Invasion | |
---|---|
Directed by | Alan Bridges |
Written by | Roger Marshall |
Based on | a story by Robert Holmes |
Produced by | Jack Greenwood |
Starring | Edward Judd Yoko Tani |
Cinematography | James Wilson |
Edited by | Derek Holding |
Music by | Bernard Ebbinghouse |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors (UK) |
Release date |
|
Running time | 82 min. |
Country | United 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 based on a story by Robert Holmes and produced by Jack Greenwood.
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. Dr. Brian Carter is killed when he tries to drive his car through the force field, crashing his car and being thrown through the windscreen. The prisoner kidnaps Dr. Claire Harland and escapes from the hospital. He takes off alone in his capsule, which is destroyed by a missile fired from the Lystrian women’s spaceship.
It was made at Merton Park Studios.
Robert Holmes later re-used elements of the storyline in the Doctor Who story Spearhead from Space (1970), which introduced Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor. [3]
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.[ citation needed ]
The film was re-released on DVD in November 2014 by Networkonair. [5]
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "[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." [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. ...The space craft, by the way, fly impressively." [7]
Leslie Halliwell said: "Understated, effective liitle suspenser, well done in all departments." [8]
The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 2/5 stars, writing: "Aliens put an invisible force field around a secluded country hospital in this endearingly daffy British oddity, which must feature the cheapest alien takeover in history. Edward Judd is the scientist battling the extraterrestrial Oriental women in spacesuits, in an efficiently made and, yes, mildly exciting slice of cut-price science fiction. Director Alan Bridges imbues the Home Counties atmosphere with a peculiar ambience that's astonishingly heady at times." [9]
Andrew Roberts at BFI Screenonline wrote: "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'." [10]
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction praised Alan Bridges' direction, saying that he "creates a powerfully strange atmosphere despite a very small budget." [11]
John Kingsley Orton, known by the pen name of Joe Orton, was an English playwright, author, and diarist.
Amicus Productions was a British film production company, based at Shepperton Studios, England, active between 1962 and 1977. It was founded by American producers and screenwriters Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg.
Quatermass and the Pit is a British television science-fiction serial transmitted live by BBC Television in December 1958 and January 1959. It was the third and last of the BBC's Quatermass serials, although the chief character, Professor Bernard Quatermass, reappeared in a 1979 ITV production called Quatermass. Like its predecessors, Quatermass and the Pit was written by Nigel Kneale.
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 for six seasons from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually original works written for television, although dramatic adaptations of fiction also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
George Sewell was an English actor, best known for his television roles, but also active on stage and in films.
The Sorcerers is a 1967 British science fiction horror film directed by Michael Reeves, starring Boris Karloff, Catherine Lacey, Ian Ogilvy, and Susan George. The original story and screenplay were by John Burke.
Island of Terror is a 1966 British horror film directed by Terence Fisher and starring Peter Cushing and Edward Judd. The screenplay was by Edward Mann and Al Ramsen. It was produced by Planet Film Productions. The film was released in the United States by Universal Studios on a double bill with The Projected Man (1966).
Roberta Tovey is an English actress who has appeared in films and television programmes. One of her better-known roles was that of Susan, the granddaughter of Dr. Who, in the films Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966), which starred Peter Cushing as Dr. Who. She also appeared in the films Never Let Go (1960), Touch of Death (1961), A High Wind in Jamaica (1965), Runaway Railway (1965), Operation Third Form (1966) and The Beast in the Cellar (1970), and the TV series Not in Front of the Children (1967–68), Going Straight (1978) and My Husband and I (1987).
Hell Is a City is a 1960 British crime thriller film starring Stanley Baker, based on the 1954 novel of the same title by Maurice Procter.
Richard Gordon, was an English ship's surgeon and anaesthetist. As Richard Gordon, Ostlere wrote numerous novels, screenplays for film and television and accounts of popular history, mostly dealing with the practice of medicine. He was best known for a long series of comic novels on a medical theme beginning with Doctor in the House, and the subsequent film, television, radio and stage adaptations. His The Alarming History of Medicine was published in 1993, and he followed this with The Alarming History of Sex.
It's Great to Be Young is a 1956 British Technicolor musical comedy film about a school music teacher, starring Cecil Parker and John Mills.
The Good Die Young is a 1954 British crime film directed by Lewis Gilbert and starring Laurence Harvey, Gloria Grahame, Joan Collins, Stanley Baker, Richard Basehart and John Ireland. It was made by Remus Films from a screenplay based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Richard Macaulay. It tells the story of four men in London with no criminal past whose marriages and finances are collapsing and, meeting in a pub, are tempted to redeem their situations by a robbery.
Milton Subotsky was an American film and television writer and producer. In 1964, he founded Amicus Productions with Max J. Rosenberg. Amicus means "friend" in Latin. The partnership produced low-budget science fiction and horror films in the United Kingdom.
Follow a Star is a 1959 British black and white comedy musical film directed by Robert Asher and starring Norman Wisdom, June Laverick and Jerry Desmonde. It was written by Henry Blyth, Jack Davies and Wisdom.
Yoko Tani was a Japanese-French actress and vedette, who had a career in both Japanese and European cinema during the 1950s and '60s.
There Was a Crooked Man is a 1960 British comedy film directed by Stuart Burge and starring Norman Wisdom, Alfred Marks, Andrew Cruickshank, Reginald Beckwith and Susannah York. It is based on the James Bridie play The Golden Legend of Schults. The film was one of two independent films in which Wisdom appeared in an effort to extend his range, as British audiences strongly identified him with his Gump character.
Violent Playground is a black and white 1958 British film directed by Basil Dearden and starring Stanley Baker, Peter Cushing, and David McCallum. The film, which deals with the genre of juvenile delinquent, has an explicit social agenda. It owes much to U.S. films of a similar genre.
Piccadilly Incident is a 1946 British drama film directed by Herbert Wilcox and starring Anna Neagle, Michael Wilding, Coral Browne, Edward Rigby and Leslie Dwyer.
A Stitch in Time is a 1963 comedy film directed by Robert Asher and starring Norman Wisom, Edward Chapman, Jeanette Sterke and Jerry Desmonde. It was produced by Hugh Stewart and Earl St. John. The film is set in a children's hospital and features an early role for Johnny Briggs.
Douglas Muir was a British film and television actor. known for The Appleyards (1952), Scrooge (1951) and his recurring role as Steed's boss in the Dr. David Keel/Cathy Gale era of TV's The Avengers. He was married to the actress Miriam Adams. Muir died on 30 November 1966 in Brompton Hospital, Chelsea, London.