So much average

Don't Believe the Hype

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

"IT conquered the world," said Beverly Garland when she first time saw the prop of the monster on the set and then kicked it over. Yep, that's how ridiculous the monster looked, and the mysterious "It" doesn't look any good on screen either.'It Conquered the World' is typical Corman's cheese fest at its finest, and great example how great of an actors Beverly Garland, Lee Van Cleef and Peter Graves actually were - they had to be in the top of their game to play through that pile of cheese with such a serious faces without looking ridiculous. The film has nice interesting premise - a disillusioned and naive scientist Tom Anderson (Van Cleef) helps an alien from Venus arrive to Earth and gain control. Chaos brakes loose when brains of some authoritative figures are taken over by hostile alien and rest of the people are taken 'under protective custody'. Scientist's wife (Beverly Garland) and his best friend (Peter Graves) are trying to talk sense into the mad scientist, while 'It' slowly gains more control over humans, until the fiend (who looks more like ice cream cone) is taken out heroic actions in real Corman's style. The film nicely plays with some interesting ideas, but never getting them properly developed or getting any full use out of them. Well - it is a Roger Corman movie, what else one can expect from his style of rushed production. The film is still highly entertaining, and Beverly Garland's powerful performance (did I really just said something like that about Corman's movie) has a lot to do with that. Peter Graves' Dr. Nelson's final overblown monologue about human nature over the montage of dead bodies dramatically over serious but somewhat eerie ending to this campy monster film.Another fun exploitation flick, but with little bit substance (not well developed script, but rather on idea bases) under the covers of (extremely) cheap special effects and cheesy dialogues. In that department, 'It Conquered the World' surpasses most of modern big budgeted, glossy science-fiction extravaganzas with polished special effects.

Knock it all they want to, IT CONQUERED THE WORLD delivers. Intense performances from the three leads, Lee Van Cleef ("We're all in a state of high hilarity."), Peter Graves, and Beverly Garland ("I hate your living guts!"), help make this one of the more enjoyable low-budget Masterworks to come out of the 1950s. Of course, Paul Blaisdell's assortment of Monsters are the REAL stars, as any true aficionado knows. The "It" of the title is especially photogenic, despite It's photo phobia (it hides in a cave until It's forced out into the light). As anyone who's ever tried to put together a No-Budget Monster Movie knows all too well, things can (and WILL) go horribly wrong when you least expect it; kudos to Corman and company for pulling off what amounts to a minor miracle. ("If it's a good movie, it's a Miracle!") (On a personal note: the "monster" at the end of one of MY Public Access Horror movies was- believe it or not- a sock puppet. You make do with what you've got...)

I would not exactly call this a good film but it certainly exemplifies what a guilty pleasure is – since it features one of the goofiest monsters ever (actually rivaling ROBOT MONSTER [1953]) in its clumsy carrot-shaped Venusian! In fact, I enjoyed it more than Corman's ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS (1957) – precisely because of its having well-known faces in the lead roles, namely Peter Graves (well suited to this type of film, as confirmed by the title which followed in my Halloween challenge i.e. Bert I. Gordon's BEGINNING OF THE END [1957]), Beverly Garland (though saddled with a one-note character) and Lee Van Cleef (too young to play an eccentric scientist in exile but this actually adds to the film's quirkiness). The 'invasion' takes the form of widespread power failure a' la THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951) and eventually an emotion-drained personality (after being pricked in the neck by a bat-like control device – perhaps a nod to INVADERS FROM MARS [1953]): as with many films of its ilk, the villain here is really Communism and, in fact, Graves brands Van Cleef a traitor for having led the alien to our planet in the misguided belief that it would solve mankind's problems! However, the film – running a brisk 68 minutes – balances its cautionary messages with action, movement (scenes depicting military maneuvers and the panic-stricken townsfolk) and even poignancy (Graves is forced to kill his wife after she has been 'taken over'); that said, we still have to contend with Van Cleef's 'climactic' tussling with the ultra-fake alien and the wacky combo of Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze (made to look and sound Hispanic) leading the soldiers!

Basically "It Conquered the World" is the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" meets "The Day the Earth Stood Still" — and the quality of those two movies only underscores how pitiful this one looks by comparison. I'll give Roger Corman credit for being the best director who ever regularly worked at American International — not that that's saying much for him — and for at least attempting to work serious political and social commentary into a few of his movies, including this one. Ideologically, "It Conquered the World" is a hard-Right propaganda piece (much the way John Carpenter's 1983 "They Live" took the central premise of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and used it for liberal-Left propaganda) in which the Venusian strategy for conquering the world is exactly what the Right of the time said the Communists were doing — targeting political, scientific and military leaders, recruiting them and using them to subvert the country by stealth — and Lee Van Cleef's character is clearly supposed to be what the Right of the time called a "Com-Symp," someone who wasn't an active Communist but so dangerously iconoclastic he was easy prey and all too willing to do their dirty work. But any attempt Corman and his writer, Lou Rusoff, might have been making for serious political commentary is subverted (pardon the pun) by the sheer ludicrousness of the appearance of the Venusian alien. (The makers of the first "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" showed great wisdom in avoiding any shots of the alien invaders in their natural form.) Maybe the upended half-cucumber with toothpick arms isn't quite as risible as the diving-helmeted gorilla who conquered the world in "Robot Monster," but that's damning with faint praise; the ridiculous monster takes what could have been a decent piece of half-serious science fiction and turns it into pure camp.