Catching "Invaders from Mars" on the Svengoolie channel (apparently, there are issues with rights to showing the more appropriate original 1953 film) reminded me why I truly disliked it when I first saw it in theaters in 1986. It was a birthday present and I saw it in a little theater in Forest Hills, New York (the same theater where I saw the similarly misguided "Short Circuit"). The remake of "Invaders from Mars" is more than just slipshod and monotonous - it has no real imagination and hardly updates the original despite being set in the 1980's.
Oh, sure, we got bigger, more monstrous aliens (Martians, sorry to all aliens out there) who walk around the inside of the spaceship like spilled leftovers from "Little Shop of Horrors" (courtesy of creature whiz Stan Winston). We do have the always reliable and thrilling Karen Black as a nurse who believes the little 12-year-old kid (Hunter Carson, Karen's actual son) and his incredible story about a UFO landing in his backyard. Yes, yes, dear child, the Martians exist because Karen Black's character is willing to listen to you first, ask questions later like any good school nurse. There's also legendary grade-Z movie actress Louise Fletcher as a biology teacher who gets her class to pay attention by yelling, "One, two, three, four five!" Oh, yeah, that ought to do it.
But beyond that, this Tobe Hooper-directed film doesn't have much going for it. There are disgusting-looking aliens, like the Martian brain on legs known as the Supreme Being (who looks like a giant toad with slightly menacing eyes), but none of them have much personality - they are just puppets that don't seem threatening enough (all apologies to Stan Winston's craft). There is no real sense of urgency at work here. And how on earth can you waste the talents of James Karen as a military commander and Bud Cort as a NASA scientist who is foolish enough to think he can reason with these Martians! Let me repeat those names: James freakin' Karen and Bud freakin' Cort!!!
The real problem is that there is no clear narrative consistency. The screenplay by Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby and clumsy direction by Hooper suggest something more tongue-in-cheek - how can anyone take Laraine Newman seriously as a mother who does impressions of the Coneheads? This ill-advised remake's tone wavers between tongue-in-cheek and gross-out humor like watching Louise Fletcher eating a frog! The original 1953 film felt like a nightmare (more so in the U.S. version) and took itself seriously enough. This stinker just makes you want to vomit, a feeling I never shook since seeing it in 1986.
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