Invaders from Mars (1953)

Jimmy's mom being being taken to the infamous sandpit by his father.

 

The original 1953 version of  Invaders from Mars was well-praised by critics and made an acceptable profit. It also haunts the memories of the thousands of Baby Boomers who saw it on the big screen in general release that year, or a few years later at Saturday Matinees.

 

Title Card,

 

 

Summary:

A young boy, Jimmy Hunt, is settled into bed by his loving parents. A bit later, he is awakened by a greenish light and strange sound. He looks out the window and sees a flying green object appear to land behind asandy hillock—beyond a winding trail—adjoining the family’s property. He wakes his parents, who persuade him that it was all a bad dream. Later, due to the classified nature of the neighboring rocket project that he’s working on, Jimmy’s dad grabs a flashlight and goes outside to investigate. We see him making his way along the trail and up the hill. He doesn’t notice, but the audience does, that a hole a yard or so wide is opening in the sand along the trail. The appearance of the hole is accompanied by an unforgettable eerily haunting male choir composed by uncredited Mort Glickman, then orchestrated and conducted by department head Raoul Kraushaar (who received credit). Then from Jimmy’s point of view, his dad vanishes before his eyes when he reaches the top of the hillock.

 

 

Jimmy’s mom is naturally worried when she can’t find her husband in the morning and calls the police. Two officers investigate and when they near the top of the hill, we see and hear another hole being made, and they too soon vanish. Jimmy’s dad comes home disheveled and bad-tempered. He orders around his family and hits Jimmy hard enough to knock him to the floor. Jimmy sees a mysterious X-shape on the back of his dad’s neck. The two policemen return and they too act strangely and their conversation with Mr. Hunt implies some kind of conspiracy. Jimmy sees the X on the back of their necks, as well. The dad says he wants to show something to Jimmy’s mom and we see them walking up the trail.

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Meanwhile, Jimmy happens to see a neighbor girl vanish on the trail and tries to tell her mother, but the girl appears just as their house goes up in a blaze. Panicked, Jimmy goes to the police station and demands of the office in charge to see the Chief, but Jimmy sees the X-shape on the back of the Chief’s neck and tries to run away. (It turns out that the X is the wound left after a 2-inch-long control devise is implanted.) The Chief orders Jimmy to be locked in a cell until his parents can pick him up. 
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Concerned about the boy, the kindly desk officer calls the school psychiatrist, Dr. Blake, who shortly visits the boy in the cell. She deems Jimmy’s story preposterous, but his passion and sincerity need to be addressed. Just then Jimmy’s mom and dad appear to take him home, but their appearance and behavior are so suspicious that Dr. Blake insists that the boy is sick and needs to stay with her for observation. The parents scowl and leave. Dr. Blake takes Jimmy to visit a mutual friend, astronomer Dr. Stuart Kelston. They banter about the planet Mars being near, and soon Kelston believes Jimmy, deciding that this attack at this time and place is due to the Martian’s fear of the rocket project, which they imagine will threaten Mars. Kelston points his huge telescope towards the trail near Jimmy’s home and sees Jimmy’s dad and the commander of the rocket project, General Mayberry, at the top of the hill ... and the general vanishes. Kelston notifies the authorities and soon the hillock is sur- rounded by Army tanks and armed forces led by Col. Fielding (played by the wonderful and ubiquitous Morris Ankrum).

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The army successfully blasts holes in the area and finds a network of tunnels. The army attacks through the tunnels, blasting at 8-foot tall, green, bug-eyed monsters, while discovering that the Martians have a bazooka-like tool that quickly and efficiently melts rock walls and makes tunnels. Taking a breather, Jimmy and Dr. Blake get swallowed by one of the ubiquitous holes and are captured by the Martian “mutants.”

 

The green, tentacled Martian “Intelligence” from Invaders from Mars was played by little person Luce Potter (uncredited). This Martian “brain” is an astonishingly original and clever conception— truly unforgettable. According to noted science-fiction and fantasy artist Vincent Di Fate on the Tor.com Publishing site, “Without the benefit of dialogue, Ms. Potter’s eyes are the only means of expressively conveying the strange aloofness of this otherworldly character. The brothers Howard and Theodore Lydecker molded the brontocephalic dome of the creature and its atrophied body in rubber. The tentacles were operated by grips with wires positioned beyond the range of the camera and a special gold metallic make up was formulated by cosmetics expert Anatole Robbins and applied by make up artist Gene Hibbs.” (courtesy Wade Williams Distribution).

 
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They are taken before the Martian Intelligence, a small green and gold disembodied head with two pulsing tentacles and two bloodshot roaming eyes, all nicely contained within a glass bowl, like a snowglobe or an upside-down fishbowl, and guarded by two huge green Martian mutants. Dr. Blake is taken away to have a control device inserted into her neck.

Two giant Martian mutants guarding the "Martian Intelligence."

Jimmy manages to escape and helps guide Col. Fielding in his pursuit of the Martians. While all this is going on, the policemen and Jimmy’s parents, under Martian control try to destroy the rocket plant. Only Jimmy’s parents are captured alive, and we learn that they have been taken to the hospital to have the control devices removed. The military swarm into the spacecraft. Dr. Blake is saved in a nick of time and bombs are planted throughout the ship. Their mission thwarted, the Martian spaceship takes off from its underground lair, and blows up. Suddenly Jimmy awakens frightened and is again comforted by his parents ... only to see out his window the spaceship arrive again and disappear behind the hillock (at least in the American version; in the British version, Jimmy merely goes to sleep—end of story).

Comments:    

“The tale is weird and terrifying, but well-done with ... exceptional color.... [T]he audience is almost frozen with fear until the finale is reached. This is entirely too terrifying and realistic a picture for children.”—Southern California Motion Picture Council
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Despite this dramatic appraisal above from the Southern California Motion Picture Council (which a surprising number of other commentators agree with), there are also many whose assessment more falls in line with Ed Naha’s thoughts in his Horrors from Screen to Scream, that the film is an “imaginatively made kiddie-matinee-oriented chiller.”

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The film in reality began as a nightmare experienced by writer John Tucker Bottle’s wife as a child. As the screenplay changed hands from one producer to another and was revised by other hands, eventually the dream ending was added and filmed, much to the dismay of Bottle who, according to his wife, was incensed, had his name removed, and never did see the movie.
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I saw the film three times at Saturday-Matinee performances at the Manor Theater on 25th Avenue in San Mateo, California. That was circa 1957–1958 when I was 12 and 13. At that age, I was something of a special-effects geek. Thus my first viewing mainly focused on what was wrong with the picture, points that are now legendary: the wide zippers down the backs of the Martian mutants, the cloying sugar-coated impossibly perfect parents at the beginning of the film, countless shots, repeated over and again, of Martians running (or “loping” as most commentators say) back and forth through their maze of tunnels, the exaggerated acting of nearly every performer, the clearly exaggerated and absurd sets, the seemingly never-ending stock footage of tanks, and so forth.

And I was perplexed by the revelatory ending that established that all of the preceding movie was merely a dream, which was then followed by David looking out the window and seeing a flying saucer land in his back yard. On one hand, this makes his dream prescient, which is fodder for a whole movie in itself, but then on the other hand establishes that David and his family and friends are now forever caught in an endless time loop, rather like Groundhog Day, a point that is never addressed.

Extremely detailed lengthy articles

and book chapters cover all aspects

of this film—from concept through

production to release and reception.

When I saw it again about a year later, I was more open to the movie, and saw that the atmospheric autumnal trail and white fence leading up to the sandpit were quite beautiful and that the score ranged from the majestic to full-on creepy, especially when the sand opened and closed; the Martian intelligence in her glass globe seemed positively real; and the concept and flow of the movie both worked well enough.
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In other words, I went from being critical of the movie to roundly enjoying it, and I now credit it with being the classic that it is, warts included. Why? Since those early days, I learned that the film was designed and directed by William Cameron Menzies.
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Please indulge me for a moment while I try to briefly explain why having Menzies onboard was important. The January 2016 issue of cable’s Turner Classic Movies’ magazine TCM Now Playing, which featured Menzies that issue, says:

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"William Cameron Menzies (1896–1957) was perhaps the most celebrated art director in all of cinema, so defining the profession that a new and elevated term, 'production designer,' was coined especially for him. Menzies was the first person to win an Academy Award for Art Direction (for 1927’s The Dove) and for the new category of "Production Design" (a special Oscar for 1939’s Gone With the Wind)."
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An early directorial triumph for Menzies.

Menzies stamp was on every frame of this film.

As Art Director, Menzies’ job often overlapped with the Director of Photography. According to classic-cinema authority Rudy Behlmer, offered in his Memo from David O. Selznick:

"[Menzies] pioneered the use of color in film for dramatic effect.... David O. Selznick’s faith in Menzies was so great that he sent a memorandum to everyone at Selznick International Pictures who was involved in the production [of Gone with the Wind] reminding them that “Menzies is the final word” on everything related to Technicolor, scenic design, set decoration, and the overall look of the production."
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Film enthusiast David Bordwell says this parallel thought in an essay on his blog www.davidbordwell.net/essays/menzies.phpwww.davidbordwell.net/essays/menzies.php:
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"Sound movies had lost the pictorial splendor of the great silent era, but Menzies thought that could be recovered if someone coordinated the overall look of the film, including lighting (traditionally the province of the Director of Photography) and figure movement (a task for the director). In 1929–1930, Menzies began to campaign for this new production role by giving lectures, signing articles, and publishing his drawings of film shots."
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He got his way, which has forever since changed the way movies are made. In other words, William Cameron Menzies was a certifiable VIP.

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It is the rare moviegoer who thinks of things like design and lighting, which, I suppose, is as it should be because the audience pays good money to be entertained, not to be become cinema geeks. Nevertheless, these days and all the way back to the era of silent mega-movies, a movie is as much the responsibility of the Director of Photography and the Production Designer as the Director (before Menzies, the closest title approximate to Production Designer was Art Director). Of course, virtually every movie or TV show has dozens or hundreds of real-life specific instances of how these disciplines work together. There are literally countless instances. 
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But I have a simple—albeit important beyond measure—example in mind that is probably familiar to most of my readers. During the three seasons of the original Star Trek in the 1960s, I was always enchanted by the look and lighting of the sets. Onboard the Enterprise, during nearly every episode, production designer Matt Jefferies designed, built, and colorfully painted hallways, rooms, corners, and backgrounds to accommodate the story as required by the script, as well as chambers, caverns, and alien planet surfaces and skies. Usually he was able to use and redress previous sets, which made his life a little less complicated.

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Colored gels as mood lighting in the original Star Ttrek.

Once built, each set needed to be lit according to the instincts of the principal Director of Photography, Gerald Finnerman, who frequently cast highlights on the background walls, corridors, and joins where walls met ceilings with splashes of colored lighting. It is not unusual to see a scene that is lit with some combination of pinks, and oranges, and blues, and reds, and greens, and purples. It was always one of my favorite elements of the show. Finnerman is quoted in his Wikipedia listing as saying, “On a show like Star Trek, you have to push the envelope; the result of playing it safe is a diet of pabulum.” The listing continues, “He used light placements and colored gels as mood lighting. Using lighting techniques and changing background wall colors, he discovered that a range of effects could be seen on a single set.” However, Star Trek associate producer Robert Justman in Inside Star Trek: The Real Story claims it was his own idea to encourage Finnerman to use colored gels extensively: “We’re in outer space, Jerry, and we’re in color.... When you light the sets, throw wild colors in—magenta, red, green, any color you can find.... Be dramatic.” Doubtless, it was a team effort as any complicated TV show must be.

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Alas! Unfortunately, as much as I adore the follow-up show, Star Trek: The Next Generation did away with this sort of lighting, as is the case with all the other properties of the franchise.

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Well then, my point is that William Cameron Menzies did it all—all of the above. He was a genius, and toward the end of his career, he directed several inexpensive genre B-movies, the most important of which was Invaders from Mars.
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As a pertinent aside, there is a verifiable story that in 1919 T.E. Lawrence—Lawrence of Arabia—had completed the manuscript for his classic autobiography Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and had it with him as he visited a cafe at Reading Station while changing trains. It was only after he boarded the new train that he realized he did not have the manuscript. He was never able to find it and had no carbon copy. Undaunted, he started again and rewrote the entire book. Who’s to say which version was better? But he got the job done.
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Well, something very similar happened to Menzies. As he was preparing Invaders from Mars, he filled several notebooks with hundreds of sketches, detailing every scene of the movie. The word is that nobody had ever gone to this much trouble before to storyboard an entire live movie. Of course, these days storyboards are common. Then when principal photography began, his assistant went into Menzies’ office to refer to the drawings, but they were not there, and they never were found. Menzies was devastated. But he had a movie to make and he remembered enough to persevere—creating something of a masterpiece.
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Funny enough, Invaders from Mars has something else in common with Lawrence of Arabia, this time the film. The constituent parts of both films were shelved, misplaced, and forgotten for decades, much of it lost and/or allowed to rot in the never stopping onslaught of commerce. Fortunately, both films were miraculously restored (as have been many others as word of the loss of our film legacy spread).
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Well ahead of his time, around 40 years ago, the enterprising entrepreneurial film exhibitor Wade Williams, of Kansas City, Missouri, began the thankless job of tracking down those constituent parts of the films he loved as a child (often scattered worldwide) and reassembling them and restoring them as well as humanly possible. High on his list, after Flight to Mars (see posting in this blog) was Invaders from Mars and it is now available in both its American and British versions on a fine DVD, with informative booklet, from Image Entertainment/Corinth Films/The Wade Williams Collection.
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The DVD booklet lays out the history of the production; but it also includes Wade Williams’ own story of how he saved the film from extinction by tracking down its crucial negative elements:
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"Invaders from Mars was designed for three-dimensional photography. Cameras were not available as many studios were shooting in the new dimensional process. It was shot on the new single strip Eastman negative. Feature and trailer (prevues) prints were made in the new three-color Cinecolor process which had emulsion on both sides of the film, giving a softer focus and a darkness to the look of the film which hid many flaws such as the zippers on the Martians. A black and white 16mm reduction negative was made from the original release for domestic television distribution. Cinecolor Labs went bankrupt in the late ’50s, and the printing matrices and other original materials were lost when the IRS sold the lab assets for salvage.

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"In 1954 the film was sold in the UK and the distributor complained the film was not long enough and the dream sequence not a satisfactory climax, requiring the producer to shoot additional footage to lengthen the observatory sequence and to delete the dream sequence montage at the end of the film.
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"The original camera negative was cut and the footage lost. The new footage was inserted and color separations were made. The negative materials were sent to the UK in 1954 for the release in Europe. The original version was not seen outside the U.S.  The color reduction negative was made in the 1960s by the former owner from an original release 35mm Cinecolor print for rental libraries and television. In 1977 fifteen new Eastman color prints were made by Precision Film Labs in New York City for the only domestic theatrical re-release, made from the re-cut UK negative. It was re-cut and dupe sequences inserted to approximate the original release. These sections were made from the only existing Cinecolor print materials and the cuts were obvious.
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"Today the 35mm negatives, color separations and Cinecolor master is preserved in cold climate- controlled vaults in Kansas along with such classics as The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind.
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"The Fiftieth Anniversary release DVD is made from the original 35mm Cinecolor release print master. This is how America first saw the picture."
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In Glenn Erickson’s dvdtalk.com discussion of the film (see link above), he shouts from the rooftops: Invaders from Mars is “a sci-fi classic that, at least in Savant’s opinion, should be showing in the Louvre.” High praise indeed.

 

Extremely detailed lengthy articles and book chapters covering all aspects of this film—from concept through production to release and reception—can be found in a variety of sources, including Bill Warren’s Keep Watching the Skies!, Vincent Di Fate’s “The Magic of Menzies” in Filmfax #106, Robert Skotak and Scot Holton’s “Invaders from Mars” in Fantascene #4, and DVD Savant Glenn Erickson’s mammoth 2-part discussion titled “The Ultimate Invaders from Mars” at www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s96InvadersA.htmlhttps://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s96InvadersA.html and also published in abridged form in his film overview volume Sci-Fi Savant: Classic Sci-Fi Review Reader. Rather than covering the same ground, I’ll merely offer a summary, then touch on the origin of the story, and finally segue into my own memories. 

Invaders from Mars (1953)

USA. Released by 20th Century-Fox, An Edward L. Alperson Production. C. 1.37:1. 78m

CREW: Director William Cameron Menzies. Associate Producer Edward L. Alperson, Jr. Script Richard Blake, John Tucker Bottle (uncredited). Score Mort Glickman (uncredited). Score Arranger and Conductor Raoul Kraushaar. Director of Photography John Seitz. Color Consultant Clifford D. Shank. Production Designer William Cameron Menzies. Art Director Boris Leven. Editorial Super- vision Arthur Roberts. Special Photographic Effects Jack Cosgrove. Matte paintings and Optical Effects Irving Block and Jack Rabin (both uncredited). Miniature and Mechanical Effects Howard and Theodore Lydecker (both uncredited).

CAST: David MacLean Jimmy Hunt. Dr. Pat Blake Helena Carter. Dr. Stuart Kelston Arthur Franz. George MacLean Leif Erickson. Mary MacLean Hillary Brooke. Col. Fielding Morris Ankrum. Sgt. Rinaldi Max Wagner. Kathy Wilson Janine Perreau. Martian Intelligence Luce Potter (uncredited).

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