A child astronomer searches the skies with his father. Later the child astronomer wakes to the sound of a flying saucer landing in a sand pit across from his home. The child's father investigates, and returns "transformed." Soon father and mother both seem affected. Child, accompanied by his fetching teacher visits his astronomer friend, whom talks unashamedly about "invaders from Mars."
Within this deceptively simple plotline is a surrealistic masterpiece. With stunning use of color, forced perspective, oversized sets, eerie dreamlike music and carefully mannered performances and plotting, director William Cameron Menzies (an Oscar-winning art director) displays the nightmarish incidents from a child's perspective. Even the typically 50s ending takes on a different perspective. Was it a dream? Was it a foreshadowing of the future? Or is it a recurring nightmare, in a mind gone hopelessly mad.
Only since this film have widespread reports of alien "abductions" and "alien implants" become a reality. Coincidence?
INVADERS FROM MARS is one of the great fantasy sci-fi films of all time.
Within this deceptively simple plotline is a surrealistic masterpiece. With stunning use of color, forced perspective, oversized sets, eerie dreamlike music and carefully mannered performances and plotting, director William Cameron Menzies (an Oscar-winning art director) displays the nightmarish incidents from a child's perspective. Even the typically 50s ending takes on a different perspective. Was it a dream? Was it a foreshadowing of the future? Or is it a recurring nightmare, in a mind gone hopelessly mad.
Only since this film have widespread reports of alien "abductions" and "alien implants" become a reality. Coincidence?
INVADERS FROM MARS is one of the great fantasy sci-fi films of all time.