Invaders from Mars

Oh, the Martians! Since the dawn of alien invasion science fiction in the late 1800s, its imagination and anxieties have focused on the Red Planet. After WWII, American films updated their political ideology, and invasion fears shifted towards a Cold War metaphor, with the Soviet Union representing the perceived menace in an era characterized by tense international instability. Thus, it’s no accident that “Invaders from Mars” – a compendium of paranoia and idolization of the US military apparatus – made its debut in theaters at the same time as a loose adaptation of “The War of the Worlds” (1953), a true prototype of the invasion genre.

In fact, the entire movie is permeated by an obsessive alarmism that emphasizes a continuous state of alert (“People the world over have been reporting unidentifiable objects in the sky since the time of George Washington; as we know, in recent years the sightings have become more numerous“), while it seeks greater strength and justification in the presumed impartiality of scientific knowledge (“It’s the firm belief of many scientists that the Earth has been under systematic and close range observation for more than 200 years“). This leads to the conclusion that the best solution lies in complete, blind trust in the military and its leaders’ untarnished sense of duty. Along those lines, the movie’s scenes celebrating America’s military might gradually assume greater importance: long marches, processions of tanks, resolute soldiers ready to sacrifice themselves for their country.

From a technical point of view, Menzie – definitely more at home as an art director – offers a film that’s heavily impacted by its ridiculous budget: not-very-special special effects (fortunately, the “aliens in pajamas” with their clearly visible zippers make their appearance relatively late), terrible editing, shoddy acting.

The movie is saved by a couple of concepts that left quite a lasting impression of the collective memory of sci-fi fans: The invaders’ boss, pure intelligence developed to its highest level, who imparts orders mentally, and the surgical procedure used to subjugate human beings.

On the scientific and astronomical front, the naiveté of the expository asides (the surface conditions of Mars, for example) firmly relegates them to the category of historical curiosity today.