Others, like Roland Emmerich’s expensive and rather daft Independence Day (1996), were merely diverting exercises in special effects. Some, such as Philip Kaufman’s satirical updating of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978), were brilliant. In the decades that followed, filmmakers returned to the theme of alien invasion only sporadically.
Others, such as The Day Mars Invaded Earth or 1969‘s daft Monitors, are mere curiosities. Of the few alien invasion movies to appear in the 60s, only Wolf Rilla’s Village Of The Damned, a well-handled adaptation of John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos, is genuinely worthy of note. Fifties anxieties of communist invasion were replaced by new fears of nuclear war, which manifested themselves in such films as Fail Safe and Stanley Kubrick’s classic Dr.
Alien invasion movie movie#
Wood Jr’s Plan 9 From Outer Space are hugely entertaining, but not, perhaps, for the reasons their creators intended.īy the 60s, the era of the alien invasion movie appeared to be over. Films such as Invasion Of The Saucer-Men (1957) and Edward D. It’s a nightmarish, brilliantly directed film that taps into the era’s preoccupation with a loss of identity, and is inarguably one of the best science fiction movies of the decade.Īs the 50s drew to a close, the alien invasion theme was played out with less conviction, and with sometimes hilarious results. Initially dismissing their claims as mere paranoia, a small town doctor (Kevin McCarthy) realises his patients are gradually being replaced by emotionless Pod People. Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, released the same year, suggests an alien threat that is silent and insidious. Originally written as a cutting indictment of the British Empire’s inhumane foreign policy, The War Of The Worlds became a straight ‘us versus them’ war movie in the hands of Hollywood, and ends on a clanging note of religiosity that would have, no doubt, irritated the original novel’s rationalist author. The epic sweep of Wells’ novel made the cut, but his sly allegory didn’t. Crashing to Earth in what appear to be meteorites, the Martians emerge in vast, eerily-designed war machines, and immediately begin obliterating everything they see. Later that same year, the big screen adaptation of The War Of The Worlds finally arrived courtesy of director Byron Haskin, and its aliens were anything but benevolent or friendly. It later transpires that the aliens are harmless, and merely need time to repair their broken down ship, and after returning the kidnapped inhabitants to their loved ones, the creatures make their dramatic exit. Michael Rennie’s benevolent alien, Klaatu, comes to Earth to issue a dire warning about its inhabitants’ aggressive nature.ġ953’s It Came From Outer Space introduced an initially sinister breed of alien, who kidnap the inhabitants of a small Arizona town and replace them with emotionless duplicates, a sci-fi trope that would appear repeatedly in 50s sci-fi cinema. It sucked.Robert Wise’s better known The Day The Earth Stood Still, released a few months later, has a similar scenario. Finally, to preempt the complainers: Yeah, we saw Predator. Close Encounters represents a frightening but peaceful encounter The Day the Earth Stood Still let Earthlings off with a warning and humans still don't recognize the secret agents stalking them in Under the Skin. Since war is only threatened in the one-of-a-kind Men in Black, that's out. aliens list, Alien and Aliens do not qualify. That is to say, although they would handily top a humans vs.
Which are the exceptions? See below for the best, but know in advance that we're talking about aliens-attack-Earth movies. In many decades of movies about little green men hoping to conquer Planet Earth, surprisingly few have made the apocalypse memorable. Love it, hate it, or shrug on their way to the parking garage, few viewers of this week's Independence Day: Resurgence are likely to leave marveling that they've never seen anything like it before.
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