Invaders from Mars (1986) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - June 1, 1986

I was on summer break from SFSU, and thus in Hong Kong, when Invaders from Mars was released at selected theaters and drive-ins to a less than spectacular reception from both audiences and critics. So I missed out on seeing it on the big screen. Which is too bad, as I thought it was a nifty 'little' movie when I saw it on home video.

While not as chaotically bonkers as Hooper's delightful cult classic Lifeforce, which had cratered at the box office the year before, Invaders from Mars, despite looking and feeling ever so slightly choppy and uneven, has a colorful charm and a dreamlike sense of wonder to it. Elements that make it pair really well with Joe Dante's 1985 box office flop Explorers, which also, despite looking and feeling ever so slightly choppy and uneven, has the same kind of colorful charm and dreamlike sense of wonder to it as Invaders from Mars.

I think this movie is well worth seeing for the Martian ship set design, the Stan Winston creatures, and Daniel Pearl's gorgeous cinematography. There was an interesting essay, that was attributed to director Tobe Hooper, that was in John Russo's book Making Movies. It detailed some of the baffling meddling Hooper had to contend with while making this movie and should be sought out and read.

One anecdote I heard was that Golan/Globus, and the Cannon Group, were disappointed that the film was not scary enough. They wanted a scary monster movie, an alien invasion variation of Poltergeist. But Hooper was intent on making more of an E.T. style adventure.

And I think it succeeded, for the most part. This is one of those movies I really wished had done better at that box office. It would have been great if it had at least broken even at the box office and not lost a ton of cash for the struggling studio/distributor.