ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Did somebody say "Invaders from Mars"?

No? Then I will.

I made the pictures below just for fun. Here's the shot of space, during the opening narration.





And here's what we didn't see, a few seconds later — the ship on its way to Earth.





And later still, when David sees it land.



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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I kind of wish the Martians had come in rockets. I'm partial to 'em.

And here's another use of the space background from the beginning of the movie, using a 1950s hood ornament one of the guys posted on the Destination Moon thread at the CHFB while they were talking about how the Luna might look if it had a chrome finish.







And for those folks who prefer wide screen, here's the CinemaScope version!



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Danilo]

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1953

[Bud Brewster]

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Awesome picture! Thanks, Danilo.

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

I think it was in a Cinefantastique magazine article on the movie that mentioned the original writer was disappointed in the movie. He didn't see the movie being a dream, but an actual event.

He also made the mistake of putting his phone number in the script, that part was never changed. As a result, every time the movie was shown on tv, he received phone calls as people tried the phone number.

David.

[Bud Brewster]

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I never knew that, Krel. That's very interesting.

Presenting the story as a dream is very skillfully done, with lots of subtle clues by director William Cameron Menzies to show us the world through the eyes of a bright young boy. If the story had been presented as a real event, the movie would have look completely different.

I'd love to interview the author of the screenplay and ask him about the differences between his vision for this story and how it was ultimately presented.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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I can't remember the date, but a few months back All Sci-Fi's Friday Live Chat featured Invaders from Mars. Here's the Youtube trailer —


_____________Invaders from Mars 1953 Trailer


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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I found some interesting facts about this movie. For example, this item is from Wikipedia.
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Invaders from Mars was developed from a scenario by Richard Blake, based on a story treatment by John Tucker Battle, who was inspired by a dream recounted to him by his wife.
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So is this one. I'd never thought about the first fact, and I'd never heard the second one.
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Invaders from Mars is notable for being the first feature film to show aliens and their spacecraft in color. The film was rushed into production to show in theaters before George Pal's War of the Worlds (also 1953).
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IMDB has this in the trivia item section, a heartbreaking explanation for why we'll never get to see a print of this movie that looks as good as it's supposed to.
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This film was shot on the new single-strip EastmanColor negative. Cinecolor Labs then produced the trailers and release prints in the three-color Cinecolor process. When Cinecolor went bankrupt, the original elements and printing matrices were seized and sold for salvage.
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And THIS I definitely did not know!
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Luce Potter, one of the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz (1939), played the Martian "head" enclosed in glass in the film. For years she received letters from fans of the movie telling her how much she had scared them as kids.




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This item in the IMDB's Goofs section shows that the author didn't understand all the little clues in the film which indicate that the story is a young boy's dream. Throughout the movie, David imagines himself as an important figure in the battle with the Martians: he's close friends with a famous astronomer, he gives advice to military leaders, and he assists a soldier when they use the Martian heat ray. That's why this item from IMDB clearly misses the point.
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When the soldiers need to blast a new escape route, the boy knows how to work the heat ray. This seems unlikely since he was never present when it was fired.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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In the spirit of my recent post, Thinking Outside the "Plot"!, I went looking for a 1950s sci-fi classic that presented us with some unanswered questions we could have fun figuring out, the way we did with The 27th Day and When Worlds Collide.

By gum, I found one!

In Invaders from Mars, the ruthless Martians embarked on an ambitious invasion which involved insidious little gizmos implanted in the backs of their victims' necks. These devices controlled the minds of the humans and forced them to commit sabotage against America's hi-tech, top secret rocket being built for a mission to Mars!

Arthur Franz gives us a wonderful "plot exposition" lecture to Jimmy and the smokin' hot Helena Carter in the observatory about scientific theories concerning a Martian civilization's desperate attempts to save their race from . . . something-or-other.

But I'm not real clear on why the Martians thought WE were a threat to THEM because we were building a rocket to go to Mars! Arthur suggests that mankind's space program had the Martians worried about US headed in THEIR direction!

It's almost as if this movie should have been called —

Invaders TO Mars!

What were those fidgety Martians so nervous about?
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[orzel-w]

[Bud Brewster]

[Krel]

I liked how they could crank that huge telescoped down far enough to spy on neighborhood.

In the category of be careful of what you put in your script. The writer used his home phone number in the script, and it was kept in. For years afterward, whenever the movie was shown on local TV, he got phone calls from people who wanted to see if it was a real number.

David.

[Maurice]

[Krel]

[Bud Brewster]

Good Lord, I can't believe I started this thread in Sept 2014 and never added the POSTER to it!

Hell, I've been adamant about putting the posters at the top of EVERY thread on All Sci-Fi, even when the thread was started by a member other than ME!

Anyway, the one above is the best version of the poster I could find.

And while I'm here I might as well add this excellent YouTube version, which I was surprised to find in view of the way free versions of movies seems to have vanished from the internet recently.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)