Invisible Invaders (1959)

Some great claims have been made as to the influence of Invisible Invaders (1959), with some suggestions that its scenes of pasty-faced living corpses shuffling around and besieging a tiny group of living survivors might have been the inspiration for similar scenes in Night of the Living Dead (1968).  It is entirely possible that George Romero might have seen Edward L Canh's B-movie in one of its many TV outings, (it was very quickly sold to TV), I have no idea, but if he did, he only took the most superficial details from Invisible Invaders.  While, like Night of the Living Dead, it features human corpses re-animated by an external source from space - aliens in Invisible Invaders, radiation in the George Romero film - which attack living people, it lacks any of the political sub-text of the later film, let alone the gore.  Not that it lacks a sub-text of its own, with its scientist hero first seen resigning his government position due to his opposition to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and eventually using the defeat of the alien invasion to call for an end to national hostilities and rivalries in favour of increased international co-operation of the kind that repelled the invaders.  There is also something of a simplistic debate within the film's action as to the legitimate use of violence, with the main scientist's daughter disturbed by what she sees as the army officer escorting them's trigger happiness when he guns down an innocent but scared farmer who blocks their way.  (Naturally, the farmer's corpse is later reanimated and comes back to menace them).

Setting aside comparisons to Night of the Living Dead, Invisible Invaders is, in its own right, a fascinating example of low budget film-making, with every expense spared by the producers.  While the idea of aliens reanimating corpses and occupying them in order to survive long-term in earth's atmosphere was, for the time, novel, it was clearly born from expediency: walking corpses are cheaper to portray on screen than aliens.  When the aliens aren't inhabiting corpses, they are, of course invisible, represented by some laboured breathing and two tracks in the dust as they shuffle across the ground.  Indeed, each instance of the aliens' presence being indicated this way seems to use the same piece of footage, repeated over and over.  Conveniently, the aliens' weapons don't seem to work on earth, so they are forced to use earth weapons and explosives to destroy cities and facilities, meaning that lots of stock footage of buildings collapsing and planes crashing are used to represent their invasion.  Most of the film's action is confined to an underground government lab, where two scientists, the daughter of the older scientist and a soldier try to find a way of stopping the aliens.  This bunker inevitably comes under siege from hordes of alien possessed corpses, co-ordinated from a locally situated flying saucer, (also conveniently invisible).  There are a few excursions outside, first to capture a walking alien animated corpse, then to destroy that invisible saucer after the scientists find that concentrated sound waves can kill the aliens,

It is at this point that the aliens briefly become visible: when the corpses are hit by the sound waves, they collapse and a blurry, glowing figure emerges, before vanishing.  In the name of cost-cutting, these shapes are actually the monster costume from It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958), shot out of focus.  (Paul Blaisdell, who designed and built the suit apparently wasn't paid for its re-use in Invisible Invaders).  All in all, an incredibly cheap way to shoot a film, using one main set, stock footage, extras in white face make-up as the monsters and a briefly glimpsed recycled monster outfit.  Perhaps surprisingly, the end result is a pretty entertaining little B-picture that succeeds largely because it knows its limitations and works within them, resisting the temptation of trying to produce some kind of low budget 'spectacle', instead keeping its action localised and focused.  At only sixty seven minutes the film wastes little time and gets quickly to the action.  The acting is adequate for this sort of film with the film featuring genre stalwarts Robert Hutton, John Agar and John Carradine, (who gets blown up as soon as he appears, only to reappear as the first corpse reanimated by the aliens, before vanishing from the narrative again - clearly he was only booked for day or so of filming).  Overall, it represents a decent piece of lower berth entertainment.