O2D This movie is only 70 minutes long and at least 35 minutes is people walking alone. There is virtually no story and you will be very confused. Literally everything that happens is in the trailer. A scientist sends a robot to Mars and the Martians destroy it and make clones of his family so they can kill and replace them.How did they know what the scientist and his family looked like? The best thing about this movie is the scientist pulls his gun but doesn't shoot.That's the first scientist in a long time that wasn't a trigger happy sharp shooter. If they had cut out all the time nothing was happening,this could have been a good half hour short movie.Instead it's a brutal example of how long 70 minutes really is.

gpeltz Spoiler alert; Holy Cow, They win! but more of that in a moment. we are talking about "The Day Mars Invaded Earth" (1963) Directed by Maury Dexter, and written by Harry Spalding. A Black and White film. The version I watched was uploaded on You Tube, and who ever did the upload used image Stabilization. This caused much distortion to the otherwise sharp image. The film was well lit and shot, in the old school studio style, There was a minimum of special effects. The California location shooting was impressive, The Rich mansion that served as the background for the story was in fact the Greystone Park and Mansion in Beverly Hills. The acting was minimal and efficient, as was the basic editing. All things considered, this film had some intelligent thought behind it. For example, it begins with a Mars robotic rover, dropped on mars. It functions for six minutes before it is destroyed. Dr Fielding who designed the robot, and his assistant Dr Spencer are played by Kent Tayler and William Mims. Dr Spencer has taken a weekend off, to visit his wife Clair, played by Marie Windsor, and his daughter Judi played by Betty Beal, and his son Rocky played by Gregg Shank. All is not well at the home-front. It is not just the Doctors neglect of his wife and kids, He is trying to make amends, What is spooky, is that all of the members of the family experience seeing doubles of themselves. These doubles turn out to be quite real, they are energy manifestations of the intelligent life forms that survive on Mars. Even back in the sixties, we realized how hostile an environment Mars could be. The Martians are on earth, to stop the invasion of their world. Although they seem reasonable, their solution to our messing around on their planet, is to kill us off. The doctor learns of this first hand from his doppelganger. All the members of his family have been replicated, and much like the pod creatures in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) their ultimate intent is to take over Earth. This movie has much in common with the Body Snatchers, a much superior film. We only learn of the Martians desire to do away with us, in the somewhat shocking last few minutes. The film is effective because of how it is underplayed. The Musical score by Richard LaSalle is also old school, and very effective in creating the feeling of unease that this film achieves on such a limited budget. I liked this film, the Scientists acted with intelligence to understand the threat to their planet, but never truly understood the brutality of the invaders. The ending leads us to believe there is not much hope for the people of Earth. Well done, Slow moving by today's standard, it never the less builds to a satisfyingly disturbing conclusion. Eight out of Ten "Obscure but Good" Stars.

ziklag1990 Very, very skimpy "the aliens are coming" movie. The acting is more than ordinarily bad, although the scientist father amusingly suggests a cross between Leave it to Beaver's Hugh Beaumont and Vincent Price. His neglected wife appears to be zonked on Xanax throughout the film, which might charitably explain her strangely sluggish, tepid reactions to rather momentous events.The dialogue is sub-rudimentary and doesn't even qualify for the respectable term "pedestrian". The screenwriter doesn't seem to have the basic awareness of how people talk to each other; e.g., when one person says A, the other will likely respond with B. This is especially frustrating when we're trying to get get specific information and a character fails to ask the obvious question from the one who has that information. Conversations are so disjointed, missing so many self-evidently necessary links, and so awkwardly inarticulate that the hopeful viewer may see it as some kind of deliberately murky screenplay experimentalism. This hope would probably not be justified.So despite what you may have read in other reviews here, this is not a "pleasant surprise", an interesting "find" or anything like that. It is terrible movie, in every category just about reaching the awfulness level of average porn, without the obvious mitigating factors.But for all of that, I was glad I stuck it out until the end. The final shot is genuinely chilling, even shocking, and made me feel far less embarrassed about my perseverance.

utgard14 A scientist in charge of America's space program takes a vacation with his wife and two kids, only to find they are being haunted by mysterious doppelgangers of themselves. Good sci-fi story of the Body Snatchers variety. I'm not sure why this one is rated so low on IMDb. My first guess was that Mystery Science Theater was to blame but apparently not this time. The direction is static and the movie has a sort of made-for-TV quality about it, but I thought it was enjoyable. It kept my interest throughout and, despite the lack of action or special effects, I was never bored. There is also a decent amount of atmosphere and suspense. The movie makes great use of its location shooting at the famous Greystone Mansion. If you like old-school sci-fi movies, even ones filmed on a low budget, then you will probably like this one.