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A poster child for cheesy 50s sci-fi. The special effects are horrendous, the little science lessons hopelessly outdated and the sci-fi bits are kept until the very end. There is something pleasantly uncomplicated about a film like this though, and the cheese is more than cheesy enough to carry at least some appeal. A young boy looks out his window at night and sees an unidentified object crashing nearby. His dad goes out to take a look and doesn't come back until the next morning, a changed man. The boy believes that something has taken over his dad, but nobody wants to believe him. Until he meets a nice lady at the police office. The middle part of the film is fairly long and uneventful, which is a tad odd as the sci-fi elements looked very practical and not at all expensive to pull off. The aliens are basically just people in an ugly tracksuit wearing masks. But once the film gets up to speed there's some fun to be had. Not what I'd call good cinema, but not terrible to sit through either.Read all

An old sci-fi flick based on H.G. Wells' novel. I haven't read that, so I'm a bit unsure where to place the blame, but it's safe to say that the film is somewhat of a mess. The pacing is completely off, and it feels like you're watching 5 seasons worth of material rolled into a single film. Luckily there are some stand-alone scenes that still make it worth a watch. People are going about their business, when suddenly a big war breaks out. Earth finds itself in serious trouble as the war continues to rage. To make matters worse, a deadly virus kills off most of the human population. But then a strange man appears from a flying vehicle, he promises to make society whole again. The first half hour is like watching a recap, with a story that goes in all different kinds of directions. The rest of the film is a lot slower and more philosophical, though the ideology is pretty basic and hardly worth the runtime. Some spectacular scenes left and right add to the appeal, but almost a century later, that's about all that's left of this film.Read all