No way I couldn't have a little week dedicated to Roger Corman and no better place to start than a good old fashioned B-movie! Shot in a whopping 5 days this classic staple of goofy monster movie history follows a crashed alien craft with it's pilot slowly conquering...a town and not so much the Earth (hey man they had to get butts in seats somehow) with the help of a resident scientist leading to the military and the scientist's friend to stop the menace. It bears some similarities to Invasion Of The Body Snatchers which coincidentally came out the same year of 1956, and though it's far from air tight in terms of plot and it's absolutely one of those movies where you don't fully see the monster until pretty much the end I gotta admit I didn't hate it! I got involved in the story with the humans and can kinda applaud it for taking some dark cold moments from time to time. The acting is solid across the board, a lot of love was heaped upon Beverly Garland as the evil scientist's wife Claire who is far from a fainting worthless woman, in fact though it would have made the movie only about an hour she has the balls to go charging into the alien's lair with a rifle to take care of business and that is fucking awesome. Best known from shows like Mission Impossible and the host of A&E Biography along with movies such as Airplane, Peter Graves is a pretty solid yet basic lead as Paul. I'm not expecting deep writing in a monster movie but he gets the job done and has a real strong voice that I like listening to. Lee Van Cleef the legend himself plays the baddie Tom and he probably has the best written material viewing the invader as a benefactor and cure to all man's problems even fully knowing it takes over people's minds and has less than altruistic motives leading to many conversations about it. Also shoutout to Dick Miller as one of the army officers, it's always kick ass to see him in any movie whether in a major or minor role! A line that struck me hard in this movie is from Paul during one of the discussions of the wrongs the alien would put to right, "I'd have to take a long hard look at anything that was gonna change the world and me so completely." and man! That needs to circulate majorly in this day and age! Some may point to it as just a cheesy sci-fi movie but I think there's more to it, and it's not an incompetently made film either! The dialogue is good, the setting is basic but has logic, the production values of the sets are believable, and even the alien himself though slightly funny is without doubt a memorable design. Hailing from the planet Venus this red crab-like monster was laughed at even on set with particular shade being thrown from Beverly Garland, and yeah it's not that major a threat or anything but it has charm to it like any rubber suit monster has. Is it a forgotten classic? No. Is it atypical of the 50s B-movie? Yeah. But for a small budget and a run time of barely over an hour it isn't a waste. It's a sure fire recommendation if you're having a 50s monster movie night and you like them on the cheaper side. I give it 2.5 stars, 6.5/10!
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