SHOULD I WATCH IT?
Be careful with black and white sci-fi movies. They are jaw-droppingly dull as a general rule. If you haven't forayed into MST3K episodes like Night Of The Blood Beast, maybe start there first. If you launch straight into this genre your eyeballs may fall out of their sockets. That said, it's a pretty enjoyable flick for the genre. It's got a bit of that Plan 9 From Outer Space + The Creeping Terror vibe to it.
PARTICIPATION
1. Take as many drinks as you dare for stock footage.
2. Argue with the narrator in the voice of Comic Book Guy.
3. Take a drink for shots of shuffling invisible "feet".
4. Shout random numbers for shots of clocks, gauges, and dials.
5. Take a drink for closed-circuit cameras with perfect cinematography.
THE SUMMARY
John Carradine (yes, David Carradine's dad!) is a nuclear scientist that's killed when his lab blows up. His buddy Droopy Dog shakes his fist at the establishment and declares, at the funeral, that he's giving up nuclear research and instead going to use his genius in the pursuit of world peace, unlike his dumb dead friend.
Way to make it all about you, asshole.
And, to Droopy's surprise, the corpse shows up on his doorstep a few hours later. Presumably because he has words.
"What was that bullshit at my funeral? Seriously."
Turns out that he's actually an alien who's taken over John Carradine's corpse for the sole purpose of delivering a message. Basically, "surrender, or we invisible dudes are gonna mess you up." Pretty classic stuff. But then that stuff immediately stops making sense. All the aliens inhabit corpses then, stumbling about at a snail's pace, which is supposed to be spooky-scary or something, but is really just kind of silly. I thought the whole corpse thing was just to deliver a message? Why would you ever stop being invisible by choice? It's the most advantageous thing you can possibly have as an invading force!
Turns out invisible aliens move incredibly slowly and drag their feet like tiny children.
Maybe the week-old corpses are a step up?
Maybe the week-old corpses are a step up?
Nobody believes Droopy Dog when he says invisible aliens are coming. Yet the aliens chose him specifically - the survivor's guilt-haver who's just done a complete career 180, then resigned from the government commissions in which he had any clout - to deliver the warning of impending doom to the world's leaders. Here's a fucking idea. Do a bunch of invisible stuff. Then kill the president of some major country, inhabit his body, and speak to the public over radio or TV. I don't know who's more inept... the aliens or our "protagonist".
So we get to see 15 minutes of this guy pouting. Grab a beer.
When nobody believes Droopy Dog, the aliens decide to show the people of Earth that they're serious about destroying everything. They accomplish this by waiting for a plane to crash, inhabiting the body of the dead pilot, and making him wander into an arena in Syracuse, New York to announce the invasion to the audience at a goddamned hockey game.
INVISIBLE INVADERS!
Stock footage starts telling us how the incredibly slow, lumbering aliens are "sabotaging" the world via explosions and things. Then John Agar shows up and starts being an awesome military guy who punches and shoots people. Finally, someone I can get behind. He bosses around Droopy, his daughter, and his colleague in the quest to find some way to defeat the invaders.
This would be another good time to go and grab a beer. Or eight.
Yawn.
Wait. Something I'm never quite clear on. When the aliens are sabotaging, or looking for scientists to kill, or generally getting around... are they invisible or are they corpses?
ARE THEY INVISIBLE OR ARE THEY CORPSES?
I guess they're corpses whenever it's convenient for the audience.
The movie wraps up in a nice, little neat bow by telling us the conflict was resolved and everything is totally hunky dory, even though a minute ago we were told the entire planet was either on fire, flooded, or in rubble. But it's OK, because the narrator slams the theme of the movie over our heads, telling us that, hey, the peoples of the world can work together after all. Except they didn't really, because the problem was solved by four people in a bunker in California. Who also, by the way, squabbled and punched each other. So no. The peoples of the world can't work together.
Hey! The UN Building is still standing! That sure is convenient. You'd think it'd be the first thing an alien force bent on world destruction would... sigh.
Good job, invisible invaders. Good fucking job.
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