Invisible Invaders
Aliens from the moon misunderestimate Earth, end in quagmire

Obviously shot on a very low budget, this is one of those films that fall into the category of the easily mockable. The film, however, in spite of everything working against it, still manages to provide a solid hour of entertainment. You just have to embrace the budgetary shortcuts.

As the title suggests, Earth is under attack by invisible invaders! They come from a planet where, for some reason long ago, they made themselves and everything invisible. The advantages of that plan are difficult for my puny earth brain to fathom. For thousands of years, the invisible invaders have been living on the moon, but we haven't guessed it because they're invisible! One of them could be sitting right beside you as you read this, probably not, but there could be. Quick! Reach out real fast and see if you can feel it. Boy, they're fast aren't they? It got clean out of the way, didn't it? Which is good news, because the invisible invaders in the movie are kind of slow, so if you didn't catch one, it's a pretty good sign that what ever got away from you probably wasn't an invisible invader; it was something else.

But I digress.

The film is told in weird semi-documentary style, the same weird style used in "Plan Nine From Outer Space." I'm sure you'll recall Criswell's amazing opening monologue: "And remember, my friends: future events such as these, will affect YOU, in the future." Followed by a total shift in time, "And now, for the first time, we are bringing to you the full story of what happened on that fateful day." Which is it? Future events, or already happened? It can be equally weird watching this film; it's unclear what time period the audience is supposed to be in while watching. Present day, looking back at an alien invasion that we have already forgotten, or far flung future?

It's such a strange device for telling the story that I couldn't figure out the purpose for it. Then I finally realized that in using it the producer can save a boatload of money. Example: A character heads out on a risky mission, the narrator says something like "And that was the last time anyone saw him alive!" Voila! A whole plot thread wrapped up in a couple of words. No need to film the character's demise; we know what happened. Money in the bank, cha-ching! Genius! And for those who would still mock it, ask yourself this: how many times near the end of a Shakespeare play does one herald after another race on to the stage to announce the sudden death of a principle character? Good enough for Shakespeare, then it's good enough for "Invisible Invaders," 'nuff said.

The story begins with a complete non-sequiter. Over stock footage, the narrator tells us that during the atomic age, scientists often worked under intense pressure. Occasionally, mistakes were made. The great John Carradine plays one such scientist, one Dr. Karol Noymann, who stands in a lab looking scholarly as he inspects a test tube. Ooops. A mistake has been made. His face settles into a mask of stoic fatalism, then boom! A spinning headline announces his death.

The atomic age stuff doesn't seem to have any bearing at all on the rest of the story except that it spurs one of Noymann's colleagues, Dr. Adam Penner, to resign from the atomic research program.

Following Noymann's funeral, however, his corpse (Huh? Wasn't he just ground zero of an atomic blast?) is reanimated by an invisible alien who visits Penner to politely inform him of the impending invisible invasion. The invaders will enter the bodies of earth's dead and use them as the weapons that will destroy all life on earth. "The dead will kill the living!" Noymann says in a reading that only the great Carradine could deliver and still live to tell the tale.

Earth's only choice is to surrender or be wiped out. The alien plan is pretty vague. If earth does surrender, what then? It would seem we'll be wiped out anyway.

The film's theme, I guess, is that Dr. Penner, the conscientious pacifist, must challenge his pacifist beliefs when confronted by the menace from space. As stock footage destruction of the earth takes place, Penner, another scientist, Penner's beautiful but smart daughter, and an Army major assigned to protect them take refuge in the impregnable depths of Bronson Canyon to work out a way to defeat the alien plan.

With the total destruction of the human race at stake, with just hours between victory and permanent retirement for homo sapiens sapiens on the line, needless to say that it is of equal importance that Penner's daughter choose one of the two available men to fall in love with, no other time will do, it has to be NOW. So who will it be? The wimpy scientist she is engaged to, or the muy macho all-American major? Hmmmm, I wonder which of these she will choose, Hmmmmm.

But all that said, the film does offer a few good things along the way. I never found it boring, and basically it is competently made; it's not as bad as it could be, and production values are fairly nice considering the budget. The black and white photography is sharp and nicely lit, especially in the opening scenes with the reanimated Noymann. Paul Dunlap's eerie music score is repetitive, but uses the theremin to good effect to create that standard 1950's atmosphere of creepy oddness. Ooo-wee-ooo-wooo!

And for film buffs, it will be fun to draw comparisons between this film and Plan 9 from Outer Space and George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead."