IT CONQUERED
THE WORLD
MOVIE REVIEW

		Review by E.C.McMullen Jr.
IT CONQUERED THE WORLD - 1956 USA Release: July 15, 1956 American International Pictures Rating: USA: N/A

EVERY MAN ITS PRISONER... EVERY WOMAN ITS SLAVE!

EVERY DOG ITS ... DOG!

In what feels like a warning of things to come, IT CONQUERED THE WORLD opens with credits that looks like Dom Casual Bold or something from a Bugs Bunny cartoon. To modern Internet audiences, it's the kissing cousin of Comic Sans.

Not the direction I'd take when making a serious movie, but then, while I've worked on feature films I've never been in charge of making them, I've only watched them.

... sometimes to my regret.

Anyway -

In a room about the size of a middle-class American living room, at least the kind of living rooms we will see in this movie, four scientists using cheap machinery (even for its day) are monitoring the launch of an expensive rocket that is carrying a more expensive satellite - nearly $96 million in 2022 dollars - into orbit.

Now if that isn't the luxury of good old American know how then what the hell is? They're launching expensive rockets from their living room with little more than a television remote!

I've watched old educational films of that era where they crash-tested cars with more measuring machines and researchers watching them.

But it is what it is and there's blonde and broad shouldered Dr. Paul Nelson (Peter Graves: RED PLANET MARS, KILLERS FROM SPACE, BEGINNING OF THE END, ATTACK OF THE EYE CREATURES, SCREAM OF THE WOLF, DEAD MAN ON THE RUN, WHERE HAVE ALL THE PEOPLE GONE?, THE CLONUS HORROR, ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES, HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL [1999], MEN IN BLACK II) standing there looking into the camera musing, "And man is finally ready to move into space."

Well, ya gotta start somewhere.

Elsewhere on the base (or some other base, who knows?), a military officer and the Secretary (of state?) are meeting with another scientist, Dr. Tom Anderson (Lee Van Cleef: THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, SPACE PATROL [TV], ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK). Unlike the clean-shaven, kindly soft-spoken mannerisms of Dr. Nelson, Dr. Anderson is a stink-eyed, purse-lipped jerk with an undisguised air of contempt.

He not only doesn't try to hide his disrespect, he nearly dares his hosts to do something about it. Anderson has quite the chip on his shoulder and, while the officers recognize his accomplishments, he's earned nearly every diploma in science known to man (surely an exaggeration), none of his wild predictions - and he's made plenty over the years - has ever come true. So everyone isn't about to drop everything they've worked toward just because Tom says so.

Yes, they are eager to work with such a learned man who has so much potential to offer, but they're not about to put him in charge of everything or anything.

This doesn't sit well with Tom. He already earned his diplomas, why should he have to actually prove himself? Bitter that the military won't accept him de facto as their leader, yet smirking as if he expected it and has the power to change it ("You'll be sorry!"), Tom leaves in a snit.

That evening, Tom and his wife Claire (Beverly Garland: THE NEANDERTHAL MAN, THE ROCKET MAN, CURUCU BEAST OF THE AMAZON, NOT OF THIS EARTH, THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE, STARK FEAR, THE MAD ROOM, HELLFIRE) have Dr. Nelson and his wife Joan (Sally Fraser: GIANT FROM THE UNKNOWN, WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST, THE SPIDER) over for dinner. As he was with the Army officers, Tom can barely contain himself from lording it over his friend, Dr. Nelson.

It's only because Paul Nelson is his friend and Tom's wife is sitting across the table from him saying, "Tom, no. You promised.", that Tom is able to contain himself until after dinner. Then Tom can control himself no more! He simply must tell Paul his secret and Paul is curious enough to go along with it.

Tom's secret is surprising all right, but in all the wrong ways. Anderson has a large device tucked behind a curtain in his office that allows him to communicate with technologically advanced life forms on Venus. Tom is excited because the Venusian praises Tom's undiscovered genius and is coming to earth - flying not in one of its own advanced spacecraft - but in one of the earth's expensive satellites that somehow got away from orbit^.

Paul Nelson wonders aloud why the advanced aliens didn't simply build their own spaceship. Paul has a few more obvious yet still pertinent questions. Simple, blatantly obvious stuff that a genius like Tom only now thinks he should have wondered about himself, but then he waves them all away because the alien from Venus flatters him, is going to bring intelligence to earth, make us all smart, and do away with stupidity. It will also put Tom in charge of everyone.

Isn't that great?

Paul repeats the most obvious question,

"How?"

...but a self-certified genius like Tom has no idea and he's not curious enough to care.

But I care about the

!!!SCIENCE MOMENT!!!:
It's not clear how a satellite specifically designed for orbiting the earth would have enough fuel to fly all the way to Venus, reconnoiter on the surface to pick up a passenger, return to space without the aid of a rocket booster that put it into space in the first place, and fly all the way back to earth -

- BUT -

since the earth scientists don't know either I'll chalk it up to unknown alien technology and leave it at that.

This Science Moment concerns itself with how the movie presents scientists.

Continued at THE SCIENCE MOMENT / It Conquered The World

Astounded at his friend's utter naivity and arrogance (Come on! Paul must have noticed long before now!), Paul ends the evening early, leaving Tom alone with the loving wife he broke his promise to.

Behaving as if he somehow lost on the argument from logic, Tom attempts to salve his feelings by speaking through his machine to his only other "friend", his fawning admirer from Venus: who promises to make everything right and put Tom in his rightful place as leader of all things earth. Why? Because the creature is such a swell life form who recognizes latent greatness.

Once the creature arrives - and it is arguably the most ridiculous looking alien ever to grace cinema - it immediately goes about releasing life forms that will take over humans a la Robert A. Heinlien's 1951 best selling novel, THE PUPPET MASTERS1. Tom remains too blinded by his dreams of ruling the world to acknowledge that he will be on the menu.

"He-ey! Relax Buddy! This isn't aboot conquest, Pal! I'm here to fix your problems, Friend!"

Part of what almost saves IT CONQUERED THE WORLD is the unintentional humor during what should be the movie's most serious moments.

Tom: "Claire, what I have to do tonight is difficult enough! You're only making it harder!"

Claire: "I want it to be hard!"

There are also moments where it feels like, well, Write What You Know seems like a great launch point for a budding writer, but there is dialogue here by Rusoff or Griffith, that suddenly jumps the rails from where the conversation was heading.

For example, Tom explains to Claire that the beauty of the Venus alien plans is that everyone will live logically, free of emotion.

Claire realizes, apparently better than Tom, that such a life means they won't love each other anymore. Something Tom - too blinded by his visions of the world praising him - never considered. Okay, all well and good, but this is how Claire responds,

Tom: "I'll still need you even when there are no emotions."

Claire: "For a few dollars you can hire a woman who'll fulfill all your fetishes. And when you get tired of her you can run down to the employment agency and hire another!"

Uh... Wait. What? Are we still talking about the alien?

Can Paul ever talk sense into Tom? Or is Tom too far gone, too drunk on his own hubris to listen to anyone, even his own wife Claire? The Claire who goes from mouse to eventual ass-kicker as she is torn between her love for Tom and her hatred for the creature that fed his weaknesses and changed him for the worst.

Can Dr. Paul ever overcome his own extraordinary naivity?

Paul: "Shallert! I've known you for five years! You've just killed a man in cold blood! Why?"

Yeah! Level with us Shallert! Just where do you get off, eh?

Produced and directed by a 30 year-old Roger Corman making his 11th feature film in two years, and working off a script by Lou Rusoff (THE PHANTOM FROM 10,000 LEAGUES, THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED, THE SHE-CREATURE, CAT GIRL, GHOST OF DRAGSTRIP HOLLOW) and an uncredited long-time Corman associate, Charles B. Griffith (who also has a brief acting part in this movie), Roger dived deep into moral preachiness with IT CONQUERED THE WORLD. He preached through Paul even while he was swimming in the racism of having only one non-white character in the whole movie and that one was a racial stereotype so vulgar that even President Truman would wince.

This was also the first SciFi Horror movie2 (of many SciFi Horror movies) that actor Dick Miller (NOT OF THIS EARTH, THE UNDEAD, WAR OF THE SATELLITES, A BUCKET OF BLOOD, THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, THE PREMATURE BURIAL, THE TERROR, PIRANHA [1978], DR. HECKYL AND MR. HYPE, THE HOWLING, HEARTBEEPS, VORTEX, THE AFTERMATH, TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, SPACE RAIDERS, GREMLINS, THE TERMINATOR, CHOPPING MALL, NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, PROJECT X, THE 'BURBS, GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH, EVIL TOONS, AMITYVILLE 1992, TALES FROM THE CRYPT: DEMON KNIGHT, ROUTE 666, TRAIL OF THE SCREAMING FOREHEAD) would make with Roger Corman and Corman talent discoveries.

Two Shriek Girls.

This review copyright 2022 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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