Invasion (1966)
After seeing this film eons ago on late-night TV, we've spent even more eons attempting to track it down.
(We always thought of it as a side-by-side companion piece to the 1963 film 'The Unearthly Stranger', which we also spent endless years in search of a re-watch. That quest finally hit paydirt this year when we uncovered it on the Internet Archive and you can check out our review of 1/27/25).
Both films share this in common - both are very understated, very modestly low budget black-and-white British takes on alien invasions....both crisply written, directed and acted by skilled talent on both sides of the camera.
On a tip from a YouTube movie blogger, we finally found 'Invasion' parked on Daily Motion, yet another random streaming site with vast amounts of free content.
Was at last catching up with it worth the wait you ask?
Hmmm......somewhat. But not nearly as much as 'The Unearthly Stranger'. That movie chilled us to the bone, with its moody story of a bedeviled scientist (John Neville) who discovers his wife's an undercover alien invader.
'Invasion', considering its limited budget, presents a far more involved, ambitious Close Encounter of the Third Kind.
Somewhere in the remote suburbs outside London, an alien ship from Planet Lystria crashes in the woods. A Lystrian convict (Ric Young) escapes the ship, only to be hit by a passing car. Taken to the area's small local hospital, an intense dedicated doctor (Edward Judd) and his staff discover through x-rays and blood tests that their new patient is no local neighborhood guy......
And even more alarming for them, a formidable pair of girl Lystrians (including the stunning international starlet Yoko Tani) is on the hunt for the escapee. They mean earthlings no harm, but end up accidentally killing a few people anyway......not to mention making Judd and the medical crew sweat bullets by overheating them with an invisible force field thrown around the hospital grounds.....
Sounds like a thrill ride indeed, but in execution, not really. The overall pacing makes it seem more like a stiff upper lip tea party where everyone starts losing their temper. In that regard, the film duplicates the constant overlapping dialogue of Howard Hawks' iconic 'The Thing' but there's no camaraderie among people uniting to battle a common foe.
Everyone here spends a lot of time testily snapping at one another, while Judd tries a grueling crawl through the sewer system to get beyond the alien heat dome.
We did very much appreciate the film's various storyline quirks.....Lystrians are not only an all-Asian planet, but female dominated. (The male fugitive marvels at how Judd's allowed to order around the nurses. Suck on that, Earth Patriarchy!)
Considering the measured pace the film affects for its brief 80 minutes, the finale wrap-up appears abrupt and rushed, as if someone behind the scenes had simply shouted, "Oh come on, get on with it already".
A minor, fascinating little film that sci-fi film completists should seek out. (And fanboys 'n girls will also spot the beautiful exotic Tsai Chin (of 'You Only Live Twice' and Fu Manchu movies) ...no, not as a Lystrian, but one of the hospital nurses)
2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)
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