Invaders from Mars

I didn't pay much attention to the 2024 selection of films to the National Film Registry when those selections were announced back in December. Apparently, one of the films named was the science fiction film Invaders from Mars. That would probably explain why it's shown up multiple times in the past several years on TCM. It's got yet another airing coming up, tomorrow, April 5, at 1:45 PM, which means it's time for me to watch it and do a review on it.

Child actor Jimmy Hunt plays David MacLean, one of those space-obsessed kids of the 1950s, although in his case it's slightly more understandable since his father George (Leif Erickson) does some sort of classified space research at one of the nearby military facilities. Mom Mary is slightly worried about the kid's overactive imagination, thinking that the kid needs more sleep. One night during a thunderstorm, David looks over to the sandpit just across a field from his bedroom window, and sees what for all the world looks like a flying saucer coming to rest behind the fence. David tells Dad, who suggests he and the kid go out and look in the morning. But Dad goes out alone, and when he gets to the sand, he suddenly falls through.

Dad isn't back by morning, so Mom calls the police, with two policemen showing up, only for them to fall through the sand too. By this point Dad returns home, although to David it seems like something has changed, as Dad has no emotion other than anger at David for asking questions about that supposed spaceship. Dad also has some strange scar on the back of his neck. Worse, David also sees his friend from nearby, little Kathy, fall into the sand. And when she comes back, she burns down her house!

David is understandably fearful that something has gone terribly wrong, so he runs away to the police station to look for help. The police bring in a doctor, Pat Blake (Helena Carter), who gets the impression that perhaps David is telling the truth when she learns that he has a bit of a scientific bent and is not known to be given to making stuff up. She talks to a friend of the MacLeans, astronomer Dr. Kelston (Arthur Franz), and brings up the idea that not only is there life on Mars, but that they may well already be sending research ships to Earth. The working theory is that the Martians have already arrived, and they have a way of controlling the minds of earthlings.

Thankfully, there's a lot of military around that they can bring manpower and weapons to the situation, as well as the scientific minds of David, Blake, and Kelston. Sure enough, there are Martians in that field, although the Martians aren't stupid and have moved to a different part of the field. What's left behind is the tunnels they've left. The search is on for the Martians, and that search gets more desperate when David and Dr. Blake fall into another of the traps the Martians have set up.

Invaders from Mars was directed by William Cameron Menzies, who is probably more prominent for his set designs although he also directed the 1930s scifi film Things To Come. It's that earlier film I found myself thinking of as I was watching Invaders from Mars. The underground Martian sets are imaginative, while the sets above ground are decidedly 1950s B sci-fi stuff. But, with Menzies at the helm, we're given to some imaginative camera work as well. That's definitely a good thing, since the story is rather straightforward and resolved way too quickly. Reading reviews from people who first saw the movie as a kid, they say they were frightened by the film, and I can see why. As an adult, however, it's not scary but just another fun 50s scifi genre film. Definitely worth watching.