(SeaPRwire) – By: Alex Mercer
Most genre fans write off 1986’s Invaders from Mars as a forgettable bomb. It checks every box for failure on paper. It has a stacked pedigree no one can deny. VFX come from Star Wars’ John Dykstra. The script got co-writing from Alien’s Dan O’Bannon. Yet it tanked hard at the box office 40 years ago. Most people don’t even bother digging it up now. That’s a huge mistake.
This 1986 film is a remake of the 1953 alien-invasion movie of the same name. It earned only about $4 million against a $7 million production budget. Its studio, Cannon Films, had a much larger flop the next year. Masters of the Universe earned just $17 million against a $22 million budget. That puts Invaders from Mars in a weird spot. It’s not an outright catastrophic failure. It’s just a forgotten footnote in sci-fi history.
You don’t rewatch this film for O’Bannon’s writing or Dykstra’s effects. The only reason to dig it up is Louise Fletcher. Fletcher plays Mrs. McKeltch, a small-town teacher controlled by aliens. Most sci-fi fans know her from two big roles. She was wicked Nurse Ratched in 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. She was opportunistic Kai Winn, the “Space Karen” of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. McKeltch lands right between the two. She doesn’t want to be evil, but aliens force her hand. Her performance feels terrifyingly real, just like people you’ve met.
Fletcher can’t fix the film’s clunky, cynical core. It’s still worse than the 1953 original. If you care about great genre acting, watch it this week. Invaders from Mars (1986) streams for free on Tubi.
Author bio: Alex Mercer, geek analyst and veteran sci-fi critic at a major Silicon Valley firm.