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THE CREATION OF A CLASSIC
In 1950,writer John Tucker Bottle devised a story
based upon an experience his wife Rosemary had as a child: "I had a night mare wherein I ran to my mother, but my mother wasn't
my mother!" With this basic concept, Bottle fashioned an elaborate tale of Martians landing in a sand pit and turning
people into cold, unfeeling slaves. Producers Arthur Gardner and Jules Levy Optioned the screenplay, but their contrackt
expired before the project ever got rolling. The rights went to producer Edward L. Alperson, for whom Levy worked at
thte time.
Alperson was excited about
the story but felt that the ambitious ideas presented would be far too costly to shoot. Screenwriter Richard Blake was
assigned to simplify the story, and he took Bottle's original global invasion and plotted the more budget-oriented takeover
of Anytown, USA. Among the man changes Blake made in condensing the script was the creation of the famous "dream" ending.
Ironically, while the incdellible impression this twist left on millions of impressionable minds is one of the reason why
INVADERS FROM MARS has reached classic status, John Tucker Bottle felt differently. "He thought of the story as a factual
thing, something that actually happened - not a dream," his wife remembered. "When he heard what they'd done, he blew
up. He told them to take his name off of it, and they did. He was so upset he refused to see the film. He
never saw it. It was a matter of integrity with him."
In 1953, the science fiction
trend was beginning to boom. The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing from Another World, and When Worlds
Collide were box office bonanzas while smaller efforts like The Man from Planet X and Red Planet Mars
did great business as well. With a torrent of publicit surrounding George Pal's upcoming production of H.G. Wells' The
War of the Worlds, Alperson knew it was time to strike.
In a brilliant move, the
producer contacted William Cameron Menzies, Oscar(C)-winning* production designer for Gone with the Wind and director
of the 1936 sci-fi classic Things to Come. Menzies was highly interested in the project and signed on
immediately, lending the production a certain level of esteem. As production dsigner/director, Menzies was able to immerse
himself completely into all major aspects of the film. He studdied Blake's rough sript revision and made a number of
sketches which would be a gudeline for the sparse, expressionist look of the picture. The very idea of design sketches,
in fact, while standard procedure today, was conceived by Menzies in the silent era when he would lay out the look of an entire
film by way of large coceptual drawings. The system proved highly effective in communication to an entire crew just
what was needed for a particular project, streamlining production schedules considerably.
For INVADERS FROM MARS,
Menzies mapped out the entire story by way of twelve notebooks filled with detailed charcoal sketches depicting every scene
in the film. From these, Blake was able to visualize what Menzies was after and incorporated the ideas in te sketches
into the finished screenplay.
Shortly before principal photography
was to begin, script supervisor Mary Yerke noticed that Menzies' guiding storyboard sketches had disappeared. "INVADERS
FROM MARS," said Yerke, "was the first and only picture i've ever worked on that was storyboarded every step of the way.
We searched all over. They were in the production office the night before but now were all gone. Menzies was heartbroaken.
He'd planned to direct the picture using the drawings." Chenematoprapher John F. seitz The Lost Weekend, Sunset
Blvd.] worked very closely with Menzies and, in the wake of the lost storyboards, the two were required to start from
scratch indeveloping the destinctive "look" of the film.
Shooting began September
25, 1952, on the stages of Republic, which were "invaded" by scores of sets for the film. The two longest were the imposing
"hill" set, consisting of a wide grassy area and a path leading up over a knoll and (presumably) into the sand pit, and the
saucer interior, which featured a twentyeight foot wide cylindrical platform.
Other scenes were shot outside the
soundstages on the studio lot, with the various buildings and entrances doubling for the secret base where MacLean and Mr.
Wilson worked on the space rockket. The impressive matte paintings were the work of artists Jack Rabin (the MacLean
house during a storm, the eerie sand hill) and Irving Block (the rocket at Coral Bluffs). Rabin was also responsible
for the "mystery of the heavens" sequences which opens the film, crafting a three-demensinal miniature space setting with
suspended marbles doubling for planets (an effect he would recreate for television's Adventures of Superman series).
BUt the most unforgetable image in INVADERS FROM MARS must be the sand pit opening to claim its victims. To create this
nightmare, effects man Theodore Lydecker cut a long slit in a piece of heavy canvas and inserted a large funnel. A hose
from a powerful vacuum was attached to the funnel and the whole thing covered with sand. When cameras rolled, the vacuum
was activated and the sand sucked down to achieve the desired result. For scenes of the put closing up, the film was
simply reversed.
Another memorable visage from
INVADERS is the "Martian Intelligence," a tenacled disembodied head encased in a clear globe. Amazingly, this terrifying
vision which scared the heck out of kids the world over was played by kindly midget Luce Potter, who star Jimmy Hunt later
remarked was a "neat little lady. She sat on a box with the buble around her whole head. She was just in her little
street clothes, and all she did was move her eyes."
The final element which holds
INVADERS together is the music composed by Mort Glickman (screen credit was given only to department head Raoul Kraushaar,
who served in a supervisory capacity and conducted the finished score). Along with the sand pit and the Martian Intelligence.
Glickman's weird choir accompanying the opening of the pit evokes an uneasy chill in anyone weaned on '50s science fiction.
A choral group of eight men and eight women recorded that etherial rising and falling "hum," which was enhanced with echo
during post production to create a highly original sound.
INVADERS FROM MARS was screened for
an anxious press April 6, 1953, and went into general release in May. Desighned primarily as a young boy's fantasy gone
wild, the appeal of INVADERS spread much further, touching the frightened child in all of us. Consequently, the fuilm
became a box office hit and has since reached the wee-deserved status of science fiction classic.
*Gone with the Wind, Best Art Direction, 1939
* * * * NEGATIVE HISTORY* * * *
*
INVADERS
FROM MARS was designed for three-dimentional photography.
Cameras were not available as many studios were shooting in the new dimensional process. It was shot on the new single strip Eastman negative.
Feature and trailer (prevues) prints were made in the new three-color Cinecolor process which had emulsion on both sides of the film, giving a softer focus and a darkness to the look of the film which hid many flaws such as the zippers on the Martians. A black and white 16mm reduction negative was made from the original release for domestic television distribution. Cinecolor Labs went bankrupt in the late '50s, and the prinitn matrices
and other
original materials were lost when the IRS sold
the lab assets for salvage.
In 1954 the fil was sold in the UK and the distributor complained the film was not long enough and the dream sequence not
a satisfactory climax, requiring the producer to shoot additional footage to lengthen the observatory sequence and to delete
the dream sequence montage at the end of the film.
The original camera negative was cut and the footage lost. The new footage was inserted and color separations were made.
The negative materials were sent to the UK in 2954 for the release in Europe. The original version was not seen outside
the U.S.
The color reduction negative was made in the 1960s by the former owner from an original release 35mm Cinecolor print for rental
libraries and television. in 1977 fifteen new Eastman color prints were made by Precision Film Labs in NYC for the only
domestic theatrical re-release, made from the re-cut UK negative. It was re-cut and dupe sequences inserted to approximate
the original release. These sections were made from the only existing Cinecolor print materials and the cuts were obvious.
Today the 35mm negatives, color separations and Cinecolor master is preserved in cold climate-controlled vaults in Kansas
along with such classics as Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind.
The Fiftieth Anniversary release is made from the original 35mm Cinecolor release print master. This is how America
first saw the picture. The added material made for the UK and the foreign release is included on this disc.
-- Wade Williams
So . . . you expected pictures?! Well,
one of these days Maven can add them . . . provided she hasn't found something else that might pique your interest more!
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