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It
seems that Dr.
Paul Wilson’s (I’m Peter
Graves) space-probe missions to
Venus aren’t going very well. All the
previously launched satellites
malfunctioned and cracked up in orbit. Not
one to give up that easily, another
$9,000,000 probe is launched. (Hell,
it’s only the taxpayer’s money. Why
not.) Meanwhile, Tom Anderson (Lee
Van Cleef) implores the brass in
Washington to abort all attempts to
explore outer-space. Anderson was once
considered a brilliant scientist -- and an
important part of Wilson's Venus program
-- until revealing that he was in direct
communication with extraterrestrials. So
obviously, his warnings that these aliens
have put up a "No Trespassing"
sign and all further probes will meet the
same fate aren’t taken all that
seriously.
Despite
Anderson's shaky mental state, Wilson
remains close friends with him. When Anderson
invites Wilson and his wife, Joan (Sally
Fraser), over for dinner, despite
his own wife's
protests, he plans to reveal his alien
communication equipment to them. All
Claire (Beverly Garland) can
do is woefully shake her head and prepare
for the evening.
After
the Wilsons arrive, and ladies excuse
themselves to the kitchen, Anderson
confides to his colleague that he has been
in communication with the planet Venus for
quite some time. In constant contact with
this "friend" from another
world, Anderson has completely bought into
the Venusian's way of life. Unsure of what
to make of all of this, they're
interrupted when Wilson receives a phone
call. It’s from the Space Probe Command
Center reporting that the latest probe has
disappeared, too. (And another $9,000,000
goes down in flames.) After
the Wilsons leave, Claire let’s Tom know
that their current situation has made her
very uncomfortable. She still loves him,
but is at her wit's end with all the alien
stuff and wants her old Tom back. Telling
her not to worry, and just to wait a
little while longer, he promises that big
things are in the works.
At
Mission Control, the space probe has
reappeared on radar. As the command crew
tries to guide it back down, all seems
nominal at first -- but then they quickly
lose control again and it crashes. (An
extremely funny F/X shot of the probe
gliding gently down, but then quickly
accelerating at a 90-degree angle straight
into a cliff!) And from the
smoldering wreckage, something sinister
crawls out. Anderson
receives a transmission from his Venusian
buddy. Seems the alien hijacked and
commandeered the probe, and then road it
back to Earth. Promising that, together,
they will take over the world and create a
new utopian society, Anderson happily buys
into it and reveals all the local
authority figures that will have to be
"brought under control." The
Venusian then poops out several control
devices -- resembling a cross between a
stingray and a sweet roll -- that flutter
off to do their thing. Phase one complete,
the alien sets phase two into action by somehow
shutting down all forms of energy in the
immediate area. This causes everything to
slowly roll to a complete halt.
As
the locals go into a panic, the control-critters
place implants in the Sheriff (Taggert
Casey) and General Paddock (Russ
Bender), the commander of the
military base attached to Mission Control.
Turning them into mindless slaves, Paddock
declares marshal law, blaming a communist
uprising for the power outages. The base
is quickly locked down, but Paddock sends
the entire garrison out on patrol -- about
ten soldiers all told, including the Sarge
and Ortiz (played by Corman
regulars Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze),
the very unfunny comic relief. They march
out, set up camp and wait for further
orders.
In
town, the Sheriff orders everyone to
evacuate. Everyone leaves except for the
local newspaper publisher, who refuses to
go, so the zombified sheriff shoots him
dead. Witnessing this execution, Wilson
confronts the sheriff but the officer
quickly subdues him -- but doesn’t hurt
him because Wilson "is to become one
of them."
Confronting
Anderson with the cold facts about what
kind of utopian society the monster is
really proposing, does no good. Anderson
refuses to be swayed and urges Wilson to
give in to the inevitable. He refuses and
promises to put up a fight. After he
leaves, Anderson contacts the Venusian and
reports that he was wrong and Wilson will
have to be implanted to bring him in line.
When Wilson gets home he finds, to his
horror, that Joan has already been taken
over. Releasing the control-critter meant
for him, she then locks them in a room.
But Wilson manages to kill it before it
can zap him, and when his wife returns,
Wilson shoots Joan right where she stands.
I
can't begin to describe how brutal this
scene is. Wilson doesn't even make an
attempt to reach her, or encourage her
to resist. He just quickly rationalizes
that he is saving her from an
emotionless future, and matter-of-factly
plugs her. Damn, but if that ain't cold.
Crushed,
Wilson heads back to the Andersons with
every intention of avenging his wife.
Proving to be too dangerous, the Venusian
orders Anderson to eliminate him. Claire
overhears all this and that's the last
straw. Stealing Tom’s gun, she heads for
the caves where the creature is hiding out.
When Wilson arrives, the have it out --
not physically, but verbally. Wilson
appears to be finally getting through to
Anderson when the communicator kicks on...Claire
has arrived at the caves and has flushed
the Venusian out -- and we finally get a
good look at the giant turnip that’s
trying to take over the world and breath a
huge sigh of relief. *sigh* Meanwhile,
Claire screams at the monster, saying she
wants her husband back. She fires at it
repeatedly, but the bullets have no effect
as the monster closes in and strangles
her.
While
scrounging for some food, Ortiz hears
Claire’s death-screams. He investigates,
discovering her dead body fist -- and then
the monster! Hightailing it back to camp
for reinforcements, he somehow manages to
convince the Sarge that the monster is
real. The squad mounts up and prepares for
the attack. Overhearing
all of that over radio, this finally snaps
Anderson back to reality. Switching sides,
to avenge his wife, he joins the fight
against the Venusian invasion. The two
devise a plan: Anderson will head for the
caves, and Wilson will go to the military
base for more help.
At
Mission Control, two of the command crew
have been taken over by the control-critters,
and then they kill the third. There are a
few more Venusians left on the
mother-planet, so another probe is to be
sent to bring them back to Earth. Wilson
arrives, deduces they’ve been converted
and kills them all. Finding the rest of
the base is deserted, Wilson heads for the
caves. Along the way, he runs into Paddock,
and after a brief struggle, Wilson
dispatches him, too. (Geez. What's
this guy's body count up to now?)
When
the soldiers enter the cave and attack, the
monster appears to be invulnerable to
bullets. While trying to bayonet it, Ortiz
is killed. And only after the Venusian
forces the troops to retreat back outside,
and the bazooka team goes to work, do they
finally manage to slow the creature down. Anderson
arrives and confronts the creature face to
face -- well, face to kneecap. Chastising
the killer turnip for lying to him, he
then sticks a blowtorch into
the creature’s eye -- it’s only
vulnerable spot, I guess, as the monster
keels over, but before it dies, it manages
to strangle Anderson to death.
Wilson
arrives too late and views the carnage. He
then goes into a big speech about what
makes mankind so great that rivals Tom
Joad’s "All be there" speech
at the end of The
Grapes of Wrath
(later lovingly lampooned in the MST3k
episode featuring this film.) The
music swells and the "The End"
card finally puts the film to bed.
The
End
The
following is an excerpt from Roger
Corman’s biography How
I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and
Never Lost a Dime
about
the making of It
Conquered the World:
Before
shooting, Beverly (Garland)
ad-libbed a few sharp lines of her own.
From my engineering and physics
background, I’d reasoned that a being
from a planet with a powerful field of
gravity would sit very low to the
ground. So with my effects man, Paul
Blaisdell, I’d designed a rather squat
creature. But just before we were about
to shoot the climatic showdown with
Beverly and the monster, she stood over
it and stared it down, hands on her
hips. "So," she said with a
derisive snarl, making sure I heard her,
"you’ve come to conquer our
world, have you? Well, take that!"
And she kicked the monster in the head.
I got the point immediately. By that
afternoon the monster was rebuilt ten
feet high. Lesson one: Always make the
monster bigger than your leading lady.
A
friend of mine once asked me what I
thought the difference was between Roger
Corman and Ed Wood. Roger was definitely a
better filmmaker than Ed, and was more
technically sound and financially savvy.
He definitely was a better judge of
talent. This isn’t a knock against Ed. I
just think it boils down to simply that
Roger made movies, while Ed tried
to make film. Ed thought he was
making art, while Roger knew he was making
crap.
This
wasn’t Roger’s first attempt at
science fiction, but it’s probably his
most notoriously famous. This reputation
is based mostly on the monster that looked
like an inverted turnip. You can see the
basic shape of the original monster and
what was added on to appease the leading
lady. Corman realized this because you
didn’t really see the monster a whole
lot until the end when it gets killed. But
then again, in his efforts to keep things
quick and cheap, he might not have even
cared.
I've
found out later that the only reason the
monster did come outside was because the
generator to run the lights broke and
they couldn't afford to fix or replace
it, meaning the climax had to be moved
outside. For more technical difficulties
stories, head on over to my tribute to
A.I.P. creature-maker Paul
Blaisdell.
The
monster aside, as far as rest of the film
goes, I think its lofty script ambitions
were sold a little short by production
costs. There's an awful lot of talking in
this movie. A lot of talking that really
isn't all that interesting, so that
gonzoid monster is a welcomed relief
whenever he shows up. Scripted by Corman
regular Lou Russof, it’s amazing when
you realize that half of this invasion
from outer space film is nothing more than
stock-footage and extra-loooong scenes of
Van Cleef and Graves just talking. Not
arguing. Talking. Talk. Talk. Talk...
The
communistic red scare overtones aren’t
very subtle, either. It borrows heavily
from The
Day the Earth Stood Still
and Invasion
of the Body Snatchers.
Okay, they ripped them off. Yet another
Corman trademark, exploitation at its best/worst.
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