INVADERS
FROM MARS

		Review by E.C.McMullen Jr.
INVADERS FROM MARS - 1986 USA Release: June 6, 1986 Cannon Pictures Rated: PG

Have you ever watched a movie that you really enjoyed, got your friends to see it, but they thought it sucked?

It happens to me from time to time. The first time is when I was a kid and raved about this crazy fun movie called FLASH GORDON. Everything about it from beginning to end was happily insane to me. Nobody made movies like that and I adored it. My friends, their minds firmly locked in Star Trek or Star Wars, couldn't enjoy a movie that so lovingly mocked Space Opera.

Not long after I went to an old art house theater that was showing a movie before my time, PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE. Like FLASH GORDON, I felt that thrill of a movie that leaped off the cliffs of crazy and splashed into the waters of gonzo.

Once again, my friends felt they wasted their money on B.S. More recently, I've had these experiences with MARS ATTACKS!, THE FIFTH ELEMENT, and GALAXY QUEST.

Sigh.

Movies like these weren't meant to bring dignity, critical praise, respect, or awards to their respective studios. They were meant to be popcorn movie theater fun! They were meant to fully indulge and exploit the theatrical experience in a way you can't quite get on TV, certainly cannot attain with old boxy VHS, and only recently have people finally learned to let go and just enjoy superhero movies.

In 1986, I had that experience with the 1986 remake, INVADERS FROM MARS.

10 year old David Gardner (Hunter Carson: THE LOCKER) is best buds with his father George (Timothy Bottoms: JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN, WHAT WAITS BELOW, THE SEA SERPENT, IN THE SHADOW OF KILIMANJARO, THE FANTASIST, THE DRIFTER, RIPPER MAN, DESPERATE OBSESSION, TOTAL FORCE, UNCLE SAM, RINGER, HELD FOR RANSOM, VAMPIRE BATS, PARASOMNIA, REALM OF THE MOLE MEN, THE SHED, TAR) and together they lay on the ground, looking up at the bright Aurigids meteor shower. David wants to grow up to become an astronaut and his father, who works in civilian capacity at the nearby military base, encourages this dream.

Then David's Mom, Ellen (Laraine Newman: THE CANNED FILM FESTIVAL [TV - 1986], WITCHBOARD 2, REVENGE OF THE RED BARON, MONSTERS, INC., THE HAUNTED WORLD OF EL SUPERBEASTO, METALOCALYPSE [TV]) breaks up the fun as its getting late and David has school tomorrow.

The family is a happy one and David goes to bed while a storm approaches. Thunder is heard in the distance.

Deep into the night, David is woke by a bright lightning strike and a loud crack of thunder. He rushes to his window to look out at the display and gets the shock of his young life when he witnesses a clearly alien spacecraft descend into the valley just over the hill across the street. The spaceship seems too large to simply disappear behind the crest of the hill, but it does and in his panic, David runs to his parent's room, waking them and yelling about UFOs.

His parents don't believe him, but they have trust with each other, so George goes alone, over the hill. He comes back... changed. Soon Ellen is changed as well and his parents become threatening, wanting him to come with them, over the hill.

As David rapidly runs out of people he can trust, he turns to his classmates, who of course, think he's nuts. Worse, his teacher, Mrs. McKletch (Louise Fletcher: EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, THE CHEAP DETECTIVE, MAMA DRACULA, STRANGE BEHAVIOR, BRAINSTORM, FIRESTARTER, FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC, SHADOWZONE, NIGHTMARE ON THE 13TH FLOOR, BLIND VISION, THE HAUNTING OF SEA CLIFF INN, TRYST, VIRTUOSITY, THE STEPFORD HUSBANDS, FRANKENSTEIN AND ME, THE CONTRACT, AFTER IMAGE, GRIZZLY II: REVENGE), becomes mysteriously hostile to David's talk of UFOs and alien invasion. She insists on dragging him to someplace without witnesses where they will be alone.

In desperation, David Gardner runs to the sympathetic school nurse Linda Magnussen (Karen Black: THE PYX, TRILOGY OF TERROR, BURNT OFFERINGS, THE STRANGE POSESSION OF MRS. OLIVER, KILLER FISH, ETERNAL EVIL, IT'S ALIVE III, OUT OF THE DARK, OVEREXPOSED, NIGHT ANGEL, MIRROR MIRROR [1990], HAUNTING FEAR, FATAL ENCOUNTER, CAGED FEAR, THE ROLLER BLADE SEVEN [all], CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT, EVIL SPIRITS, AUNTIE LEE'S MEAT PIES, DEAD GIRLS DON'T TANGO, PLAN 10 FROM OUTER SPACE, CHILDREN OF THE CORN IV, LIGHT SPEED, OLIVER TWISTED, SOULKEEPER, LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS, MINER'S MASSACRE, HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES, OOGA BOOGA) who initially protects David from the raging Mrs. McKletch simply because the teacher insults and demeans her.

David tells her his story and, naturally, she doesn't believe it. But McKletch returns, more maddened than before, more threatening than before, and while Linda isn't ready to buy into a UFO conspiracy from a 12 year old kid, there's certainly something distressing about Mrs. McKletch's behavior.

Of course, you can't have a movie called INVADERS FROM MARS unless you actually have evil aliens and their wicked plans for dominating earth.

Tobe Hooper was making a comeback at this point in his life, having been removed from two previous directing jobs, largely because he was suffering some kind of personal duress which was derailing his career. Cannon threw him a bone with INVADERS FROM MARS and he rocked it for all he was worth. Tobe wanted to make this remake family friendly. Something for the kids to watch in the summer and have fun with it.

On first view I remember noticing how the tempo of the movie changed the moment little David Gardner woke up and saw a spaceship landing. His parents weren't talking and behaving like adults to a beloved child anymore, but with the speech mannerisms - argot - of adult-sized children. From this moment on throughout the rest of the movie, all the adults talk like you'd expect a child imagining adults talking.

Because of this, as it turned out, I accurately figured how this movie would end. Was it by luck, am I that smart, or did Director Tobe Hooper and writers Dan O'Bannon, Don Jacoby, and Richard Blake mean to tip their hand?

It was because of that knowledge that I enjoyed the carnival atmosphere of INVADERS FROM MARS. It's because of this very thing, that my friends didn't catch that tip (if there is supposed to be one), and hated the movie.

Special Effects maestro, Stan Winston, was simultaneously working on ALIENS at the same time he was doing INVADERS FROM MARS and there is a definite "H.R. Giger" influence and cross over into Tobe Hooper's movie. While the sets are Giger-esque (if not far brighter and more colorful than Giger would do in that period), the creature creations are all Stan and madly inventive in both their design and execution.

Then actors James Karen (FRANKENTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER, THE CHINA SYNDROME, THE TIME WALKER, POLTERGEIST, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, JAGGED EDGE, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD II, GIRLFRIEND FROM HELL, THE WILLIES, THE UNBORN [1991], FUTURE SHOCK, CONGO, PIRANHA [1995], NIGHTMAN, SHADOW OF DOUBT, APT PUPIL, MULHOLLAND DRIVE, TRAIL OF THE SCREAMING FOREHEAD, DARK AND STORMY NIGHT, THE BUTTERFLY ROOM, AMERICA'S MOST HAUNTED) as General Climet Wilson and actor Bud Cort (HYSTERICAL, BATES MOTEL, OUT OF THE DARK, BRAIN DEAD, DOGMA) as Scientist Mark Weinstein, come into play.

I mean, seriously! How can you not be in on the joke with the Marine General telling David things like,

"Don't worry, Son! We Marines have no qualms about killing Martians!"

Or when David discovers that the devastating alien weapon is ... coin operated?

Director Tobe Hooper had already made one of the hardest of hard core Horror movies with THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. He followed that up two years later with EATEN ALIVE (TCSM in the swamp). Then he proved those were no fluke with a sanitized Hollywood Tobe creation, FUNHOUSE.

But this time he was out to make a fun kids movie that grown-ups could also enjoy. Yet Hooper was still widely known for THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and FUNHOUSE and Dan O'Bannon was one of the writers of ALIEN and DEAD AND BURIED. Audiences in 1986 were most familiar with their gore-soaked Horror movies and, as you saw in the trailer, Cannon Pictures chose to market INVADERS FROM MARS as an action packed INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS type of movie.

Which It Is Not!

You don't promise people R rated adult Horror and give them PG rated kids Horror (although why the PG didn't alert anyone I still can't figure out. Does no one look at the ratings?).

Upon its release, INVADERS FROM MARS was an audience and critical disaster, excoriated on the scale of John Carpenter's THE THING, released a few years earlier.

While never attaining the heights of THE THING down through the years, INVADERS FROM MARS found and built its audience over time. So much so that here in 2022, the Bluray alone sells at a premium price.

So what can I say? Maybe you'll love it, maybe you'll hate it, but I give 1986's INVADERS FROM MARS 3 Shriekgirls.

This review copyright 2022 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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