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An indelible dilation of the concentrated nightmare essence of Invaders from Mars, H.G. Wells via DeMille via George Pal. Newsreel black-and-white gives way to blazing Technicolor for the follow-up to the World Wars, a planetarium show narrated by Cedric Hardwickle places Earth before an envious Martian telescope. Conquerors arrive inside a meteor "big as a house and red-hot," a California square dance suddenly goes dark as rubes unwisely approach it with white flags. (They have their backs to the camera when the alien periscope unleashes its heat ray, so that the whole screen is engulfed by crimson sparks.) A small fire for "the beginning of the rout of civilization," the global menace finally measured by a desperate scientist (Gene Barry) scanning devastated Los Angeles streets for his beloved (Ann Robinson). "You're going to need plenty of reinforcements." Arnold sees cosmic contact for mind-expanding awe (It Came from Outer Space is concurrent), Byron Haskin mines it for post-nuclear dread and spectacle—squashed monuments and Munch skies to bring the war home like nothing before. A dissolve from a zapped colonel's glowing skeleton to jets zipping across the cobalt ether gives the palette of impotent heroism, the invaders' own vision comes through the helmeted camera slithering across a farmhouse. The Armageddon of a marauding spaceship gliding unscathed out of a mushroom cloud, then Exodus as Haskin cranes over the tumult to contemplate boy and pooch helping themselves to an overturned ice-cream cart. Feeble flesh within titanium is the punchline, reunion in a bombarded church (Wyler's Mrs. Miniver) and miracle of a filthy atmosphere. "For the sake of future history, if any." Spielberg and Verhoeven serve up contrasting studies down the line. With Les Tremayne, Robert Cornthwaite, Lewis Martin, and Paul Frees.
--- Fernando F. Croce |