The Movie:

Proof positive that not all remakes have to suck is Tobe Hooper's 1986 retread of William Cameron Menzies 1953's sci-fi cult classic, Invaders From Mars. Made with a younger audience in mind, Hooper's film doesn't always take itself too seriously, but then when you put ‘fun' front and center as your reason for being in the first place, that's okay. This is really entertaining picture and it holds up well.

The story tells the tale of David Gardner (Hunter Carson), a boy who lives a perfectly ordinary life and who dreams of one day becoming an astronaut. He lives at home with his father George (Timothy Bottoms), a NASA scientist, and mother Ellen (Laraine Newman) and things seem idyllic for the family. All of this changes, of course, otherwise we wouldn't have much of a story and that change occurs late one night when a U.F.O. lands just past the family's backyard. David's the only one who sees this and of course his parents figure it's just the product of a child's overactive imagination, chalking it up to lightning, because that's what parents always do in movies like this. Later, however, George heads out in to the night to see what he can see.

When George strolls back to the home hours later, something seems off. He looks fine but David realizes that his dad has changed. When he can't quite pinpoint what it is he brushes it off and goes about his business but then notices that his mother is acting equally odd. The more attention that David affords to those around him, the more he realizes that his parents aren't the only ones acting strange, in fact, it seems that almost everyone around him is off in that same way that his mother and father are. Of course, there's one exception, and that's Linda Magnusson (Karen Black), the school nurse. When David first tells her what he thinks is going on she understandably figures he's just a kid being a kid but soon enough she sees enough of what he sees that her opinion is swayed. Now allied with an adult, David has to get the military officers in the area to see things their way and hopefully stop what he and Linda feel is a Martian invasion before it's too late!

While you can't fairly say that Invaders From Mars is played completely for laughs the movie definitely has a sense of strange humor running throughout, and it's all the better for it. Hooper's take on the source material presents things almost completely from an angle that younger viewers will be able to relate to: weird parents, difficulty getting adults to relate, trying to separate what's imaginary from what's reality and of course, the fear of the dark (in this case the dark being Martian invaders, but the ‘fear of the dark formula' allows you to swap out ‘the dark' with whatever other element that is difficult to understand you may choose). It not only works but it works well, giving some decidedly fifties era material an appropriately eighties feeling facelift.

As the film is geared towards younger viewers, you can't go into this one expecting gooey, gory effects work intended to go for the gross out the way that a lot of slasher films being made around the same period feature. We do, however, get some fantastic alien invader effects courtesy of the one and only Stan Winston with help from the equally talented John Dykstra. If they're not gory they're no less effective and they add to the film's reason for being: fun. In fact, production values are rock solid across the board, not limited to just the effects work but encompassing the sets and the lighting and the cinematography as well. A movie meant for younger viewers or not, this is a great looking film from start to finish.

Performances are good here as well. Laraine Newman and Timothy Bottoms are fun as the parents in both incarnations of the characters. Not surprisingly, it's Hunter Carson and Karen Black that do most of the heavy lifting here and they work well together. It's also fun to see James Karen and Louise Fletcher pop up in supporting roles. To summarize, yeah, it's basically a kids movie but it's a kids movie that kids of all ages can appreciate. It's sci-fi horror done in the tradition of the old creature features that inspired it, without a need for nasty gore effects or heavy doses of sex and violence. As a throwback to that era, Invaders From Mars works really well and, as such, is definitely worth revisiting.

Video:

Invaders From Mars debuts on Blu-ray from Shout! Factory in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed properly in a 2.35.1 widescreen aspect ratio. There are bits and pieces of minor print damage throughout and one instance where a fairly nasty scratch rears its head for a few seconds but otherwise this transfer shapes up quite well. Colors look very nice here and black levels are just peachy. Detail is noticeably and considerably improved over past DVD releases and there's no evidence of noise reduction as is obvious from the natural looking film grain present throughout playback. Depth is strong, skin tones look nice and natural and there are no problems with contrast, funky compression artifacts or edge enhancement.