Oct 111963
 
2.5 reels

After a Martian probe stops transmitting, lead scientist David Fielding (Kent Taylor) takes off a few days to try and save his crumbling marriage.  Gathered in the small house on the grounds of a huge, abandoned estate, David, his wife Clair (Marie Windsor), and their two kids attempt to enjoy a belated Christmas and New Years, but they begin to see duplicates of themselves on the grounds.

Made when B-movie sci-fi was switching from alien invasions to atomic mutations, The Day Mars Invaded Earth is a low-budget body-replacement film.  Following in the shadow of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (deep in its shadow), the characters are confronted with cold, hostile doppelgangers, but as the entire cast could fit in my kitchen, they aren’t confronted by many of them.  This isn’t the people of Earth being replaced; it’s a few people in California.

If you are hoping for visible aliens, high tech gadgets, spaceships, or action, you’ll be disappointed.  Primarily what you get are the four members of the scientist’s family walking around the estate, hearing noises, looking frightened, and occasionally seeing themselves or one of their loved-ones who shouldn’t be there.  It builds a reasonable amount of tension in the middle, particularly when the wife goes alone to check the main house, and then is sure she’s being followed.  It also has a far better finish than I had expected, which is the main reason I’m recommending it, at least if it comes on TV.

Even with its brief running time of seventy minutes, there isn’t enough story, and what plot exists isn’t forwarded by any events on the screen.  No one works out what is going on, but just “feels” it.  There are a lot of new and exciting senses given to David and his wife.  She has the ability to sense when she’s being followed, but that’s pretty standard for the movies, particularly if you don’t have the budget to have something doing the following.  But she also shares with her husband the ability to know conclusively if their son is lying.  Now that’s got to be handy for parents.  David can also “feel” that the ghostly duplicates must be connected to his work at NASA.  I’m not sure what kind of feeling that might be, but its lucky that he can detect such things or the story would never progress.

The atmosphere relies on people wandering off on their own.  It is a poor plot contrivance at the beginning, and ridiculous at the end, when everyone is convinced that they are being stalked and that there are doppelgangers.  There’s no way to explain Dave sending a friend of the family, on his own, to break open the gate.  Wouldn’t you all want to go together, and then drive through the gate as soon as it’s open?  That way you both: 1- escape; 2-know your friend hasn’t been replaced.

With its small cast, few sets, scale-salary acting and workmanship directing, The Day Mars Invaded Earth seems less like a feature than an episode of The Outer Limits.  Sure, I liked The Outer Limits, but I wouldn’t want to pay theater prices to see one show.

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