Ah,
Invaders From Mars, one of the great Brechtian films! I finally got around to acquiring the DVD a few weeks ago and I had been planning on trying to open up a discussion on it. Menzies brought with him the cream of Hollywood's craftsmen:
Set decorator Edward G. Boyle -
Gone with the Wind, And Then There Were None, Body and Soul, Force of Evil, Cyrano de Bergerac, Sudden Fear and later
Sweet Smell of Success, The Apartment, and
Seven Days in May;
Art director Boris Leven, who later work magic on
Giant, Anatomy of a Murder, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, The Andromeda Strain and Scorsese's,
New York, New York.
Cinematographer John F. Seitz was a Hollywood veteran who shot
The Patsy (1928) and
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) in the silent days and Billy Wilder's
Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend and
Sunset Blvd., as well as
This Gun for Hire and
Sullivan's Travels. Great DP.
Mort Glickman's ethereal music remains very spooky and underscores the nightmarish images perfectly, though the poor chap goes uncredited for some reason. Must have been a union thing.
So, this was a movie with solid, imaginative talent behind it. DVD Savant's review is out-the-window with enthusiasm and he contextualizes this magnificent oddity of American Cinema beautifully. The influence of this film is huge, yet it is seldom given much credit for being so. It is hard to imagine most alien visitation films - even
Close Encounters - without
Invaders from Mars, along with
The War of the Worlds, of course, released the same year. Blimey, what nightmares did manifest in the child's mind that year! The way that Leif Erickson hits his kid is very vicious and seems uncharacteristic of how violence towards children was displayed in movies of the period - he really whacks him! It's a very disturbing film when seen through the eyes of a child, no question, though today it probably wouldn't have such a strong effect as it did in the past. Visually, though, it remains very powerful. It was shot using the two-strip Cinecolor process - actually Super-Cinecolor with the prints by Eastman. Over the years, the prints degraded in quality and the rich reds and greens (blues were hard to achieve) were badly faded, but the newer DVD was transfered from the best surviving 35mm print, but it needs digital clean-up as the scratches and lines plague the film throughout, but could be easily removed today, but as Wade Williams is a bit of a tight-ass, he probably wouldn't do it. It's a landmark film and should be in the National Film Registry.
Another Image Entertainment 50s sci-fi film that I have wanted to check out is the 1957 black and white scope film,
Kronos. Cinematography by the great Karl Struss (Murnau's
Sunrise, Niblo's
Ben-Hur,
Island of Lost Souls
Mamoulian's
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). Ace
Outer Limits set decorator Chester Bayhi and legendary Walter M. Scott (
All About Eve, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Planet of the Apes, The Sound of Music, The Gunfighter, The King and I, The Fly, Journey to the Center of the Earth) fashioned the impressive, expressionistic sets.
DVD Savant's review of the good, but sadly non-anamorphic 2.35:1 DVD. Another small gem for the wish list, but when will I get round to ordering it?!