William Cameron Menzies’ 1953 “Invaders from Mars“ is an unusual example of 1950s paranoia about invasion. The whole story unfolds from the viewpoint of 12-year-old David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt,) who one night sees an alien spaceship land near his home and bury itself underground. His dad, who works at a secret atomic missile base, investigates the landing site and comes back ‘different’. Next, his mum becomes equally cold and distant, as does a girl after David has seen her sink into the ground near the spaceship. Even more chilling, they all have a small scar on the back of their neck.
Dr Pat Blake (Helena Carter) is convinced by David’s strange story, but before the army can attack the invaders, Pat and David are carried by tall ambling humanoids along luminous tunnels to their spaceship. Here they literally meet the head Martian – he is a head with tentacles suspended in a glass globe. This is the creature that controls the humanoids and any human who has a radio implant in his or her neck. As noted later in this text, this film could well have supplied much of the imagery for the real abduction experienced by Betty and Barney Hill. Intriguingly, the American version frames the story as a boy’s dream, but the European version, although longer, doesn’t have that scene.
In the 1986 remake of the classic 50’s, this Science Fiction tale is about a boy, played by David McLean, that sees a spaceship crash into a nearby sandpit. When his father goes to investigate, the boy notices hes different, and suspects something happened to him out there, because he was once cheerful and affectionate, and he’s now sullen, snarling, rude, and abusive. As the others fall into the sandpit, they all return acting like his father; cold, ill-tempered and conspiratorial. David now believes aliens are taking over the bodies of all the humans in his village. He soon realized it’s up to him and a couple of friends that they set out to stop the evil plans of these extraterrestrials.
“Invaders from Mars,” stars Louise Fletcher Karen Black Timothy Bottoms Bud Cort and Hunter Carson, wich is Directed by Tobe Hooper.
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Invaders from Mars is a 1986 science fiction horror film, directed by Tobe Hooper from a screenplay by Dan O’Bannon and Don Jakoby. It is a remake of the 1953 science fiction film Invaders from Mars, and is a reworking of that film’s screenplay by Richard Blake from an original story by John Tucker Battle. Its production was instigated by Wade Williams, millionaire exhibitor, science fiction film fan and sometime writer-producer-director, who had reissued the original film in 1978 after purchasing the copyright to the property. Elaborate creature effects were supplied by Stan Winston and ornate visual effects by John Dykstra for the remake.
On the night of a meteor shower, young David Gardner sees an alien spacecraft land in a sand quarry behind his house. This is the beginning of an alien invasion that sees David’s parents (George and Ellen Gardner), his teachers and the townspeople slowly assimilated by the alien lifeforms, returning with less emotions. The only one who believes David is the school nurse, Linda Magnuson. Together, David and Linda enlist the aid of the U.S. Marines to help save the world. The film ends when David realizes that everything that has happened was a dream. He tells his parents what happened, and wonders if his dream will become a nightmare, especially when the alien spacecraft begins to land, and David witnesses something that terrifies him so much that he begins screaming, but remains unseen to the audience.
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