Invaders From Mars, 1953.
Directed by William Cameron Menzies.
Starring Jimmy Hunt, Helena Carter, Arthur Franz, Morris Ankrum, Leif Erickson, and Hillary Brooke.
SYNOPSIS:
The underrated but very influential 1953 science-fiction classic Invaders From Mars makes its 4K debut in North America (this disc was issued in the UK in 2022), featuring not only a stunning 4K restoration but also a booklet detailing the exhaustive process. You’ll also find a nice batch of bonus features.
I remember coming across Invaders From Mars on TV when I was in elementary school. It made such an impact on me that I started writing a story based on it the next day. The storyline of a boy’s parents’ minds, and those of others in the town, being taken over by aliens for a nefarious plot resonated with me, and the ending threw me for quite a loop.
Rushed to theaters to compete with 1953’s The War of the Worlds, Invaders From Mars tells the story of David McLean (Jimmy Hunt), who witnesses a flying saucer landing in a field behind his house. His father goes to investigate and comes back changed, with a strange mark on the back of his neck.
David’s mother quickly becomes the aliens’ next victim, followed by a neighborhood friend, the local police chief, and others. They use the humans to carry out their plans, and once the humans have fulfilled their goals, or are arrested, the aliens can remotely kill them thanks to the device implanted in their necks.
David is able to find help from unaffected adults, and soon the military is mobilized to surround the field, where the flying saucer is buried below ground. He and others eventually end up exploring the underground caverns created by the Martians as they try to save his parents and others.
As John Sayles points out in the TCM Film Festival introduction included in the bonus features, director William Cameron Menzies introduced the point-of-view of a child in Invaders From Mars, telling the story from David’s point-of-view. In addition, there’s a dreamlike quality to the presentation, including the conclusion, that hit me much the same way Time Bandits did several years later.
Ignite Films painstakingly restored the film in 4K for this edition; the process is described in great detail in the accompanying booklet, which was a nice touch. The company even restored some additional footage, including an alternate ending, that was shot about a year later to pad out the scant 73-minute running time for European distributors. The new ending made the finale much more literally and the rest of the footage simply extends the observatory scene for not much of a reason, so it’s good that none of it was put back into the film.
In addition to those extras, Ignite commissioned a solid line-up of other bonus features that include:
• William Cameron Menzies: Architect of Dreams (16.5 minutes): This is a retrospective of Menzies’ life, mostly featuring his biographer, James Curtis, although his granddaughter, Pamela Lauesen, shows up for a couple minutes too. Menzies started his Hollywood career during the silent era as a production designer and got into directing several years before his death in 1957.
• Jimmy Hunt Saves the Planet (10.5 minutes): The only living primary cast member from the film, Hunt gets his turn in the spotlight here, and he makes the most of it with an entertaining interview. Fun fact: He played the police chief in Tobe Hooper’s 1986 remake of Invaders From Mars.
• Terror from Above (22.5 minutes): Directors Joe Dante and John Landis, among others, reflect on their exposure to the film as kids (sounds like it freaked them out the same way it did to me) and discuss its various themes. Scott MacQueen, who oversaw the film’s restoration and wrote the essay in the booklet, shows up here too.
• Restoring the Invasion (7 minutes): MacQueen talks about the enormous amount of work involved in restoring this film, which is unfortunately typical of a movie this old, since most film studies didn’t put a lot of effort into preservation in decades past.
A pair of trailers and an image gallery round out the platter.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
