Rent Invaders from Mars (1953)

Matinée Sci-fi (spoiler). - Invaders from Mars review by Steve

Invaders from Mars was made for a family or younger audience, and while it's unlikely any kids now will sit still for this typically paranoiac 1950s science fiction drama with home made effects, there is plenty to interest genre fans.

It was the first sci-fi film released in colour, rushed through to pip The War of the Worlds. Director Menzies was best known for his art direction. And this is the main attraction of the film. It's a low budget production but the expressionist set design makes it feel detached and dreamlike, and looks great..

The story is indeed a dream. David McLean (Jimmy Hunt) is a science and sci-fi fanatic who sits up at night watching the stars. In one of these sessions he sees a flying saucer land and burrow its way into the sand at the back of his house near the local rocket research facility... When the martians take over the bodies of his parents and other locals, including the police, David has to find support among the unpossessed to rally opposition until the army arrives.

Being the boy's nightmare, the surreal look is just right. As is the crazy jargon of the dialogue which sounds like it has come out of the comics David reads. It is an eerie film, and while the monsters look very crude, their leader, a head suspended in a glass dome, has a haunting, organic quality. It became a motif of science fiction that a small town would have to make it through the night against an alien foe to reach the safely of the morning, and that started with this imaginative, lurid melodrama.