Reviews
Invisible Invaders (1959)
Invisibility, aliens, destruction, and a few tight sweaters!
If only the leaders of the USA and USSR had been forced to watch this movie when it was released in 1959. We might have been saved the escalation of the arms race, the Bay of Pigs incident and an entire generation of cheesy spy films.
Invisible Invaders is a wonderfully awful B-movie with the message that all would be well if only we'd stop producing the nasty nuclear weapons that threaten the future of our species and our planet, and incur the wrath of imperialistic aliens who lack working knees. I suspect the aliens perfected the trick of invisibility to conceal the embarrassing fact that they can't walk heel to toe, as evidenced by the twin tracks they leave as they shuffle along.
Despite being invisible, it's not tough to know when an invader is around. Their breathing makes them sound like an asthmatic bull moose.
Anyway, this movie is rife with funny goofs, sight gags and enough stock footage for two BBC specials on WWII. Jean Byron (Who played Patty Lane's mom in The Patty Duke Show) plays Phyllis Penner, the earnest and lovely female prop and daughter of Dr. Adam Penner. Dad gets tired of perfecting the annihilation of the human race just in time for a visit from an alien who inhabits the corpse of his recently blown up friend, Dr. Karol Noymann (Played by B-movie perennial and sire of a show biz dynasty, John Carradine.)
John Agar (Former hubby of child star, Shirley Temple) tries to recapture the glory of his Sands of Iwo Jima days with his portrayal of the gruff Major Bruce Jay. Phyllis thinks she loves Dr. John Lamont (Robert Hutton) until Major Jay kills somebody and then shows his sensitive side. Phyllis swoons and offers herself to her G.I. Joe with the line, "I took psychology in college, but I'll take a few lessons from you, Major." None of the dialogue gets much better than that. Oh, and they smoke a lot.
The aliens are eventually defeated, but of course you could guess that. I doubt anybody would ever receive an epiphany from watching this movie, but if you like classic, sci-fi B-movies (and who doesn't?), you'll get your guilty thrills from watching Invisible Invaders.
A goof that demands remark: Stock footage of a plane crashing into a mountain, complete with an "X marks the spot" impact point.
Best line: "Dictatorship of the universe!" - Dr. Adam Penner.
On a Mystery Science Theater 3000 cheese scale of 1-10, this movie gets an 8.
The Man from Planet X (1951)
Of all the moors in all the world, he had to land in mine . . .
Between the accents and the silly special effects this movie provides some excellent B-movie laughs. The character Enid's accent makes her about as British as Barbara Bush. But she makes excellent tea and knows that pharmacists in Britain are called chemists, so it's OK. She provides the love interest to the movie's hero, an American journalist and Bogart wannabe. By contrast, the local constable's over-the-top Scottish accent and dialect makes one wonder if any moment he'll blurt out, "Professor, the engines kanna take no more! They're gonna blow!" Meanwhile, there's a plot involving a planet careening toward Earth and an alien in a diving mask who can't keep his air pressure regulated and lets himself get beat up by the wormiest guy in the movie.
Best line: "Tis a fearsome visitor from another world!"
On a Mystery Science Theater 3000 cheese scale of 1 to 10, this movie is an 8.
Related trivia: Robert Clarke, the actor who plays the American journalist, appears in the 1991 stinker, "Attack from Mars," with Ann Robinson, star of the George Pal classic, "War of the Worlds". "Attack from Mars" is awful, but it proves that a paycheck is a paycheck, even in Hollywood.