The Day Mars Invaded Earth (1962)

Another of those B-movies which feel as if they come from a decade earlier than their release date, The Day Mars Invaded Earth (1962), is a very modest affair boasting a very modest invasion.  In fact, we only see five of the invaders, all of them duplicates of the main cast, which obviously saved on the budget, with most of the action taking place in and around a country house.  Conveniently for the low budget, the Martians are energy beings that can transmit themselves down radio waves, deciding to invade the earth via the transmissions from an earth Mars probe.  Their aim is to put an end to earth's space programmes, so they start by duplicating a top US space scientist and his family.  Although a science fiction film, in truth The Day Mars Invaded Earth, for much of its length, plays out more like a haunted house story, with the family fleetingly encountering their mysterious doppelgängers in and around the house and finding themselves trapped there, with the main gates refusing to open.

Apart from the split screen work to allow actors to encounter 'themselves' in some scenes, special effects are minimal, with the most notable being the scientist's friend burning up and being reduced to ashes by the scientist's double.  While only running around seventy minutes, The Day Mars Invaded Earth still drags, with too many slow, talky scenes padding out what feels as if it should have been a half hour Twilight Zone episode, (in truth, the trailer actually gives away pretty much all of the movie's highlights, condensing them into less than two minutes).  The cast have a decidedly B-movie feel, led by Kent Taylor, who looks as if he's simply going through the motions, which well he might have been, being a veteran of many a low budget movie.  Marie Windsor - often dubbed the Queen of B-movies, so many did she appear in - seems similarly unenthusiastic as his wife.  The film's biggest problem is that once the situation is established, the script simply doesn't seem to have any idea of where to take it, with the film rolling to an abrupt and downbeat ending, (perhaps its most novel feature).  Produced by Robert Lippert's Producer's Associates - which turned out dozens of B-movies, many, like this one, for Twentieth Century Fox, The Day Mars Invaded Earth would, be but for that ending, entirely forgettable - it's the only part of an otherwise bland production that lingers in the memory.