruptures. Deliberate ambiguity? I will say no more.
Invaders from Mars is a classic American fifties SF film. It’s flawed but can be comfortably placed at the back of the queue with those other classics The Day the Earth Stood Still, War of the Worlds, Them and The Incredible Shrinking Man.
- Alan Price
Editors note: This is the film that Martin Kottmeyer has identified as being responsible for much of the imagery described in Betty and Barney Hills hypnotic regressions. In particular the 'needle in the navel' sequence of Betty's 'surgical examination' and the curious detail of Betty's description of the nose of the aliens as resembling Jimmy Durante's.
You can read Kottmeyers article, 'Entirely Unpredisposed: The Cultural Background of UFO Reports' here: https://magoniamagazine.blogspot.com/2013/11/entirely-unpredisposed-cultural.html
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