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The Invaders (1967 - 1968)
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Pow
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 30, 2018 1:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

More Invaders Trivia }

Larry Cohen,The Invaders creator, gave his lead character the last name of Vincent. This was in honor of actor Vincent Price. Shame they never had him appear as a guest star on the show.

The first thing Larry came up with for the show was the regeneration chamber.He did not want to make the aliens seem invincible to humankind, so he introduced this weakness that the aliens must return to such a device every 10 or 12 days in order to survive.

Cohen says that the idea of the aliens having a malformed finger came from Alfred Hitchcock's movie ''39 Steps.''
In that film, the leader of an espionage ring had a missing finger.

Cohen presented his concept for the show to the network as being done similar to the ''Batman'' television show.

The Invaders would be a bi-weekly series, 30~minutes in length with the first episode ending on a cliffhanger.

When uber TV producer Quinn Martin was brought on board for the show he wanted to do it as a hour long TV series.

At this point Larry Cohen had no creative input on the show anymore. He was paid very nicely for creating the show & also received a huge profit from the series.


Last edited by Pow on Sat Mar 06, 2021 5:10 pm; edited 1 time in total
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mach7
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 10:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is a great show, I watched it in reruns back in the day and again when the DVDs came out.

The saucer got its shape from the George Adamski UFO from the '50s.

It was posted already, but there was no full size saucer built, the landing gear was built and the filming model was matted in. Ambitious for the day.

I've visited Vasquez rocks and Power plant 2 in the Antelope valley, locations used in the pilot and "The Saucer". I have photos, but they are on photobucket.

For its time it was a very high quality show. Very well written and acted.

It''s been probably 5 years since I last watched The Invaders, probably time for a re-watch.

Edit:
I found a few photos.

Power plant 2



Vazquez rocks
The saucer



My scratch built death disk


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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 13, 2018 10:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Invaders was a great series that should have gone on just a little bit longer! The music in the series was terrific with it's spooky theme whenever David Vincent would discover a regeneration centre or the weird music whenever someone was being mentally controlled or succumbing to the tuning fork spinning crystal! Shame the newer version was rubbish too...
JB
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 13, 2018 11:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

This the best example of how a "second look" at a series many years later can change a persons mind about it. I was not fond of this show in the 1960s, but after the late Bulldogtrekker and I watched the entire series "together" (chatting on Facebook, with synchronized DVDs), I ended up buying the box set!

And yes, JB, that music is awesome! Very Happy


The Invaders Season 1 Opening and Closing Credits and Theme Song


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Last edited by Bud Brewster on Thu Jan 17, 2019 3:52 pm; edited 1 time in total
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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 14, 2018 3:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It sure is, Bud! Very Happy
JB
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2019 4:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I found the interesting info below on Wikipedia concerning the popularity of the series in other countries.

________________________________

The Invaders abroad

The series proved to be enormously popular in France (first aired in 1969 as Les Envahisseurs), and it is still a local favorite, inspiring books, comics, songs, comedy skits (Les envahisseurs by Les Inconnus), and even TV advertising commercials.

In Italy, it became a popular "filler" for syndicated TV stations (like other 1960s series such as Hawaii Five-O and Mission: Impossible) in the 1980s.

The series also met with success in South America and Germany.

It was popular in the UK; it was shown there on ITV in the 1960s, with several repeat runs on BBC2 from 1983 onwards to Sunday mornings in 1993. It appeared on SciFi Channel in 2004 and 2013, and the seasons played throughout on Horror Channel during summer of 2017 and late 2018.

Very popular in Spain, a weekly street market in Albacete is still called Los Invasores as the market stalls invade the streets.

Despite its allegory of the Cold War, the series also made it across the Iron Curtain into Hungary, where it was dubbed and aired under the title "Attack from an Alien Planet" (Hungarian: Támadás egy idegen bolygóról) between July 4 and September 5, 1980.

The whole series was never shown, with only the black and white versions of the following 9 episodes making it to the TV screens after prime time on Friday nights, in the sequence indicated (Season/Episode): 1/1, 1/11, 1/13, 2/12, 2/14, 1/4, 2/7, 2/6, 2/21. These 9 episodes were described in the media as the complete series, with no reference made to the existence of any other episodes.

Newspaper reviews tended to be critical of the show being "more fiction than science". It was nevertheless well received by viewers, as attested by references to it in popular culture at the time.

________________________________

It always amazes me when I see a brilliant property like this handled so poorly. To withhold episodes, and even lie about their existence, makes no sense at all. It's like somebody was afraid they'd make too much money! Shocked
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Last edited by Bud Brewster on Sat Jun 15, 2019 10:10 am; edited 1 time in total
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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 15, 2019 8:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well the BBC showed The Invaders twice, once in the eighties (1984) and once in the nineties (1990/91) but they didn't give the show a great slot either time to be honest, plus it took them almost a year to complete the series due to their regular change of schedule, plus they missed out four episodes, Summit Meeting 1 & 2 plus The Prophet and The Captive!
JB
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filmdetective
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 14, 2020 5:22 pm    Post subject: As A Rookie . . . Reply with quote

As a Rookie Planetary Explorer, I am surfing thru the different forums, acquainting myself with the board and all of the subjects and SFantasy in different media in different threads.

I am sticking to commenting on the short, less than one whole page, or going into a second page threads because I can read all the comments previously posted.

Not so, with this thread on The Invaders.

I did watch The Invaders for awhile, but soon became tired of the seemingly endless repetition of the Invaders causing their enemies to die from cerebral hemorrhages, and the film's protagonist, played by Roy Thinnes, never really getting anywhere in alerting the public to the Invaders' invasion of our planet.

So, I did not stick with The Invaders. About the only TV show I did stick with was The Edge of Night, and by 1972, I had gottten enough of that one.

I do remember in about 1969, a paperback Flying Saucer book, titled "Are The Invaders Coming?" obviously getting its title from the TV show.

And, unlike other writers on Flying Saucers, the author of that
paperback book was honest, and concluded by saying as to "Are The Invaders Coming? I Don't Know."
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Maurice
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 15, 2020 3:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
The Invaders Trivia[...]

As with many television shows from the 60s & 70s The Invaders never created a story bible for the series. That lead to some episodes taking a long time to shoot due to halting the show in order to have lengthy story conferences in order to resolve problems regarding the alien's saucer capabilities, biological background, alien tech.

I find this a bit hard to swallow. Why would this become a concern while the episodes were filming and not in the week each director would spend prepping the next shoot? Sure, it happens sometimes (Gene Roddenberry rewriting "Shore Leave" as it was being shot) but if they had had this kind of problem consistently someone in the production office was falling down on the job.
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Eadie
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 15, 2020 4:07 pm    Post subject: Re: As A Rookie . . . Reply with quote

filmdetective wrote:
I do remember in about 1969, a paperback Flying Saucer book, titled "Are The Invaders Coming?" obviously getting its title from the TV show.

Available at: https://www.amazon.com/Are-invaders-coming-Steve-Tyler/dp/B0007FWPB0


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filmdetective
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 15, 2020 6:13 pm    Post subject: Thanks for the Post Reply with quote

Thanks for the post, Eadie. I kept my copy for many years, and finally gave it to Wild Bill Wilkerson of West Columbia, South Carolina, along with Flying Saucers Serious Business, and Flying Saucers Here and Now, and some British paperback I foget the title of, and UFOS? Yes, and a paperback by the Lorrenzons of APRO.

I did keep, among others a real favorite, Flying Saucers are Watching Us, by Otto Binder, a 1968 paperback which in my net searches, I was surprised to find had many different publishings, with different covers.

In the 1969 Brad Steiger and Joan Writtenhour's Flying Saucer Invasion, Target Earth, there was an ad for Flying Saucers are Hostile, a really great title, but I only got and read it within the past few years.
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filmdetective
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 15, 2020 6:19 pm    Post subject: After The Invaders Reply with quote

After The Invaders, I do not remember seeing Roy Thinnes in any TV or films until late 1990, when I saw him in Mind Benders, Retitled Alien High, on USA TV. I would not have even recognized Mr. Thinnes in that film. Also, I'll have to start a Thread on Mind Benders, if there isn't already one on the board.
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Maurice
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 15, 2020 6:28 pm    Post subject: Re: After The Invaders Reply with quote

filmdetective wrote:
After The Invaders, I do not remember seeing Roy Thinnes in any TV or films until late 1990, when I saw him in Mind Benders, Retitled Alien High, on USA TV. I would not have even recognized Mr. Thinnes in that film. Also, I'll have to start a Thread on Mind Benders, if there isn't already one on the board.

Quick question...what does it say in book in your avatar? "How to be a _____"?
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Eadie
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 15, 2020 8:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Thinnes#Post-Invaders

He returned in 1995 as a much older David Vincent, as part of a TV mini-series titled The Invaders (starring Scott Bakula), and a decade later provided audio commentary for the official DVD releases of The Invaders.

Decades after the unexpected cancellation of the original series, "in Europe ... It hasn’t stopped running."

The Washington Post noted in 2008 that, although The Invaders "ran for just two seasons ... in 2004, TV Guide placed main character David Vincent at #6 on its 25 Greatest Sci-Fi Legends list."

In 2019, U.S. basic-cable network MeTV began running weekly reruns of The Invaders as part of its popular "Red-Eye Sci-Fi Saturday Night" overnight late Saturday evening/early Sunday morning sci-fi TV series programming schedule.

The Invaders {AKA The New Invaders} is a two-part television miniseries that aired on November 12 & 14, 1995. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invaders_(miniseries)

In the original broadcast version, the aliens were never shown. They do appear in subsequent airing on SYFY and on the DVD.

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filmdetective
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 15, 2020 9:47 pm    Post subject: Re: After The Invaders Reply with quote

Maurice wrote:
Quick question...what does it say in book in your avatar? "How to be a _____"?


Maurice, I made that Avatar in sometime after I joined CHFB, I think in 2013, and fixed it to conform to that board's 100X100 pixels required avatar size. To match my user name, the cover should read, "how to be a film detective," although it says something that some board moderators might consider off color, altho no one on CHFB has ever objected." I'm pretty slow to do things, but I'll fix it to read "how to be a film detective." Meanwhile, if people can read "how to be a?" and not the rest of it, there shouldn't be any problem, altho there might or might not be a problem with some message board moderators if it were sharper than it is now.
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