INVADERS FROM MARS: Blu-ray (Cannon Pictures 1986) Scream/Shout! Factory
It’s been said
before, so I really have no problem saying it again; what scared us in the 1950’s
rarely – if ever – has quite the same effect some years into the future. It
isn’t so much that movies of a particular period no longer hold their sway over
an audience after their own time has passed. Indeed, some movies perennially
renew themselves – Casablanca (1942)
immediately comes to mind. Such are the purest works of cinema art and
craftsmanship. But sci-fi and horror have a unique hurdle to overcome, arguably
intrinsic to their very existence; namely, effectively recreating the ‘chill
factor’ the second time around. Audiences tend to become more jaded in their
viewing habits; the level of expectation further diminished by memory; also,
the expectation for bigger, more terrifying spectacles to take the macabre to a
whole new level of exhilaration. Revisiting a classic horror movie takes some
effort. And put bluntly, Tobe Hooper’s 1986 remake of Invaders from Mars is no Casablanca!
It is a rare
remake, particularly in cult horror/sci-fi, that can visit the well twice and
come up with something refreshing, or even as good to stimulate the creative
juices into dread. William Cameron Menzies’ original Invaders from Mars (1953) has the pedigree of a Hollywood craftsman
to recommend it; also the timely topic of the ‘Red Scare’ – in this case, taken literally (the invaders being from
the ‘red’ planet). By 1949, the
Joseph McCarthy witch hunts had raided virtually every studio back lot for
communists and communist sympathizers; a possession and an expulsion of
Hollywood’s creative roster not unlike the insidious Martian infiltration
depicted in this movie. In hindsight, Invaders
from Mars presupposes even the monolithic takeover of our tiny planet, one
town at a time, as ominously played in Don Siegel’s moody sci-fi classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956); more
purposefully remade by Philip Kaufman in 1978 as a social critique of
humanity’s gradual isolation.
Invaders from Mars may also be credited with starting
the whole alien abduction cycle in popular cinema; a topic nonexistent to rare
in its day, except as fodder for dime store pulp fiction. Alas, we’ve seen far
too much of it ever since, reaching super-saturation levels in more recent
times. As they still say in Hollywood;
timing is everything. The 1953 Invaders
from Mars was the first sci-fi movie to be shot in color, beating out Byron
Haskin’s War of the Worlds (also
released in 1953) by mere months. For
its time, Invaders from Mars broke
new ground, especially in its rhythmic underscore by Raoul Kraushaar; also, in
Menzies’ decision to utilize an Eastmancolor negative, later printed to SuperCinecolor,
lending an unsettling vibrant and lush look. Menzies’ who had designed sets
for no less grand a production than Selznick’s Gone With The Wind (1939) brought this grandiosity to bear on Invaders from Mars albeit, on a much
tighter budget. Curiously, the cost-cutting never shows, Menzie’s manipulating
the scale of certain sets with forced perspective and using elongated and sparse
decoration to exaggerate the film’s surrealism.
Fast forward a
few decades to shock-meister, Tobe Hooper’s glossily gilded 1986 remake. Apart from more complex special effects, this
Invaders from Mars now had something
of a slightly mangled screenplay by Dan O’Bannon and Don Jakoby, sadly denied
its’ 50’s ‘red scare’ paranoia – replaced by rank shock value. The movie is equally plagued by some truly
hammy acting from James Karen, Karen Black and Louise Fletcher – among others –
all of whom are clearly having a colossally good time, either being possessed
by or fleeing the otherworldly threat in tandem. O’Bannon and Jakoby have not
veered all that much from Richard Blake and John Tucker Battle’s original
scenario. However, rather than being a virtue, such strict fidelity turns out
to be a considerable vice. Even before the VHS era of everything on home video
had taken over we had already seen the movie’s abduction scenario played out
before – and again, and again – ad nauseam and to the point where it now seems
terribly gauche to make even the attempt. Homage is one thing. And certainly,
done with an increasing sense of foreboding it might have clicked with
audiences once more.
A seismic
shift occurred in 80’s horror that, at least in retrospect, seems to belie all
the more profoundly disturbing efforts put forth to mature the genre a decade
earlier. Seventies’ horror was made for adults; often with bone-chilling
realism meant to truly terrorize. By comparison, eighties horror has a much
more adolescent slant; to tease us with pseudo-scares. Invaders from Mars is of this latter ilk and, generally speaking,
badly done on most accounts. Some of the best horror and sci-fi movies were
shot on a shoestring with C-grade talent rising to the occasion; the lack of budget
forcing film makers to be cleverly deceitful in their shudders; the absence of
star power adding a sense of realism to these stories.
Hooper’s Invaders’ remake is trying
desperately to channel this aura. But it is a tenuous
tightrope at best, only occasionally successful at heightening the overall
anxiety and dread, as in the sequence where our prepubescent protagonist, David
Gardner (played with ineffectual fear by Hunter Carson), discovers Mrs. McKeltch,
his science teacher (exorcised with demonic aplomb by the kooky Louise Fletcher)
devouring a live frog in the backroom. Mmmm….yummy! Alas, Hooper’s spectacle
veers toward the traditional ‘gross out’ rather than exerting some truly sublime
grotesqueness. Case in point: McKeltch, having eaten a frog is eventually eaten
alive herself by one of the Martian guards, on this occasion – bearing an
uncanny resemblance to Frank Oz’s reincarnation of the man-eating plant, Audrey
II from Little Shop of Horrors
(1986).
Categorically bent
on achieving more elaborate creature and visual effects than its 1953
predecessor, the remake repeatedly oversteps the boundaries of good taste at
the expense of the original’s darkly sinister undercurrent; Stan Winston and
John Dykstra’s latex puppetry playing more to the camp elements of the story.
Worse for the movie’s impact, funded by a private millionaire at a considerable
cost of $12,000,000, Invaders from Mars
cannot help but acquire a fairly glossy patina; the movie’s paltry $4,885,663
box office intake a blushing embarrassment for independent distributor, Cannon
Films and a major creative misfire for Tobe Hooper, whose best efforts have
been primarily in the horror genre; The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), The
Funhouse (1981) and Poltergeist
(1982). These have remained cultural touchstones in movie horror. But Hooper’s
modus operandi on Invaders from Mars
- to amalgamate at least some of these riches mined from horror to augment and
compliment his foray into science fiction are a colossal mistake from which the
movie never quite recovers. Something is decidedly remiss in this quaint
conjoining of stylistic elements; the tone of the piece missing its mark, failing
to frighten or astound; the net result – a minor amusement rather than a major
flight into fear.
And despite
the movie’s tagline, “there’s no place on
earth to hide”, this Invaders from
Mars is only interested in the inhabitants of a single isolated community
referenced as Santa Mira, California: a rather transparent homage to the town depicted
in the original, Invasion of the Body
Snatchers. Exteriors of the Gardner house were shot on the freestanding and
fully functional set built for 1948’s Mr.
Blandings Builds His Dream House (currently housing the administrative
offices for Malibu Creek State Park) with other locations lensed in Simi Valley
and Eagle Rock, a suburb of Los Angeles. It’s difficult to poo-poo a film whose
cult following has only continued to grow in the years since its release. Certainly,
there are merits to the exercise, particularly some of the visual effects. For
their day, these were state of the art and colorfully achieved; Hooper likely
attempting to tap into the gaudy allure of the original film’s vibrant
spectrum. But the cave-like Martian mothership hidden beneath the sand dunes,
where unsuspecting humans are implanted with odd worm-like glowing probes that sedate
their emotional responses and make them subservient to their outer space
controllers, looks more like an 80’s discothèque than an otherworldly central
command post for this global takeover; complete with strobe-lighting and
steaming vats of pumped in mist.
Our story
begins at the Gardner household, the idyllic all-American household with a
good-looking, affluent young couple; George (Timothy Bottoms, looking uncannily
like Ryan Reynolds) and Ellen (the thoroughly nondescript Laraine Newman) and
their precocious young son, David (played with ineffectually canned defiance by
Hunter Carson). It all looks as it should, the family seemingly without cares;
mom, a rather lax disciplinarian and dad, the kid who hasn’t quite said goodbye
to his own adolescence as yet. Predictably, all this wide-eyed optimism is
about to be turned asunder after David is awakened in the middle of the night
by a violent electrical storm. This leads to his discovery of an alien spacecraft
docking in the sandpits just beyond the horizon. David tries to convince his
parents about what he has just seen. But startled in the middle of the night by
a screaming child does not exactly broker an air of confidence and so, like all
‘good parents’ in an atypical horror movie, the Gardners placate David’s
imagination for the sake of restoring peace to their bucolic household,
although George does promise to investigate David’s claim just as soon as the
rain stops.
Predictably,
the morning yields unanticipated consequences. George is different from his
usual self; more restrained and queerly robotic. David notices this change in
his father’s personality almost immediately, although it will take the
dim-witted Ellen some time to figure out as much. At school, David runs afoul
of science teacher, Mrs. McKeltch (Louise Fletcher); a rank disciplinarian who
vows to exact revenge, merely for defending the honor of a fellow classmate,
Heather (Virginya Keehne) after two other classmates hurl a dead biology frog
at her. David confides his woes about George to the school’s nurse, Linda
Magnusson (Karen Black). She empathizes with David and gains his trust. Alas,
she doesn’t quite believe his story either. Dumb adults. When will they learn?
Children and pets always know more about the fate of the world than they do! David
returns home to discover his front door ajar and the TV in the living room
ominously glowing with static. It’s all a ruse, however, perpetrated by Ellen
(presumably, for no reason other than to tease the audience into believing her
possession by an alien life force has already occurred). In fact, nothing out
of the ordinary has happened in all these long hours since the invader’s
arrival. If they are bloodthirsty for world dominion, they are taking their own
sweet time about it.
David tells
his mother he is very worried about George. Again, she doesn’t believe him
until the hour grows late and George fails to return home. The police are
summoned; David directing them to investigate the sandpit just beyond the
horizon for clues. Inexplicably, George resurfaces suddenly from the bushes in
the backyard with another man, Ed (William Frankfather) who is Heather’s father.
When asked about their whereabouts by Ellen, the two men remain cryptic. The
police return from their search, predictably, already implanted with the same
controlling device in the back of their necks and exhibiting the same frosty
lack of human emotion. Again, Ellen doesn’t notice the difference, but David
does. Later, George takes Ellen to the sandpits where she too is converted into
a Martian clone. The next morning, David is acutely aware his parents are no
longer operating with his best intentions at heart. And although Ellen suggests
they all play hooky from work and school for a ‘picnic’ beyond the horizon,
David elects to return to class where he begins to suspect Mrs. McKeltch has
also become Martian possessed.
A bit of
skulking around on David’s part during recess reveals McKeltch in her backroom,
devouring one of the science lab frogs. Heather, now also a synthetic human,
confronts David and draws McKeltch’s attention to the fact her own secret
identity has been exposed. McKeltch attempts to take David away, presumably to
the Martian caves. Mercifully, she is thwarted in this endeavor by Linda. David
tells Linda, Mrs. McKeltch is an alien/human hybrid, as are his parents and
Heather. He points to the matching puncture marks on the back of all their
necks as proof of an otherworldly conspiracy taking place right under their
noses. Linda is sympathetic, but cautiously remains disbelieving of this truth.
The boy simply has an overactive imagination. But when she witnesses the same
puncture marks on the back of McKeltch and Heather’s necks, Linda decides to
keep David away from both women. Later, when David’s parents come to collect
him from school, Linda lies about David’s whereabouts. In actuality, she has
sent the boy to hide in her apartment.
From here, the
O’Bannon/Jakobi screenplay devolves into a cursory convolution of false starts,
meant to heighten suspense as David and Linda discover what we, the audience,
already know. Even more predictably, the movie unravels into a series of 80’s
styled chase sequences, presumably meant to elevate the level of suspense.
David and Linda both agree Gen. Climet Wilson (James Karen), presently
overseeing a rocket launch at the nearby military base, must be brought in to
investigate. Wilson gave a lecture at the school and is something of a personal
friend to David, as George also works at this top secret outpost. Earlier,
Linda and David witnessed the alien abduction of two workers from this
facility. Now, they have returned, planting some explosives on a highly
combustible petroleum tanker that is then driven to the rocket launch pad and
detonated into a hellish ball of flames. Gen. Wilson confronts the two men in
his office. They are neutralized by their alien controllers and Wilson puts the
entire base on high alert, calling out the army to infiltrate the sandpits.
What follows is a disastrous series of obvious misfires, designed to get Linda
and David back into the Martian mothership where they too can be threatened
with the prospect of being converted into clones. Linda is knocked unconscious
as Mrs. McKeltch oversees the preparation of another probe meant to be inserted
into the back of Linda’s neck.
McKeltch takes
David to meet the supreme being of this Martian invasion; a pincushion styled purple
blob. David ineffectually pleads for the Martians to reconsider their hostile
takeover (oh right…now that’ll work!) and McKeltsh is eaten alive
by one of the Martian henchmen, presumably for having failed in her primary
objective to stifle the boy’s probing mind. Together with Gen. Wilson, David
rescues Linda before the probe can be implanted. The Martians are subdued in a
hailstorm of bullets and David narrowly escapes the alien craft with his
Martian-controlled parents in hot pursuit. As the mothership prepares for its’
hasty departure from earth, the mind control exerted on David’s parents short
circuits. George and Ellen return to their former selves. At this point, David
awakens from his nightmare, comforted by George and Ellen, even as a violent
electrical storm is brewing outside. Too bad for David, history is about to
repeat itself. David witnesses the landing of the self-same spacecraft depicted
in his nightmare and rushes to his parent’s bedroom to warn them of the
impending disaster, whereupon he witnesses a terror (unseen by the audience)
that sends him into fitful screams.
In hindsight,
this final scene seems even more perversely to have been stolen – if watered
down – from Philip Kaufmann’s remake of Invasion
of the Body Snatchers; a truly ominous finale where Veronica Cartwright
suddenly discovers she is the only human being left on the planet untouched by
that film’s pod culture. There is no such moment of startling revelation at the
end of Invaders from Mars. A pity, the
movie plays very much like a hand-me-down, stitched together from parts of
other horror/sci-fi masterpieces; the 1953 original included. At least, the ’53
version had some fairly solid acting to recommend it. The ’86 remake lags in
this regard, especially Hunter Carson’s blonde-haired moppet, frustratingly
unable to convey a child’s startle, shock, amazement and disbelief as anything
greater than a pair of bulging eyes and some thoroughly girlish, if marginally
frantic shrieks. Perhaps comparisons between the ’53 and ’86 versions are unfair.
After all, the ’53 was made near the start of the Cold War. If one substitutes
communism for alien abduction (as one must in this case) then the original
movie is a very clever allegory for this socio-political angst and paranoia
gripping the United States. Having reset the movie to the ‘then’ present, ’86
version cannot use the threat of communist infiltration as its crutch – at
least, not with a straight face.
Invaders from Mars is a prime example
of a high concept past its prime. In choosing to remain closely aligned with
the original 1953 classic’s plot – though hardly its thematic elements – and
going the more glossy route to ‘show’ the Martians in their full flourish –
this remake subverts virtually all the horror clichés inserted by director,
Tobe Hooper meant to titillate and terrorize. Inevitably, the precepts of
sci-fi too had moved on; particularly in the wake of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind
(1977) and E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial
(1982); two movies about visitors from outer space with more altruistic
purposes in friendship than hostility. Within the context of its original 50’s
‘red scare’ paranoia, the original Invaders
from Mars premise worked exceedingly well and was repeatedly mined
throughout the decade. It would take the
likes of Roland Emmerich’s Independence
Day (1996) to dilute, then trample on Spielberg’s warm and fuzzy aliens,
making Invaders from Mars either a
cultural throwback to another time or the proverbial fish out of water in its
own. Either way, the movie does not work half as well as it should. There are
nuggets of greatness about it, but on the whole, nothing comes together in any
sort of deliberately edifying way. Quel dommage!
Scream Factory
– a division of Shout! has brought Invaders
from Mars to Blu-ray. Alas, there are issues with this 1080p transfer;
age-related damage, speckling and some moderate to unexpectedly heavy scratches
and a lot of dirt. I suppose we shouldn’t be terribly surprised by any of it.
This film was released by Cannon, now under the auspices of MGM, who clearly
have only marginal interest in resurrecting their back catalog. Very
problematic: up-and-down grain – looking either harsh or nonexistent (as in DNR
scrubbed) – erratic clarity and a general lack of overall crispness. About
grain: it has a bizarre yellow caste. I am at a loss to explain the reasons why
this is so. But trust me – it is, and distractingly evident. The SFX shots, using optical mattes, are less
refined with a distracting spike in grain texture. As expected, the exterior
sequences look brighter and generally more colorful.
I really need
to tap into the executive brain trust to explore the logic behind a good many
less than stellar digital transfers getting completely repurposed DTS 5.1 audio
tracks. It isn’t that the effort is not appreciated. But frankly, what is the
point when the visuals do not live up to such high levels of mastering
proficiency? Fix both or fix neither. A great sounding movie with mediocre
visuals is still a dud in my not terribly humble opinion. The original 2.0 mix
is included for the diehard purest. Overall audio fidelity will surely impress
on either track. Extras include an audio commentary from Tobe Hooper, a making
of (superfluous at best), a few TV spots and trailers, stills gallery and some
original storyboards. Don’t get excited. As a movie, Invaders from Mars is a middling effort. Ditto for MGM Blu-ray master,
farmed out to Shout!/Scream Factory to save a few more bucks in third party
distribution. Bottom line: pass, and be glad that you did!
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
2.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
2.5
EXTRAS
3
Comments