THE DAY MARS INVADED EARTH (1962)

THE DAY MARS INVADED EARTH (1962)

Tagline: Strange Invisible Astro-Energy Unleashed Leaves Mankind A Human Shell As It Destroys His Body And Brain!

(Sci-Fi, Psychotronic, Get You’re A-s To Mars ) [PG]

It’s like a house of mirrors, what did you say when she told you?

In this one earth lands a probe on Mars. Of course, Mars isn’t having it and they decide to start replacing earth’s top scientist in the field with replicas that have nefarious and deadly intentions. 

First off, in the list of movies that are considered Christmas movies because they involve Christmas, this one actually takes place shortly after Christmas. Claire Fielding decided to leave the tree up because her husband was still working on stupid space stuff (and because Rocky, their son didn’t want to take it down). The nerve of that guy! Regardless, I don’t think you can call this a Christmas movie even though it features a Christmas tree. 

Acting wise we really don’t get anything crazy good in this. Marie Windsor is solid as Claire Fielding and fortunately, this plot does a bit to stretch her emotionally. It’s not like the CAT WOMEN situation. I mention that because Windsor is most famous for CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON. Kent Taylor is decent as Dr. David Fielding. He is probably best known for THE PHANTOM FROM 10,000 LEAGUES. We also get a bit of Betty Beall as Judi Fielding. She does a pretty decent job in the short amount of screen time she gets but stopped acting 2 years after this movie. I also liked William Mims as Dr. Web Spencer. He ended up with 125 acting credits in a career that spanned from 1956 to 1988. Overall the slow start to this movie I am guessing led to the cast playing everything pretty stiff, but we do get better and better acting as the movie rolls along.  

One thing I liked about this story is that aside from the creepy “replicas” running around, the rekindling of the spark between Claire and David is something that endears you to the characters. You can see how stressed Claire is due to David’s demanding job and the time he has to spend away and you are kind of rooting for that to change. Another thing that kind of stood out was Dr. Web Spencer as kind of being that one work friend you can count on to believe whatever crazy story you tell no matter how bad it might make them look they told anyone else. Everyone needs that one person at least who just buys whatever you are selling because they know you well enough to know that you can be trusted. That is of course if you are “trustable”.

The budget for this movie was probably $35.00 at the time not including whatever they paid the actors. All they needed was a string to pull some old vacuum cleaner parts some TV antennas attached around in the sand and “bam” sci-fi. Having said that, this thing is actually pretty interesting and it falls into the cool category of “this is a warning from space, but not everyone on your planet has to die”. This flick also has one of those bleak and kind of unexpected endings so if you are into watching stuff and feeling fairly unhappy, this is for you. 

THE DAY MARS INVADED EARTH gets a 4 out of 7. They did a lot with a little and I always appreciated that kind of filmmaking when the dialog holds up, but be warned. This is not likely to go how you think it will. It should also be noted that we don't have any aliens in awesome rubber suits going on here, so just a heads up. 

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