invisible invaders

Now that we've reached the point of zombie oversaturation, it's fun to look back at the undead's humble beginnings. Long before Romero's "ghouls" were re-animated in 1969 ostensibly due to a crashed satellite, Invisible Invaders (1959) combined sci-fi and shambling corpses in amusingly cut-rate fashion in a story of transparent moon men who inhabit the bodies of the recently deceased to stage a takeover of the planet Earth.

Apparently mankind's recent nuclear shenanigans are a clear and present danger to the invaders, who send in horror icon John Carradine, whose character, a famous nuclear scientist, is blown up in the opening credits but returns from the dead to act as the aliens' ombudsman. B-movie stalwart John Agar stars as a military man escorting a team of scientists to their underground bunker in an attempt to come up with a counterattack while the zombified masses burn down cities and cause general mass destruction.

It's an interesting take on the now familiar zombie apocalypse, using the same budget-friendly scenario Romero and his imitators would lean on for decades: a plucky group of survivors trapped in a tenuously safe location fight the undead and each other while the world waits for a cure. Director Edward L. Cahn was no stranger to zombies, having already made Zombies of Mora Tau (1957) and a few other shambling monster pics (Creature with the Atom Brain and Curse of the Faceless Man). And even though he repeats many of the same gags to create his "invisible" effects (shuffling footprints, rustling shrubbery and heavy breathing are a sure sign an invader is near) he comes up with a couple of new spins on the material by working within a sci-fi framework.

And make no mistake; Invisible Invaders is schlocky science fiction first and foremost, leaning heavily on stock footage to pull of its vision of widespread chaos. But Agar - who'd already fought off the Gill Man, giant spiders and an army of mole people at this point in his career - puts in a better than average effort, channeling a bit of John Wayne in his authoritative performance. His suped-up sonic gun showdown with the undead might look corny by today's standards (and probably did in 1959 too), but it's the corny comic book culmination of many a sci-fi fan's dream...stock footage be damned!

Kino Lorber's newly remastered blu-ray (replacing the out of print MGM DVD that paired the film with Journey to the Seventh Planet) looks very good. And the new audio commentary from Tom Weaver - plus extra info from Dr. Robert J Kiss - is essential stuff...making a (let's face it) very minor cinematic zombie outlier a much more interesting viewing experience.