Revenge of the Revenant Review 31: The one with Eisenhower zombies

 

Title: Invisible Invaders

What Year?: 1959

Classification: Prototype

Rating: What The Hell??? (2/4)

 

With this review, I’m officially going past the 30-review mark I set for this feature. What settled this in my mind is that I still hadn’t done a zombie movie from the 1950s, outside of a review of Plan 9 From Outer Space for Space 1979. I ended up running out the original count as I considered what material was available. An issue I kept running into is that there are a lot of movies that one could easily assume came out in the ‘50s based on their tone and “feel”, which really came out late in the decade if not an entirely later period. After considering several different films, I finally went with one that was obvious from the start for a genre scholar, but still turned out to be barely within the era it represents. Here is Invisible Invaders, the movie that brought us the zombie apocalypse in the bygone but still surprisingly late year of 1959.

Our story begins with the funeral of a nuclear scientist who on his deathbed renounced his work and called for world peace. Later that night, the deceased reappears to a colleague and friend. The revenant reveals that he is the corporeal vessel of an alien invisible to human eyes, and gives a warning that the Earth must submit to their rule or be destroyed by the living dead. Soon, more of the undead appear, hijacking radio stations and PA systems to broadcast their demands. As the attack begins in earnest, civilization quickly fragments and crumbles. Meanwhile, the living scientist searches for a way to fight back with help from his intelligent and reasonably attractive daughter, a younger colleague and a hard-boiled military man. They manage to reach a lab that is secure from the undead, only to find themselves trapped inside as the horde closes in. Will they be able to find an instant solution where the combined resources of whole nations have failed? Did I not say this is a 1950s movie?

Invisible Invaders was a science fiction/ horror film directed by chronic B-movie offender Edward Cahn, also responsible for the 1957 movie Zombies of Mora Tau. The cast was led by Englishman Philip Tonge as the scientist Dr. Penner and stalwart Robert Hutton as his youthful colleague, with Jean Byron as the lovely daughter and one-time John Wayne co-star John Agar in the relatively limited role of Major Jay. A creature suit from Cahn’s film IT! The Terror From Beyond Space was reportedly used to portray a captured invader. Stock footage was used heavily to portray the damage of the attacking undead. The movie is believed to have done poorly at theaters, frequently appearing as the second or third film in matinee double bills that are known to have included Plan 9 From Outer Space. The film went on to be a cult hit on television and later home video. Images of the film’s iconic suit-clad undead have been heavily reprinted and referenced, notably for 1984 Fiends album We’ve Come For Your Beer.

For my personal experiences, this is one I was virtually obligated to watch, but still took a long time to get to. Based on that single viewing, I was inclined to pass over it, especially given its relatively high profile. After viewing or considering several other 1950s movies, however, I admitted that this was the one to cover. This was in no small part because, despite its relative familiarity, this is genuinely a very odd film, more so than I myself readily remembered, and the one that did the most to lay the groundwork for the zombie genre in the coming decade.

Diving right in, the most counterintuitive thing about this movie is that it is at face value a routine if not formulaic ‘50s science fiction movie. On deeper scrutiny, this is just as well, as many of the film’s relative strengths rise simply from handling the formula better than usual. The stakes are established as very high, and even compared to Plan 9, there is no hint of satire or self-parody. The unseen aliens are genuinely unique foes, who are convincingly matched by the doctor’s unconventional thinking. The confined lab environment adds an impressive element of claustrophobia to the proceedings. Most impressively, the story at least implies the social breakdown and moral ambiguity that would be the most potent themes of the genre in the coming decades. At the breaking point, even the main characters question and mistrust each other, enough that the inevitable discovery of their common enemy’s weakness defuses what might have been a far worse situation.

Moving on, the undead themselves are in certain lights among the weaker elements of the movie. The obvious problem is that we never get a convincing or coherent explanation of what the “invaders” really are. For the most part, they act like demons (shades of Evil Dead?), yet they are still shown to have physical form and corresponding limitations. Once the undead appear, they are at least suitably grim in appearance; their slow and even motion is all the more impressive for a movie this far ahead of the stabilizing paradigms of the “modern” genre. We get further glimpses of intelligence, as would be expected from revenants explicitly under the control of beings more advanced than humanity. The deeper issue is that the movie pulls many of its conceptual punches. We never see the effects of conventional weapons on the undead, which puts the zombie apocalypse conceit under more strain than usual. It’s also unresolved whether the zombies can really multiply in what would become “standard” fashion; the invaders can certainly reanimate the victims of their earlier attacks, but we don’t know their numbers among a great many other things. In perhaps the greatest missed opportunity, it’s explicitly acknowledged that the undead can use human weapons, anticipating Day of the Dead and City of the Walking Dead. Outside of stock footage of explosions, however, we see even less of this still novel premise than we do of the invaders.

With that, I’m ready for the “one scene”. What I’m going with is tellingly a sequence where the zombies are mentioned but unseen. As the major is driving the scientists and the lady to the fortified lab, they find a single man standing in the road with a raised shotgun. It’s not completely clear at the outset if he’s human, but he speaks clearly as he orders them out of the vehicle. Any ambiguity fades as the survivor tells his tale in rough, spontaneous dialect. His voice rises as he recounts an encounter with reanimated neighbors: “I seen them walking dead things, I seen ‘em… walkin’ and killing!” The younger scientist simply remarks, “He’s out of his head!” Still, the military man orders the others to comply. Meanwhile, we see the now-familiar tracks of at least one approaching invader, undoubtedly anticipating a new supply of hosts. As with many of these scenes, the outcome is never in doubt. It’s the buildup and execution that makes it memorable, and it is this scene as much as any other that anticipates the course of the genre much further ahead.

In closing, what continues to weigh the most on my mind is whether I have ever really “got” 1950s science fiction movies. It’s a period I’m sure people who know me would expect me to be well-versed in. In fact, there are certainly movies that I love, and a few more that I can deeply hate. The vast majority, however, simply fall into a strange dead zone for me. I can look at the acclaimed classics and the notorious atrocities, and still not find enough difference to care either way. Given that context, the present movie is “middle of the road”, just good enough that I bumped its rating up in the course of this review. What I find most striking after looking at both this and several other ‘50s zombie movies is the sense of elements discovered, if only by chance, yet not assembled or used. It’s like looking at the state of aviation before the time of the Wright Brothers; success was closer in hindsight than most could have realized at the time, if not for far too many peculiar dead ends. The real value of a movie like this is that it shows just how profound the breakthroughs of the coming decade were, not just with Night of the Living Dead but its now-underrated predecessors like Carnival of Souls, The Earth Dies Screaming and The Last Man On Earth. We came a long way in just a little time. The enduring question is whether we ever really got much further.

Image credit Movies and Mania.