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| Helena Carter in Invaders from Mars (1953) |
Count me in as an Invaders from Mars boy. (Are there Invaders from Mars girls? All the Invaders from Mars obsessives whom I know are baby boomer male nerds. The movie feels completely locked into an adolescent boy perspective.)
While Invaders from Mars enjoyed some
popularity upon release in 1953, its real impact came when the movie was
released to television in the late 1950s. Although it inevitably lost the power
of its weird Cinecolor process and its depth of field, it strangely gained in
resonance as well. In their comfortable suburban homes, boys could watch the
story of a boy who looked out the window of his suburban home. And there was a
curious leveling of the image in those old TVs—low budget science fiction came
out looking eerily similar to the 6:00 news.
I
think I must have seen Invaders from Mars
for the first time between 1965 and 1970 (when I was five to ten), probably on
a Saturday afternoon. Although I watched it approximately 15 years after the
movie was made, the movie’s main protagonist—a preadolescent boy—could have
easily been a neighbor on my block. His bed looked like mine, his telescope
looked like mine, and his window looked like mine. I could easily imagine
rising from bed at 4 a.m. and looking out my window to see a UFO descending.
This key scene was grounded in my reality. For a suburban 60s kid, it felt
archetypal.
Excerpted
from my Invaders from Mars essay:
read it all at Wonders in the Dark
I
contributed this piece to the Top 100 Science Fiction Countdown at Wonders in
the Dark. For the next three months, Wonders blogmaster Sam Juliano will be
sharing 100 essays on these great films, written by dozens of his knowledgeable
film-buff friends. It’s an honor to be counted among them!
© 2016 Lee Price
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