Invasion
Original British 1-sheet poster
Directed byAlan Bridges
Written byRoger Marshall
Based ona story by Robert Holmes
Produced byJack Greenwood
StarringEdward Judd
Yoko Tani
CinematographyJames Wilson
Edited byDerek Holding
Music byBernard Ebbinghouse
Production
company
Distributed byAnglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors (UK)
Release date
  • 15 May 1966 (1966-05-15) (UK)
[1]
Running time
82 min.
CountryUnited Kingdom

Invasion is a 1965 low-budget British science fiction film, directed by Alan Bridges and starring Edward Judd and Yoko Tani.[2] It was written by Roger Marshall and produced by Jack Greenwood.

Plot

Driving home at night, Lawrence Blackburn knocks down a strangely-dressed male figure. He takes the casualty to a nearby hospital, where blood tests reveal that he cannot be human. Later at home, Blackburn dies from a heart attack when he suddenly meets two women similarly dressed to the accident victim.

At the hospital, which is surrounded by a mysterious force field, the patient recovers consciousness and explains that he is a Lystrian, and crashed while transporting two prisoners to another planet. Soon the Lystrian women reveal that the man is actually the prisoner, and they are his escorts. The prisoner escapes from the hospital and takes off in his capsule. A missile destroys it.

Cast

Production

The film was written by Roger Marshall from a storyline by Robert Holmes. Holmes later re-used elements of the storyline in the Doctor Who serial Spearhead from Space (1970), which introduced Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor.[3]

It was made at Merton Park Studios.

Release

Invasion opened at the ABC Lime Street cinema in Liverpool on 15 May 1966.[4] It was theatrically released by Anglo-Amalgamated in the UK, and by American International Pictures in the United States.

A very brief video release by Warner Home Video was available in the UK in 1992.

The film was re-released on DVD in November 2014 by Networkonair.[5]

Critical reception

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote:

Alan Bridges' first film Act of Murder [1964] showed signs of a promising talent. Invasion, made by virtually the same production team, fully confirms that promise. What is remarkable about the film is not merely that Bridges has made a perfectly rounded piece of work out of a small budget production but that he has done it with a style and polish which many large budget productions come nowhere near to emulating. ... [The] suggestion, that the extraordinary, the nightmarish is simply one step further on from the everyday, is effectively evoked throughout the film by James Wilson's restless, prowling camera, by judiciously timed shock cuts, by the use of over-lapping dialogue, with sentences half-finished and characters cutting each other short. And if this effect is over-indulged, if it: smacks of Welles and grander things, it is certainly not the fault of the leading players, who all give performances which are perfectly integrated into the nervous mood of tue film. ... This is not to say that Invasion doesn't have its faults: it sometimes leans too heavily on television for its ideas, its technique occasionally gets in the way of its content. But it marks Alan Bridges as an intelligent director with a highly developed style of his own, and one looks forward to seeing more of him.[6]

Kine Weekly wrote: "The eeriness of the opening scene when the invaders land and cause widespread electrical failures is well done, but the mystery is sustained too long while nothing much of consequence happens. Once the Lystrians and their mission has been made clear, the pace and temperature hot up and the atmosphere of unexplained doom is, paradoxically, livened by a couple of deaths. From that point the story jogs along to a satisfactory climax. ...The space craft, by the way, fly impressively."[7]

Andrew Roberts at BFI Screenonline wrote: "Invasion is one of a number of low-budget science fiction dramas that use the theme of alien invasion as a vehicle for exploring British social attitudes. Alan Bridges' background in television plays and B-films allowed him to create a wholly believable cottage hospital based on what was virtually a single set, while the screenplay ... manages to evoke some unusually plausible alien 'invaders'. The exotic 'oriental' appearance of the invaders belies the actual mundanity of their mission – they are simply intergalactic policewomen pursuing an escaped prisoner who has taken refuge in a small town."[8]

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction praised Alan Bridges' direction, saying that he "creates a powerfully strange atmosphere despite a very small budget."[9]

References

  1. ↑ 'On the Screen Next Week', Liverpool Echo 13 May 1966, page 5.
  2. ↑ "Invasion". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 31 December 2023.
  3. ↑ The Television Companion: The Unofficial & Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who by David J Howe & Stephen James Walker
  4. ↑ 'On the Screen Next Week', Liverpool Echo 13 May 1966, page 5.
  5. ↑ "Network ON AIR > Invasion". networkonair.com.
  6. ↑ "Invasion". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 33 (384): 87. 1 January 1966 – via ProQuest.
  7. ↑ "Invasion". Kine Weekly. 587 (3058): 18. 12 May 1966 – via ProQuest.
  8. ↑ Roberts, Andrew. "Invasion". BFI Screenonline. Retrieved 1 January 2023.
  9. ↑ "Invasion [film]". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. 30 March 2015. Retrieved 4 December 2016.
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