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And when that happens—
Three things make a post, especially if they're all film-themed. That was lucky.
1. I cannot in good conscience recommend Invisible Invaders (1959), which![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel and I watched last night at the point where I was so tired that I nearly fell asleep during the anticlimax. It is terrible. It's like some deathly straight version of Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)—attracted by humankind's recent experimentation with atomic weapons, invisible aliens from the moon come to Earth and possess the bodies of the dead in order to conquer the living. The budget is minimal. The dialogue is strictly expository, although the filmmakers must have thought it left something to the imagination, because the voiceover not only narrates every moment of downtime between conversations, it overdubs some of the spoken scenes. The internally inconsistent timetable leaves the impression that the entire invasion, occupation, and defense of Earth maybe took place over a long weekend. The characters come in the standard assortment of two scientists, one soldier, and one scientist's beautiful daughter. No prizes for guessing how the romantic triangle resolves. John Carradine makes a memorable cameo as the first of the aliens' hosts, delivering an ultimatum to Earth the day after his burial: "My people will come to your planet and inhabit the bodies of other dead Earthmen. The dead will kill the living and the people of Earth will cease to exist. That is the message you will bring your people." I recognized no one else in the cast, although Rob pointed out John Agar as a stalwart of B-movie sci-fi.
If you care about zombie fiction as a genre, it's almost certainly a valuable early entry. There's one clever scene with a terrified farmer who holds up the protagonists at shotgunpoint on their way to a safe bunker: "You think you're better'n I am, soldier? You think you got a right to live and I ain't? I seen them walking dead things—I seen them! Joe Hannis and his wife drowned two weeks ago. Now they're walking through the fields again, walking and killing! I'll give you three to get out of that car, then I'm shooting." Demonstrating a jaw-dropping failure to understand the concept of a zombie apocalypse, the soldier behind the wheel shoots him instead; a few minutes later, they have one more possessed corpse to deal with. Like the wandering sickness of Things to Come (1936), this brief scene feels like a direct pointer to later zombie traditions: there's the survival horror, the horror of recognizing mindless versions of familiar faces, the creepy efficiency of an invading force whose defeated enemies become its newest recruits. It goes by in a flash; none of these themes will appear again, being overtaken by the requirement for our heroes to find a way to destroy or at least repel the invaders. The focus is on the intruders from space, not the revenants from the earth. It's also worth noting that the film's undead are not the ravening kind—they are strictly vehicles for their alien inhabitants, no brains or other fuel required to keep running. Mostly we see them engaged in acts of industrial sabotage and radio broadcasting, although a shot of stiff-limbed, sunken-eyed, expressionless (and conservatively dressed) "creatures" converging on the bunker certainly looks like tryouts for Night of the Living Dead (1968).
I imagine it is clear by this point that I am not describing a lost classic or even an underrated curio in Invisible Invaders; it is 67 minutes long and I don't know how they got that much out of it. Nonetheless, it does contain one glorious moment for which I suggest everyone watch this slightly fuzzy online version. It occurs after a minute and a half and to get the full effect you should watch from the starry credits through the supremely leaden scene-setting. I make no claims except that I burst out laughing so hard I actually scratched up my throat. Nothing else in the film is as good, but it doesn't need to be. This opportunity brought to you by my long-suffering backers at Patreon.
2. In better science fiction news, a Kino Blu-Ray of The Monster That Challenged the World (1957) is the universe's way of telling me that it loves me and wants me to watch more Hans Conried. I caught the film on TCM in 2010 and fell in love; it's set around the Salton Sea, its monsters are giant prehistoric sea snails, and its positively portrayed scientist is Conried's Dr. Jess Rogers, cranky and competent. I don't care that the monsters don't challenge the world so much as they vampirize some unsuspecting swimmers in southern California. It's a monster movie without a total idiot plot and there is some surprisingly decent character work in between the scream scenes. (It's also a nice touch that nobody really cares when the monsters turn out to be radioactive, because it's not as though huge carnivorous non-radioactive sea snails getting into the All-American Canal would be such a good idea, either.) I'd especially like to see it again knowing that Spielberg is supposed to have drawn inspiration from it for Jaws (1975), a detail I could not have evaluated for myself at the time. Anyway, if you ever wanted to hear Hans Conried deliver a lecture about snails, this is your film. Come for the B-picture, stay for the pedantry. It's always worked for me.
3. I must visit the library to retrieve a DVD of William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), which I plan to watch with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skygiants tonight. This is the direct result of reading Mark Harris' Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War (2014), which I glossed here and Skygiants reviews much more extensively here. I have a mental backlog of about three movies for writeup right now, but I really will try to say at least something about this one.
I wish my head did not hurt so much. I've had a much worse headache than usual since the Sunday of Readercon and I am very definitely bored with it by now.
1. I cannot in good conscience recommend Invisible Invaders (1959), which
derspatchel and I watched last night at the point where I was so tired that I nearly fell asleep during the anticlimax. It is terrible. It's like some deathly straight version of Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)—attracted by humankind's recent experimentation with atomic weapons, invisible aliens from the moon come to Earth and possess the bodies of the dead in order to conquer the living. The budget is minimal. The dialogue is strictly expository, although the filmmakers must have thought it left something to the imagination, because the voiceover not only narrates every moment of downtime between conversations, it overdubs some of the spoken scenes. The internally inconsistent timetable leaves the impression that the entire invasion, occupation, and defense of Earth maybe took place over a long weekend. The characters come in the standard assortment of two scientists, one soldier, and one scientist's beautiful daughter. No prizes for guessing how the romantic triangle resolves. John Carradine makes a memorable cameo as the first of the aliens' hosts, delivering an ultimatum to Earth the day after his burial: "My people will come to your planet and inhabit the bodies of other dead Earthmen. The dead will kill the living and the people of Earth will cease to exist. That is the message you will bring your people." I recognized no one else in the cast, although Rob pointed out John Agar as a stalwart of B-movie sci-fi.If you care about zombie fiction as a genre, it's almost certainly a valuable early entry. There's one clever scene with a terrified farmer who holds up the protagonists at shotgunpoint on their way to a safe bunker: "You think you're better'n I am, soldier? You think you got a right to live and I ain't? I seen them walking dead things—I seen them! Joe Hannis and his wife drowned two weeks ago. Now they're walking through the fields again, walking and killing! I'll give you three to get out of that car, then I'm shooting." Demonstrating a jaw-dropping failure to understand the concept of a zombie apocalypse, the soldier behind the wheel shoots him instead; a few minutes later, they have one more possessed corpse to deal with. Like the wandering sickness of Things to Come (1936), this brief scene feels like a direct pointer to later zombie traditions: there's the survival horror, the horror of recognizing mindless versions of familiar faces, the creepy efficiency of an invading force whose defeated enemies become its newest recruits. It goes by in a flash; none of these themes will appear again, being overtaken by the requirement for our heroes to find a way to destroy or at least repel the invaders. The focus is on the intruders from space, not the revenants from the earth. It's also worth noting that the film's undead are not the ravening kind—they are strictly vehicles for their alien inhabitants, no brains or other fuel required to keep running. Mostly we see them engaged in acts of industrial sabotage and radio broadcasting, although a shot of stiff-limbed, sunken-eyed, expressionless (and conservatively dressed) "creatures" converging on the bunker certainly looks like tryouts for Night of the Living Dead (1968).
I imagine it is clear by this point that I am not describing a lost classic or even an underrated curio in Invisible Invaders; it is 67 minutes long and I don't know how they got that much out of it. Nonetheless, it does contain one glorious moment for which I suggest everyone watch this slightly fuzzy online version. It occurs after a minute and a half and to get the full effect you should watch from the starry credits through the supremely leaden scene-setting. I make no claims except that I burst out laughing so hard I actually scratched up my throat. Nothing else in the film is as good, but it doesn't need to be. This opportunity brought to you by my long-suffering backers at Patreon.
2. In better science fiction news, a Kino Blu-Ray of The Monster That Challenged the World (1957) is the universe's way of telling me that it loves me and wants me to watch more Hans Conried. I caught the film on TCM in 2010 and fell in love; it's set around the Salton Sea, its monsters are giant prehistoric sea snails, and its positively portrayed scientist is Conried's Dr. Jess Rogers, cranky and competent. I don't care that the monsters don't challenge the world so much as they vampirize some unsuspecting swimmers in southern California. It's a monster movie without a total idiot plot and there is some surprisingly decent character work in between the scream scenes. (It's also a nice touch that nobody really cares when the monsters turn out to be radioactive, because it's not as though huge carnivorous non-radioactive sea snails getting into the All-American Canal would be such a good idea, either.) I'd especially like to see it again knowing that Spielberg is supposed to have drawn inspiration from it for Jaws (1975), a detail I could not have evaluated for myself at the time. Anyway, if you ever wanted to hear Hans Conried deliver a lecture about snails, this is your film. Come for the B-picture, stay for the pedantry. It's always worked for me.
3. I must visit the library to retrieve a DVD of William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), which I plan to watch with
skygiants tonight. This is the direct result of reading Mark Harris' Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War (2014), which I glossed here and Skygiants reviews much more extensively here. I have a mental backlog of about three movies for writeup right now, but I really will try to say at least something about this one.I wish my head did not hurt so much. I've had a much worse headache than usual since the Sunday of Readercon and I am very definitely bored with it by now.
no subject
I saw The Monster That Challenged the World a year or two ago. Hans Conried lecturing about snails is always a good thing (possibly even better than Edmund Gwenn lecturing about ants in Them!).
I hope your headache goes away soon.
no subject
We laughed so long we had to pause it anyway.
Hans Conried lecturing about snails is always a good thing (possibly even better than Edmund Gwenn lecturing about ants in Them!).
It's not Edmund Gwenn's fault, but I will always prefer Hans Conried.
I hope your headache goes away soon.
Thank you.
no subject
*snerk*
I'll take the sea snails over the zombies anyday... but I'll watch it for ninety seconds at least.
no subject
I promise it's worth it . . .
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no subject
Thank you. I hope my head can hear you.
no subject
It's not as though huge carnivorous non-radioactive sea snails getting into the All-American Canal would be such a good idea, either. Truth!
Also this-->the creepy efficiency of an invading force whose defeated enemies become its newest recruits is a really wonderful, concise explanation of a key element in a zombie threat. Nice.
no subject
IS THAT NOT THE BEST?
It was such a boring voiceover already, and such a generic at-the-start-of-the-atomic-age opening, we were not prepared for the explosion. I can't remember if we rewound to watch it again or just kept laughing. I know John Carradine has been in sillier movies *cough*Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)*cough* but I really applaud his willingness to stand there with a quizzical expression and a test tube and perfect timing. I don't really think I should attempt to inflict that movie on an audience unless it's, like, a festival of obscure zombie movies, but I'd still love to see what a theater made of the first two minutes.
Also this-->the creepy efficiency of an invading force whose defeated enemies become its newest recruits is a really wonderful, concise explanation of a key element in a zombie threat. Nice.
Thank you. To be honest, I think I got the principle from The Black Cauldron.
no subject
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no subject
Oh, God, yes. The remaining 65 minutes of the film would have been infinitely more watchable.
He could have been a meta-spokesman for the invasion... I'm overthinking this!
You're just putting in more thought than the filmmakers themselves!