Movies you've seen recently (Part 2)

Cafe Society
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Invaders from Mars (1953) (Pluto) This was the topic of discussion recently on a movie-related Facebook group, where the respondents all commented on how this film totally freaked them out as a kid. 1950’s sci-fi schlock that I’d never seen! So I had to see it.

(Paging Cal Meacham…)

Young David is looking out his bedroom window and sees a Martian spacecraft land, and disappear into the neighborhood sand pit. Everyone who goes to investigate also gets sucked into the pit but comes back changed: emotionless and hostile…they’re being controlled by the alien invaders via an implant visible on the back of their neck.

But our hero manages to convince a few adults of his story, and the army comes in takes charge of repelling the invaders.

Notes:

Comparisons to 1956’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers are obvious: humans that look the same as they did but have been taken over by aliens. These replicants aren’t as insidious as those in IotBS – they’re more overtly hostile rather than just emotionless; and they’re easy to spot by the incisions on their necks.

Another difference: our young hero is able to get responsible adults on his side with surprising ease.

The last 1/3 of the film is less creepy and just good-guys vs bad-guys underneath the sand pit. The invaders consist of a disembodied head in control of synthetic humanoid slaves (called “mutants” but pronounced “mew-TANTS” here). The head communicates only by moving its eyes left and right.

The ending is … whoa. We see David replaying scenes from the film in his mind. He runs to his parents bedroom where everything is normal and they convince him he was dreaming. He returns to his room, looks out the window, and sees the Martian spaceship landing in the sandpit. Apparently David is stuck in a loop.

Barbara Billingsley (Beaver’s mom, “I speak jive” lady) has one line.

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You rang?

Yes, I’ve seen Invaders from Mars many times. I first saw it one Sunday afternoon (one channel, I think it was CBS, was into running science fiction movies on early Sunday afternoons). I was young, and properly impressed. Especially by the Marian-head-with-tentacles-in-the-glass-sphere. Creeped me out.

As I got older, I was less impressed. I saw this movie once at the Dryden THeater at Eastman House in Rochester NY. You have to understand that this was an Art Cinema, where you heard the capital letters. People got dressed up to go to retrospectives here. There were no snack bars – you could watch the movie, secure in the knowledge that you wouldn’t have to unstick the soles of your shoes from mostly dried-up soda and squashed Milk Duds. People here were SERIOUSLY into watching the movies for content, understand? These were folks who knew that Invaders from Mars was directed by William Cameron Menzies, the legendary production designer of both versions of Thief of Bagdad, was responsible for the very look of Gone with the Wind, who shot the Salvador Dali-inspired dream sequence for Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound. So you knew they were going to be respectful and careful note each nuance of this rare directoral effort by Menzies.

But that’s not what happened.

The audience groaned at the dialogue and shouted derisive comments at the screen. They howled at the pronunciation of “Mu-TANT”.

It was an interesting evening. Critics made much of Menzies’ set design, shooting everything as if seen through the eyes of a child, and of the sense of creeping paranoia, but that simply couldn’t stand up beside film that the audience clearly considered to be dumb and stupid.

On thing I will give the movie – at the end they set the bomb to destroy the saucer on a timer for, let’s say, five minutes (I can’t recall the exact time). I timed the screen time between the setting of the bomb and its explosion , and was very surprised to see that it was the exact interval the bomb had been set for. They don’t usually do that in the movies (the only other case I can recall is that episode of the TV series M.A.S.H. with the clock in the lower corner). When you’re watching the film the time feels absurdly long, as if they’re just padding it out, but it was, in fact, the real interval. Five minutes just feels longer in Real Life.

In any event, as you can tell, I was a lot less impressed by the movie as an adult. It’s not on my “top Ten” list of SF films. Not even of SF Films of the 1950s.

Ifyou haven’t seen it, give the 1986 remake a shot. It was directed by Tob Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist) from script by Dan O’Bannon (Dark Star, Alien**Return of the Living Dead) with effects by Stan Winston (Jurassic Park, among a great many others) and John Dykstra (the original Battlestar Galactica). With the child star from the 1953 version, Jimmy Hunt, playing the police chief, and with “W.C. Menzies Elementary School”. If you look close when they’re going through the school basement, you can see the original Golden Martian in a Glass Ball in the background, out of focus. Starring a lot of familiar faces. I suspect they got Laraine Newman just so she could do the Connie Conehead “alien” voice. Worth a look.

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When the army comes to the rescue and the colonel in charge first sees a mu-TANT he says:
“What in the name of time is that”?

In the name of time? WTF? Time doesn’t have a name. Was the writer trying desperately to avoid “name of all that’s holy”, or “name of God”? … but came up with that?

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Me, too. There’s even this really squelchy rom-com with Reese Witherspoon that I’ll watch if it shows up on my TV. When I watched Now You See Me I was irritated by how they made Ruffalo such a sad sack and butt of the magician’s little tricks. But then you find out Ruffalo was the puppet master all along!

Oh, it totally freaked me out as a kid. I even got some shivers when I re-watched it as an adult. That kid who played the neighbor girl “Kathy” did an awesome job of scaring the shit out of me.

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Superman.

Loved it (hey, Krypto stole the very first scene!), but still processing it…

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Just Like Heaven - I love that movie. I’ve seen it like three times.

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I do enjoy it, but it is soppy.

I now mostly watch for Ruffalo and the stupendous apartment. I lust after it every time I watch the movie.

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Saw Opus.

It is a familiar kind of movie: reclusive genius invites a group of people to his remote resort to preview his latest project, and then nefarious deeds ensue.

John Malkovich plays the genius, an erstwhile gigantic worldwide pop star who hasn’t been heard from in 30 years. Ayo Edebiri (who plays Sydney on The Bear) is the plucky junior reporter who begins to suspect things aren’t quite right.

I like Edeberi a lot, and Malkovich is having a ton of fun being dependably Malkovich. But . . . I mean it’s good, don’t get me wrong, and it’s beautifully well made. It just didn’t blow me away the way I hoped.

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A few years ago, those of us in a book discussion group (who once a year watch films instead of discussing a book) played the 1953 film Invaders from Mars using a movie theater in a university (because one of our members teaches there). To get use of the movie theater, we had to let students from the university watch it with us. So we had our members who were old enough to have seen it in midnight movies on television, along with students were born long after the period when the movie was shown so often on midnight movies. One member of our book discussion group introduced each film. I was the one who introduced Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This is approximately what I said in my introduction:

Invaders from Mars came out in 1953. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, it was frequently shown on late night television. Some kids, like me, saw it several times on those late night shows. So if you want to know why my generation is so screwed up, it’s because we kept seeing this movie again and again. And if you think we’re screwed up, imagine how screwed up our parents must have been to let us keep seeing it and having nightmares every time.

There are two things that make it especially interesting. First, it sets up a situation where the children know something horrifying is going on, but none of the parents believe them. Second, it has two twist endings. In one, in the last minute or so of the film, there’s a twist that makes you think, “Oh, it’s not really so bad after all.” Then in the last few seconds of the movie, there’s a second twist which makes you think, “Oh, no, things are even worse than I thought.”

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Singin’ In The Rain

Recommended.

Nope, never had seen it and didn’t know anything aside from Gene Kelly dancing and singing in the rain.

A great movie about making movies and filled with joy and incredible performances. I dare say the actor who plays Cosmo steals the movie. His performance is amazing.

Great songs, great dancing, great sense of humor(much funnier than I expected), and also just a great movie about how hard it was to transition from silent to sound movies.

HBO Max streams a 4K remastered version and I can’t imagine it looking any better in theaters in 1952.

This is an older film that holds up entirely. Excellent stuff.

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Too bad that was his only role in Hollywood.

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Umm, I assume this is a joke. The actor is Donald O’Connor. He made 88 films. I even think that his singing and dancing in the number “Make 'Em Laugh” isn’t just the best number in the film (yes, better than Kelly in “Singin’ in the Rain”). It’s the best song-and-dance number in any film ever.

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Yes, it was a joke.

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Gene Kelly relating his origin story and saying how he used to perform for his parents society friends when he was actually tap dancing in a pool hall… Cracks me up every time.

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“…yyand I ceyyyaaan’t steyaaand him!”

also “Moses supposes”. Dance schmance, what I really remember from that movie was the funny and intriguing “media revolution” aspect. What happens when today’s superstar just can’t manage the requirements of tomorrow’s entertainment genres?

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Watched it again…quite a few awards well deserved and very engaging.

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It’s available for free on PlutoTV. Just sayin’.

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Nother film buff explanation

guess I will haul out the 4k BR version tonight and see how it is on the new TV

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE1jTDaaThk &1
I recall seeing this in 80mm screen when it first was remastered…thought I could reach in and pick up sand from the desert it was that immersive.
Not sure there are any 80mm theaters left :frowning:

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One of my all time favourites. And that’s even with that Broadway Melody bit in the middle (or is it another bit, I forget, with the women’s fashion and all that stuff) which is so hilariously dated now (or was that the point at the time? If so… I deserve a whooooosh). All 3 main performances are just perfect (so is Jean Hagen). And I agree about 'Make ‘em laugh’ - probably the best scene in the whole film.

I love the wittiness, the playfulness, the tunes, the acting (the head of the studio..hmm, ok he’s a bit wooden), the nostalgia, the romance… I could go on. Oh and 'ROLL ‘EM!!!’

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O’Connor was an incredible athletic dancer, but he also made a lot of weird little comedies that didn’t require any fancy footwork. Sometimes he seemed like two different people. Or three. He was the child star who played Huckleberry Finn and young Beau Geste, and the singer and dancer in Singin’ in the Rain and a lot of Broadway shows, but he also played the straight man to Francis the Talking Mule in five movies, and the hero in the virtually forgotten Wonders of Aladdin (1961. I actually saw this in the movies). Then seemed to spend most og his time guest-starring on TV shows.