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The opening credits roll on a quivering monitor screen, the planet seen from outer space becomes punctuation on the end card. Stock footage states the satellite's ascent, cheered by all but the disgruntled scientist (Lee Van Cleef), a Manhattan Project veteran. His views are dismissed as "calculated fantasy," inspiration comes from the Venusian conqueror heard on the radio transmitter. The alien design adds glowing peepers and snaggled fangs to Hawsks' "intellectual carrot," it unleashes winged minions and stills the town's machinery, the Commies are blamed. "I got a premonition." "I got a stalled car." Parallel with Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a cosmic matter envisioned by Roger Corman as domestic drama and philosophical debate. The fifth columnist welcomes the takeover along with the end of "hate, bitterness, dreams, all the foolish nonsense," his wife (Beverly Garland) makes a plea on humanity's behalf: "You can't rub the tarnish from men's souls without losing a little of the silver, too." Military authorities are mind-controlled zombies or bumblers sur l'herbe, the colleague (Peter Graves) comes home to an extraterrestrial bat hurled by his smiling missus (Sally Fraser). Corman's calm in the face of the absurd is buttressed by Garland's conviction as she grabs a rifle and heads to the invader's cavernous lair, the protagonist's atonement means a blowtorch to the eye of the interplanetary vegetable. The friend's eulogy reverberates beyond the stratosphere: "He learned almost too late that man is a feeling creature..." Half of a potent double-bill with Not of This Earth. With Russ Bender, Taggart Casey, Karen Kadler, Dick Miller, Jonathan Haze, and Charles B. Griffith. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |