“Invaders From Mars” (1953)

Some great background. The green mutants (pronounced mute ants) are hilarious.

[quote] her white shunt

Her white suit

Saw it as a kid and the lead alien was really creepy to me. And I love the original American ending.

Yes, I've seen it. It's creepy. It's one of the few sci-fi movies of the '50s that isn't sort of exciting or fun, as well as scary. It's just creepy and scary.

I didn't dislike the remake.

I had a friend, as a kid, a girl, who loved this movie.

Me too r3. By the way, I should point out that this movie was three years *before* Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” so it didn’t steal that films idea. If anything, it was the other way around — but IOTBS is a much more sophisticated, adult film, and far creepier.

Wasn't IFM a kid's movie though?

Yes and no, r6. Many reviewers in the 50s treated all sci fi movies as kids movies.

I wouldn't call it a kids' movie.

It’s a moo moo.

I saw the 1980s version not too long ago. Karen Black was weirder than the aliens.

I loved that movie as a kid, but was also terrorized by it -- after all, the first people to get zapped by the aliens are the kid's parents. Frightening idea.

And then the ending where it turns out that although it was all a dream, the dream presaged reality and the horror are now about to unfold.

Amazig movie for its time. Despite the weird clunky aliens.

*Not of This Earth*

This movie creeped me out when I was a kid.

Not of This Earth! IMO Corman’s best 50s sci-fi.

It’s interesting how our attitudes change as we mature. The movie The Slime People scared the shit out of me as a kid. Now I just laugh.

[quote] Despite the weird clunky aliens.

How double DARE you, sir

Scared the crap out of me as a kid but I watched it every time it was on Chiller Theater.

The little girl with the glazed eyes who sets the fire ... the hole in the sand that fills itself up ... the forced perspective of the scary police station ... the parents who become automatons ...

Brrrr!

The fact that the little girl dies when the device is set off in her skull is, let’s admit, more brutal than even most sci-fi movies today.

Bootsy, why do you think the 1986 remake was "crass"?

It had Tobe Hooper, Karen Black, and Louise Fletcher going for it.

It’s dull and has a very self-conscious sense of its own kitsch, like a dialed down version of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

I wasn’t against a remake but all it chose to do was be smugly self aware. I would have loved to see it take the original formula and move it ahead. Also the monsters are cringe.

Took you long enough to answer, didn't it, R18?

And leaving off a poster reply number, clearly you didn't intend me to know you'd replied.

Yes, the set of the hill with the fencing, falling thrpugh the sand, your parents who suddenly act like they aren’t your parents anymore . . . very scary for a kid.

Since we had a B&W TV set, I had no idea this was in color. Except for that hillside, this could — and maybe shpuld — have been shot in B&W since the green aliens look anything but frightening.

The main marketing hook of the movie was that it was the first sci fi color movie.

Yes the Mute Ants (the way the movie chooses to pronounce mutants) are truly hilarious!

Cringe-inducing, r19.

I'm mesmerised by the shot in OP. Is that a matte painting? But where does it start and what is she standing on? It's quite a feat that a still from the first sci-fi colour movie can capture my imagination in this way after all these years.

Pretty sure it was a set as far as you can see the path, r23.

R23 — It was a studio set, lit to look like daylight here. It has some of the same haunting quality that the Kansas sets at the beginning of “The Wizard of Oz” had — moody and very, very still. And obviously artificial and dreamlike.

[quote]R22: Cringe-inducing, [R19].

Did you mean 'Invaders From Mars' (1986), or were you referring to something else?

I think they were referring to the way you pounced on Bootsy over such a small thing.

[quote]R27: I think they were referring to the way you pounced on Bootsy over such a small thing.

What you call "they" was Bootsy himself, and he has no room to talk.

Did you see how Bootsy 'pounced' on me this morning? On the 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫 𝐀𝐭𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤 thread, reply 30?

[quote]You’re mentally ill if you think the only reason people might object to ethnic cleansing is “Russian trollery.” I mean deeply mentally ill.

I almost never speak to Bootsy at all. But he certainly spoke to me, and outed himself as one of the trollsocks following me around calling me 'mentally ill.' Maybe he didn't think I'd catch who that was, or maybe he got careless and used the wrong account to post it.

When Worlds Collide would classify as a sci-fi movie in color made 2 years prior to this.

If one wanted to be overly pedantic, Georges Méliès' 'A Trip To The Moon' (1902) would be the first color sci-fi film.

R28, even more cringe-inducing. Only the most obsessive loser will drag issues from one thread into a totally unrelated one. Only a small-minded and vindictive one with no life whatsoever. So, you.

There, I clarified what I meant by cringe-inducing. Happy now?

R30 Except A Trip to the Moon was not shot in color.

[quote]R31: Only the most obsessive loser will drag issues from one thread into a totally unrelated one.

So why do you do it? You've spitefully pursued your own grudges for years.

On 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫 𝐀𝐭𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤, I responded to the OP, who was dragging his own petty vendetta into the thread. I just thought it was a Star Wars thread; I had no idea it was him, until he threw a fit over me replying. Then I calmly explained myself.

And then there was you, at Reply 30 of that thread.

Sorry, but you say something on one thread, you cannot expect people to ignore that it's you. That's what ignore-dar was put into DL for; it's meant to be used.

Why not clear the air? Take the stick out of your ass, and explain once and for all the basis for your 'borrowed grievance', instead of passively-aggressively running in wherever I'm posting with little jabs, calling me mentally ill, using socks?

[quote]R32: Except A Trip to the Moon was not shot in color.

Fair enough. But the exemplar was hand-colored, frame-by-frame, at the time the print was made. It's the first color sci-fi film.

[quote] It's the first color sci-fi film.

Questionable since only one original hand-colored print of the film was discovered. We can speculate there may have been more but most prints of this film were shown in B&W.

At any rate, Dr. Cyclops (1940), Unknown Island ('48), Destination Moon ('50), Flight to Mars ('51) were all in color, all before Invaders from Mars. I imagine there are more.

It wasn't really the first color sci-fi film. When Worlds Collide (in Technicolor) was released in 1951, for example. I think it's supposed to be the first color film to depict space aliens.

(Sorry - i see this was already mentioned. Oops.)

The dad in the film Leif Erickson was once married to Frances Farmer.

I think he was in that Joan Crawford axe movie.

The home video began in the 70s. Out family had a vcr when I was a small child in 1978

I just saw a documentary short on TCM called 𝐓𝐰𝐨 𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐎𝐧𝐞: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐨𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐅𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞, which mentions 'Invaders From Mars' as having run as a double feature with 'The Day The Earth Stood Still' (1951).

(segment starts at 2:51)