Young David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt) is awakened when a flying saucer lands in a nearby field. His father, a secret government researcher, goes to investigate, and returns with a new, cruel, personality. When the police and neighbor girl begin acting differently, David tells his story to helpful doctor Pat Blake (Helena Carter), who believes him, and takes him to see astronomer Stuart Kelston (Arthur Franz), who calls the military.
An early entry in the 1950’s string of alien possession films, Invaders from Mars distinguishes itself only by being a juvenile (that is, a kid’s film). With a gosh-and-golly, child lead, it spends only a few minutes building tension before turning into a kid’s adventure tale. Like many juvenile films, it talks down to its audience, assuming that the children watching will be dim, but will find it “neat” to see another kid fighting aliens.
It starts out as a shoestring, childhood version of It Came from Outer Space, but with the bite and paranoia of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But the budget, schedule, and talent is lacking to pull off the latter. We’re treated to laugh-out-loud scenes such as when a policeman supposedly plummets into the Martian’s sand trap—the camera pushes in so we only see his head and shoulders as he slowly throws his arms in the air, and then makes an “O” expression before ducking out of the frame. Couldn’t they afford one stuntman for a fall?
As a kid’s films, they couldn’t keep Jimmy alone for long, so he gets replacement parents in the form of a doctor (of what? She talks like an MD, but she’s called in as if she’s a psychiatrist.) who believes whatever she’s told, and a scientist who wildly speculates on the aliens and then believes whatever he just made up. So we get: the aliens would develop great intelligence, thus would have artificial men to walk for them; they could land in the desert by using some completely unheard of type of x-ray; they are unhappy about the U.S. developing a rocket. Naturally, he calls the military who believes him in every way and sends tanks. He also lectures the screen on “science.”
Apparently they only had about sixty minutes of film, as the middle of the picture is padded with stock footage of the military arriving. But why complain when the stock footage looks better than the aliens? The lead alien is a head in a bowl, which isn’t too bad, but there are also the slave mu-tants (yes, it is pronounced with the pause), wearing green felt and goggles with clearly visible zippers down their backs.
A “twist” ending, one that has been used over and over, and wasn’t clever the first time, takes care of the numerous plot holes and unbelievable action by making everything that happened before unimportant. The British cut of the film gets rid of the foolish “twist.”
You can read the standard Red-menace scare into the film, with the Martian’s standing in for the Russians, or take it as a story about an abusive father. Neither interpretation add much to the picture, but gives you some subtext to dwell on during the science lecture portion of the film.