1953. Directed by WILLIAM CAMERON MENZIES. TAGLINES : "Natural or SUPERNatural?" "Mankind's oldest fear comes to life!" "Murderous Martian creatures from out of space!" "From out of space... came hordes of green monsters!" "Mankind's oldest fear...The Alien's last conquest" - A young boy learns that space aliens are taking over the minds of earthlings. One night, young David McLean sees a spaceship crash into a nearby sandpit. His father goes to investigate, but comes back changed. Where once he was cheerful and affectionate, he's now sullen and snarlingly rude. Others fall into the sandpit and begin acting like him: cold, ill-tempered and conspiratorial. David knows that aliens are taking over the bodies of humans, but he'll soon discover there have been far more of these terrible thefts than he could have imagined. The young doom-monger finds some serious help in a lady doctor and a brilliant astronomer. Soon they meet the aliens: green creatures with insect-like eyes. These beings prove to be slaves to their leader: a large, silent head with ceaselessly shifting eyes and two tentacles on either side, each of which branches off into three smaller tentacles. It's up to the redoubtable earth trio to stop its evil plans. CAST includes Helena Carter, Jimmy Hunt, Arthur Franz, Leif Erickson, Morris Ankrum, Hillary Brooke, William Phipps, Janine Perreau, Milburn Stone, Max Wagner, Barbara Billingsley, Richard Deacon, Fay Baker, Peter Brocco, William Forrest, Douglas Kennedy, Todd Karnes, Walter Sande, Lock Martin, Robert Shayne, Steve Donovan, Bert Freed, Luce Potter. BEHIND THE SCENES TRIVIA : The genesis of this film was when the wife of writer John Tucker Battle woke him up one morning to recount a vivid and disturbing dream she had of Martians invading Earth. He had her tell him as much as she could recall, and he developed the rest of the story from there. Director William Cameron Menzies was better known as one of Hollywood's great production designers. This film was originally planned to be shot in 3D and his designs were meant to emphasize the sense of depth. When it came time for principle photography, there were reportedly no 3D cameras available so filming proceeded in standard 2D. His production designs were so good at creating the sense of depth that many people swore that they saw this film in 3D. Luce Potter, one of the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz (1939), played the Martian "head" enclosed in glass in the film. For years she received letters from fans of the movie telling her how much she had scared them as kids. The special effects department used condoms to create the "bubbles" on the walls of the underground tunnels. In one scene, Dr. Kelston refers to the "Lubbock Lights" and to a "Captain Mantell." These were-real life U.F.O. events that created a nationwide sensation in their day. The photographs shown by Dr. Kelston are actual photographs of the Lubbock Lights that appeared in newspapers and magazines. The eerie sandpit choir chant was done by a choral group made up of eight men and eight women. Moreover, said chant was further enhanced with echo in post-production to give it a more haunting and ethereal quality.The sandpit opening and closing was done by cutting a long slit in a piece of heavy canvas and inserting a large funnel. A hose from a powerful vacuum was attached to the funnel and the whole thing was then covered with sand. The vacuum was activated and the sand was sucked down for the shots of the sandpit opening. Moreover, the film was simply reversed for shots of the sandpit closing. Little people were chosen to double the main characters when an action shot by one of the mutants was required. Six mutants ranging in size from 5'1" to 6'3" acted in these shots with the little people to keep the size ratio correct. This was necessary because the primary Mutants were 8'2" and 7'7" and rather ungainly in their movements due to costuming restrictions.
WILLIAM CAMERON MENZIES Mini Bio :
Born : July 29, 1896 · New Haven, Connecticut, USA
Died : March 5, 1957 · Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA (cancer)
Nickname : Billy
Height : 5′ 8″
William Cameron Menzies was educated at Yale University, the University of Edinburgh and at the Art Students League in New York. He entered the film industry in 1919, after serving with the U.S. Expeditionary Forces in World War I. His initial assignments were in film design and special effects, as assistant to Anton Grot at Famous Players-Lasky. Menzies drew inspiration from German Expressionism and from the work of D.W. Griffith. His sense of visual style was quickly recognized and he was promoted to full art director after only three years. At United Artists (1923-30, 1935-40) and Fox (1931-33), he eventually designed for stars like Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. He worked for all three of the major independent producers: Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick and Walter Wanger. Menzies also had the singular distinction of receiving the first-ever Oscar for art direction (for The Dove (1927)). His flamboyant and exotic fairy-tale sets for The Thief of Bagdad (1924) are regarded to this day as a work of pure genius. From the beginning of the sound era, Menzies also got involved in directing and producing. During the 1940's, he worked frequently with the director Sam Wood, whose films he improved dramatically through his designs. Over time, Menzies acquired a well-earned reputation for his larger-then-life personality, his visual flair and love of adventure and fantasy in films. He defined and solidified the role of the art director as having overall control over the look of the finished motion picture. He was a tireless innovator, who meticulously pre-planned the color and design of each film through a series of continuity sketches that outlined camera angles, lighting and the position of actors in each scene. For Gone with the Wind (1939), he and J. McMillan Johnson drew some 2000 detailed watercolor sketches, that got him the Honorary Academy Award 1940 "For outstanding achievement in the use of color for the enhancement of dramatic mood" of the film. An historian, Wilbur G. Kurtz, was employed on the project to provide additional accuracy of period detail. Menzies himself directed the famous burning of Atlanta sequence and hospital sequence, including the famous long shot of wounded and dying Confederate soldiers, taken from a 90-foot crane. A consummate designer of film architecture on a grand scale, Menzies was rather less effective as a director, consistently displaying an inability to draw strong performances from his cast. As a result, others were often brought in as co-directors, forcing Menzies to share the credit. In the 1950's, he helmed several low-budget films, which stand out purely for their characteristically good visuals, as, for example, Invaders from Mars (1953). Menzies was inducted into the Art Directors Guild Hall of Fame in 2005.