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By Robbie Graham
In 1953, director William Cameron Menzies gave the world Invaders from Mars – a fascinating if typically clunky addition to what was then the burgeoning UFO subgenre. The movie did what it said on the tin: there were invaders, and they were from Mars, and – aside from the film’s none-too-subtle communist invasion allegory (then obligatory for movies of its ilk) – that was pretty much it. Yet Invaders from Mars bears closer scrutiny from a UFOlogical perspective, with one scene in particular screaming out for analysis.
The scene in question sees the film’s hero – an implausibly square-jawed astronomer – declare the Martians’ arrival as no surprise. He explains that the government has been studying the saucers for a number of years and is well aware that they are extraterrestrial in origin.
In the fashion of a public service announcement, the astronomer goes on to describe various real-life cases catalogued by the Air Force’s “Project Saucer” (officially named Project Sign), including the UFO-related death of Captain Thomas Mantell in 1948 and the “Lubbock Lights” of 1951. The astronomer illustrates his eight-minute lecture with genuine news-clippings and UFO photographs: “Life can, and does, exist on other planets,” he intones, before displaying scale models of the multiple saucer types he says are known to exist by the Air Force.
This lengthy scene clearly was devoid of narrative function and it did not appear in the US theatrical cut of the film. That it was scripted and shot at all raises questions about the possibility of subversive government involvement in the filmmaking process – a notion that cannot easily be dismissed in light of the US government's documented historical efforts to manipulate the content of Hollywood's UFO movies. Such efforts typically were geared towards debunking the UFO phenomenon; in a few select cases, however, the objective apparently was to acclimate the public to the notion of UFO reality (with the Robert Emenegger case of the early 1970s standing as perhaps the best example of this approach).
Watch the Invaders from Mars scene (as well as the rest of the movie) and see if you're not intrigued...
Copyright©Robbie Graham
NOTE: This article was originally posted on Silver Screen Saucers in March 2011.
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