| |
|||
 |
|||
|
|||
|
|
Invisible Invaders
Now here is a difficult achievement: To be the film that inspired both Ed Wood and George Romero. That Invisible Invaders manages to be just that is a milestone unto itself, and we must give credit where it's due. Wood, of course, was the greatest (or worst?) schlock director to come out of Hollywood, famous for his hilariously bad B-movies about killer aliens and spaceships made out of cardboard. George Romero was the creator of the equally low-budget but nevertheless terrifying Night of the Living Dead and its sequels, which used the idea of cannibalistic zombies as a metaphor for deprived human society. Wood’s work was trash at best. Romero’s was brilliant at worst. Invisible Invaders is somewhere in between, but probably closer in spirit and budget to Wood. Still, we’ve got to hand it to the makers of this film—at least they sidestepped the issue of cardboard spaceships by making their monsters invisible! There’s a certain genius to that, I must admit. In fact, they go on to admit their entire society is invisible, including their vehicles, weapons, metals, and cities. Somewhere in heaven, Ed Wood is shaking his head sadly and thinking, “I wish I’d thought of that.” The plot is formulaic, to say the least. Because the people of Earth have experimented with nuclear weapons, invisible aliens living on the moon decide that in order to keep humanity from destroying itself, they’ll invade the earth and kill every last human being on the planet. Go ahead, read that last sentence again, but it won’t help. It still won’t make any logical sense. (Keep in mind, when this was made in 1959, aliens could still have reasonably been living on the moon. Makes you wonder how history would have unfolded had this film been based on fact. “That’s one small step for man. One gigantic---OW!”) Following the alien’s reasoning, we are forced to conclude that the only reason these extraterrestrials would attack the earth is because they’re really bored. But really, who can blame them? After all, if you were an invisible alien, wandering around up there on the moon and constantly bumping into your invisible friends, family, pets, and cities, wouldn’t you wake up one day, turn off your invisible alarm-clock, shake your head, and think, “There’s got to be more to life than this”? Of course, these aliens have a fantastic method of destroying humanity: They invade the bodies of the recent dead and use them as a vehicle for worldwide destruction. These alien-zombies are certainly powerful, unstoppably forces. First of all, they all wear business suits (chilling!). Secondly, they walk really, really slow. Thirdly, they all walk with their arms raised high in the air, as if they had all seen James Whale’s Frankenstein perhaps one time too many. These slow, inarticulate brutes somehow manage to overtake most of the planet, sending London, Paris and other major European cities to their knees in defeat. But of course, we never see any of that, except in fleeting moments of burning cities that were purchased as archive footage from better, bigger movies (minus zombies, darn it all). No, no, forget the rest of the world; our time is spent watching the same half-dozen alien-zombies walking up and down the same hill, trying to get into the bunker where our heroes—two scientists, a military man, and an obligatory damsel-in-distress—try to find a way to keep the evil aliens from destroying the planet altogether. In case any of this might keep you in too much suspense, here’s a heads up: We win. There are, I suppose, logical questions we could ask as patrons of film who actually know what terms like “neorealist cinema” mean: Why would the aliens walk around in the bodies of the slow-moving dead, when they would tactically be much better off in their invisible forms, unseen by their adversaries? For that matter, since we can see the aliens’ footprints as they walk, we know that they must have physical bodies. Yet they can leap in and out of human corpses, like spirits. Do they shrink in size and go in through the ear hole, making their way to the brain, where they set up shop? Do any of these questions matter? Of course not. Invisible Invaders is just another low-budget, 1950s alien invasion flick, but on those terms, it resonates with its own bizarre sort of charm. It has the decency not to take itself quite as seriously as Ed Wood took his films, and the acting is at least sincere from the key players. More importantly (and against all odds), the film tries to make a statement about potential Cold War-related nuclear destruction. Such commentary, though vague, certainly is in the same vein as Romero’s Dead saga. I suppose that if there is any possibility that Romero’s great works could have been sparked by this little, low-budget film, we owe it something. Like about a two-star rating. Cast: MGM presents a Premium (ha!) Pictures release. Directed by Edward L. Cahn. Written by Samuel Newman. No M.P.A.A. rating (fine for kids). Running time: 67 minutes. Time spent writing the script: 67 minutes. Original United States theatrical release date: May 15, 1959. Questions? Comments? E-mail me: danel_the_tinman@hotmail.com |
||
