INVADERS FROM MARS/1953-----Curious adolescent boy David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt) confronts aliens who have set up base in his backyard. The extraterrestrials intend to use mind control on the local townsfolk. Determined to stop the invaders, who have already co-opted his father (Leif Erickson), he attempts to warn others. But when local law officers also succumb, David teams up with astronomer Stuart Kelston (Arthur Franz) and Dr. Pat Blake (Helena Carter), and the trio must fight together to repel the insidious intruders.
My mother never stopped me from watching movies about Aliens from Space but suggested if I watched those movies in the afternoon, perhaps the scary parts would fade away before nighttime, and she added, isn’t the NIGHT TIME when creatures prefer to wander free. My father on the other hand sighed and said, what good is a scary movie if it ISN’T DARK OUTSIDE because everyone knows that creatures are scarier in the dark! I grew up during the ’50s the decade when the scary part of living was the fear from the Russians and other Communists who were certain to invade America and INSTANTLY defeat DEMOCRACY. Hollywood, it seemed, used the idea of the unknown and created, at least for me, the best of the worst SCI-FI movies, and there were more ALIEN INVASIONS predicted than I had time to watch, be it in the day time, or even better at NIGHT!
The one movie which to this day still sends a CHILL THROUGHOUT my body is INVADERS FROM MARS. Imagine being the kid in that movie, watching his parents turn into MONSTERS…AHHHH, UGHHH, I had to watch that movie with all lights on in the house, and never at night. My daughter (both of my kids, were also raised on ALIEN AND ZOMBIE movies) recently bought me a sweatshirt with the poster for INVADERS FROM MARS printed on it. And as I wore it, a thought entered my mind; a thought which had prevailed as I read the excuses from the JANUARY 6, INSURECTIONISTS, as to why they thought a political coup was a GOOD THING. The ALIENS in the form of TRUMP and his CONFEDERATE/NAZI/LOVING/FASCIST/RACIST SWAMP CREATURES did indeed invade this nation, albeit not from MARS, but worse, from the hallways and households of HELL. I will not tell you how the movie INVADERS FROM MARS ends, but let me caution you, it ends with a warning!
