Invisible Invaders (

1959

)

I complain that a lot of 1950s sci-fi and horror movies are overloaded with padding and filler, and for the most part, it’s a fair complaint. Movies like Fire Maidens of Outer Space (1956) and The She-Creature (1956) feel like 20-minute teleplays stretched out to feature-length. Yet, it’s not fair to judge a whole epoch of film by its most atrocious examples, else you’d wind up calling Goldfinger (1964) boring because it came out the same year as Empire (1964). The same goes for 1950s sci-fi, and if you take the time to look you will find more than a few films of this era and genre that are bursting with energy and excitement. Films where there is hardly a wasted moment let alone an empty scene. Films like Invisible Invaders, whose goals about what they want to depict are so wildly out of proportion to their run time and resources that you can’t help but salute them for trying with such gusto. Today’s movie is a scant 64 minutes long, and it purports to tell the story of earth’s invasion, subjugation and eventual triumph over a race corpse-snatching alien invaders.

That line might have made anyone passingly familiar with 1950s B-movies do a double-take. Isn’t that just the plotline to Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)? Yeah, pretty much, but Invisible Invaders adds in the additional element of making the aliens invisible to the naked eye as well. Because what Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) really needed was to add Forbidden Planet (1956) to the list of films it was shamelessly and incompetently ripping off. It also makes the alien menace look much more like an actual invasion than the more famous (and craptastic) film does. Here the aliens actually make demands to the Terran governments, rather than play coded messages on the off chance that the humans might be able to decipher them. The invaders also bother to send more than one warship to subjugate the planet. There’s also a reason why the aliens have to bother with all the walking dead malarkey and don’t just nuke the earth from orbit too. Apparently all their technology is made from handwavium and aside from their transport ships, all their weapons and gear fall apart in the earth’s atmosphere. It’s a lousy explanation, but at least it shows that the screenwriters have actually spared a few moments thought about logistics. Despite the similarities between the two films, I doubt that director Edward L. Cahn was ripping off Ed Wood, as nobody in their right mind sets out to rip off a technically inept filmmaker that can barely turn a profit. No, you’ve got to aim a bit higher than that if you want any hope of success.

We start off with a bang, literally, when the laboratory of famed atomic researcher Dr. Karol Noymann explodes in a horrific accident. This is a set up for the film’s unusually blunt, anti-war/anti-bomb message. Noymann’s lifelong friend and colleague Dr. Adam Penner begins to question the safety, necessity, and sanity of research and development on new and more powerful bombs. Especially when the weapons mankind already possesses can eradicate all life on earth several times over. At Noymann’s funeral, Penner emerges as an outspoken critic of these doomsday weapons and begins to openly campaign for worldwide disarmament. This puts him at odds with his daughter Phyllis and her suitor Dr. John Lamont, what with Lamont being a slimy career man who’d agree to any war crime so long as the Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on it. What’s striking is just how heroic the doddering old Penner looks in comparison to his potential son-in-law. Lamont is a snake, interested only in his own comfort and personal advancement; later in the film, he will be revealed as a coward as well. It’s odd to see a mid-century 1950s sci-fi movie make such a bluntly anti-militaristic statement. Most of Hollywood’s genuine dissidents had been rounded up in the red scare a few years earlier, and by 1959 there were few people with the courage and means to make political statements on screen. Of course, low-budget films were a haven for dissidents, as small-scale operations attracted scrutiny in proportion to their budgets. Independent producers were more interested in lining their coffers quickly than enforcing the ideological purity of their employees, and the American Legion wasn’t about to waste too much effort censoring a film that existed only to be played in the background while teenagers made out.

Despite the blunt message, Invisible Invaders is not On The Beach (1959) by any stretch of the imagination. The focus here is going to be first and foremost on action and excitement. So, shortly after Penner has begun his crusade to ban the bomb, the reanimated corpse of his old friend, Dr. Karol Noymann, visits him. The zombie claims to be an emissary from an alien race, who is possessing Noymann’s body in order to deliver a message and ultimatum to the people of earth: Surrender and accept alien occupation or be destroyed. Why the aliens thought it was best to deliver this message to a single old man instead of say, the UN general assembly, is beyond me. Obviously, Penner isn’t even able to convince his own daughter that he isn’t absolutely loony. Unsurprisingly, when the world falls to heed the warning of a solitary and possibly senile old man, the aliens are forced to take drastic measures to make their intentions known.

A word about these aliens: They have altered their molecular construction so as to be rendered permanently invisible along with all their technology. Long ago, they colonized our moon, but we didn’t notice them because everything they built there was invisible. I assume that the aliens are only invisible to humans and that they have some method of seeing each other, else I have no idea how they would manage to organize anything as complicated as a birthday party, much less a global invasion. I’m still surprised the aliens would opt for permanent invisibility as opposed to say a wearable stealth suit; altering your molecular structure just sounds a bit too drastic for me. Practically I know why the invaders and all their gear are invisible, it allows the filmmakers to save money on special effects and rubber suits. Indeed, Cahn reused the monster suit from his earlier It! Terror from Beyond Space (1958) in the brief moments when the aliens are visible to save on this very expense. The only visual effects the film needs for invisible monsters are so cheap that even a slap-dash production like Fiend Without a Face (1958) could manage to pull them off effectively. Though to be perfectly fair, Fiend Without a Face (1958) has visual effects that look downright brilliant compared with this movie. Hell, there is only one shot of the alien’s footsteps appearing in the ground that is reused ad nauseam.

Mankind isn’t about to collaborate with any uppity alien invaders though, and immediately the nations of the earth unite against the extra-terrestrial menace. There’s not much they can do though, the zombie shock troops employed by the aliens are all but invincible, and the invisible aliens are able to carry out an effective campaign of sabotage. This sabotage is entirely stock footage; obviously Cahn didn’t have the money to blow up real (or even model) bridges and buildings. Most of the footage comes from WWII, but some are obviously footage of controlled demolitions. It sure is kind of the aliens to implode their targets in some cases rather than explode them. All the same, the earthlings are on the ropes. The US government moves high-value military and scientific personnel into bunkers scattered across the whole nation, in the hopes that these brilliant minds will be able to come up with a countermeasure before all hope is lost. Penner, Lambert, and Phyllis are included among these critical personnel and are escorted to the bunker by Major Jay Bruce. There they set about working on a weapon that can defeat the alien invaders, but time is swiftly running out.

Obviously, Invisible Invaders is a cheaply made, a throw-away film meant only to cash in before the market for sci-fi horror movies dried up altogether. Yet, Invisible Invaders is a remarkably fun movie for one lacking both the budget of major releases like War of the Worlds (1953) and the insanity of crap like Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). Part of it is the pacing, the relentless action, and the admirable brevity. Not even my legendarily short attention span can get bored with a movie that’s barely over an hour long. There’s also a surprising degree of care taken with the film, as evidenced by its eagerness to explain away potential plot holes rather than just let them linger. It’s mercenary filmmaking at its best, quick, entertaining, professional, and really cheap. Yet, beneath that surface its possible to see a faint gleam o genuine passion. If you don’t believe in your product there’s no reason to sneak an anti-war message into it, especially in a time when holding such views could be professionally disadvantageous.