Invaders from Mars: Remembering the Good Times

Who can forget their first job? Certainly nobody who works in the film business can forget theirs.  They will be able to relive it whenever the first film they worked on is shown again, thus embarking on a bright and nostalgic skip along memory lane or a repulsive stumble into the dark side.  Sometimes, depending on the film and the experiences, it can be both (and for me, it was). In honor of that long ago on-the-set adventure, for the next couple of entries I’d like to talk about my first film job.

The other day, partway into an extended period between jobs, while successfully avoiding all forms of productivity, I came across my very first film.  They were showing it on one of the outer channels in the satellite dish movie array, past HBO, Showtime, and any other recognizable franchises. Frankly, if I hadn’t been channel surfing for far too long, killing time and the battery life of my remote, I never would have found it.

Invaders from Mars was an ‘80’s remake of a truly creepy 1953 sci-fi movie of the same name.  The plot was the stuff of a child’s nightmare: your parents and then everyone else in your town is taken over by… something horrible, and they become zombified, possessed automatons.  You are all alone, the only person left who is still human.  Come to think of it, this is probably the stuff of adult nightmares, too.

The Martians have landed in a big sand pit outside of town, but just over the hill in your own backyard.  People go up the hill and disappear into the sand.  When they come back, they aren’t themselves.  As the one kid who hasn’t been taken over by Martians, it’s up to you to save yourself and everyone else.  And that requires going down into the sand pit, to find out exactly what is under there. What you find is pretty amazing.   Scary, too, if you are between the ages of four and seven.

If you get a chance, and you, like me at the moment, have the inclination to slothfully dispose of some time which could be better spent doing something (anything) else, give this film a look.  The production design, done by Leslie Dilley with the help of Craig Stearns and sets designed by Randy Moore, is actually very impressive.  The script is not, however.  It suffered by being a product of Cannon Films filmmaking standards (slapdash, fast money, remarkably unconcerned with quality) at the time. Still, there’s fun to be had, somewhere in there.

I do recall what my mother said after seeing it for the first time, though. The very first job on a film her beloved daughter had ever had, a many months’ long ordeal of hard work and endless hours, framed by daily commutes from the north end of the San Fernando Valley down to Long Beach on the worst freeway in the world, the dreaded 405.  For those of you unfamiliar with the geography of LA, that is a distance of approximately 400 miles, one way.

I was anxious to hear what she thought of this epic endeavor, and called her at home the night it opened, after she had gone to see it.

She was only slightly apologetic. “Oh honey, I don’t want to embarrass you, but that movie was pretty terrible!”