Monday, October 18, 2021

Target Earth (1954)

An interesting take on the 1950s "alien invasion" theme. Nora (Kathleen Crowley) awakes after an attempted overdose, she finds all her neighbours seem to have gone, in fact the whole city seems to be empty! Finally she runs into Frank (Richard Denning), who also had been out of it for some time - though in his case due to a mugging. They explore the eerie empty city, finally they hear piano music and discover Jim (Richard Reeves) and Vicki (Virginia Gray) getting hammered in a bar!

Soon after the four discover something else is stalking the streets. The US has been invaded by a mysterious army of robots from outer space. The foursome flee to a hotel and hole up there until escaped convict Davis (Robert Roark) forces them to help him facilitate his own escape from the alien robots. Meanwhile the US Army races against time to find a counter to the robots, if they don't... well they are going to nuke the city!

This is a great sci-fi film, full of suspense with it's empty streets and air of mystery. A lot of that mystery is lost though when we finally see the robots, which are ridiculously clunky. However, this film is elevated above other films in it's sub-genre by how it explores the human reactions to an alien invasion not just lots of laser gun firing. A great little film.