Invaders From Mars (1986)

Cannon blessed director Tobe Hooper (POLTERGEIST) with a decent $12 million budget to do right by this colorful remake of the 1953 science fiction film INVADERS FROM MARS. It was one of the studio’s biggest flops, opening in seventh place (one of the films ahead of it: POLTERGEIST II: THE OTHER SIDE, which Hooper had nothing to do with) and contributing to Cannon’s eventual and inevitable downfall.

Certainly, Hooper and producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus had good intentions going in. A-list special effects artists John Dykstra (STAR WARS) and Stan Winston (THE TERMINATOR) were brought in to head departments. BLUE THUNDER’s Don Jakoby and ALIEN’s Dan O’Bannon (who also worked on BLUE THUNDER) wrote a screenplay that closely followed that of the original picture. Hooper’s TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE cameraman Daniel Pearl handled the director of photography duties. If only Hooper and company had been more diligent in casting.

By Cannon standards, $12 million was quite extravagant, though not quite enough to more than passably create the spaceships and aliens required by Jakoby and O’Bannon’s script. The film mainly suffers from a campy approach with arch performances by Karen Black (THE DAY OF THE LOCUST) and Louise Fletcher (BRAINSTORM) draining the suspense and terror from the premise. Granted, this approach plays fair with the ending, which copies that of the 1953 film, but it makes taking the film seriously a chore.

Likewise, the casting of Hunter Carson as the juvenile lead doesn’t work. The son of star Black and screenwriter L.M. Carson (PARIS, TEXAS), Carson is a subpar actor and unable to carry a film, as he must as one of the few “normal” characters. Nobody believes David (Carson) when he tells them a spaceship landed behind a hill in the backyard. Soon, his father (Timothy Bottoms), mother (Laraine Newman), teacher (Louise Fletcher as Dana Carvey), and even the local cops (one played by Jimmy Hunt, the kid from the original INVADERS FROM MARS) are acting logy and zombie-like.

The only person who believes David’s story is the school nurse, played by Carson’s mother. Granted, casting the eccentric cross-eyed Black as a normal human among a small town of weirdos is a crafty notion, but INVADERS FROM MARS is unable to make it work. Pacing is too leisurely during its first half, though the film becomes more interesting once things really get going with weird aliens and the military finally joining the picture. Sci-fi fans will enjoy the in-jokes, like Hooper’s LIFEFORCE playing on television and the school being named for William Cameron Menzies, the star of the original film.

James Karen (RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD) gives the film’s best performance as a cigar-chomping general who kicks some spaceman ass. INVADERS FROM MARS was the second in Hooper’s three-picture deal with Cannon. Though the creative success of LIFEFORCE, INVADERS, and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 can be debated, none made money for Cannon, and Hooper’s career as a bankable filmmaker was basically over. His next film, SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION, came out four years later.