HoopTober 8: Mosquito Takes Mandragon

Movie 22
1st of 2 Tobe Hooper Films (There must ALWAYS be a Hooper film)

Is it possible that Invaders from Mars has fallen down the crack between the sofa cushions of Tobe Hooper horror fandom and 80's sci-fi practical effects love? Why the hell is this movie not more loved? I never saw this one back in the day but a quick skim of my Letterboxd peeps' ratings for this one shows a distinct lack of enthusiasm which I for one find disturbing.

I thought Invaders from Mars was an absolute blast. This is one of those 80's movies which I think reflects the interior decor of the deepest recesses of my brain. Wha...??? I hear you say? OK, that sentence made little sense, but I just mean, there's something about the look and feel - the texture of this film and others like it which seems to have been birthed direct from my sub-conscious. It just gave me happy feelings as soon as it started.

I mean, look at that image on the poster. That little bit of production design features heavily in the film and there's something about it that I just love. Suburban, and comfortingly rural, and mysterious and menacing all at the same time. We might just pass it off as a nice piece of set design, but this is the thing for me with Tobe Hooper. I think Hooper conceptualised narratives as a series of images. Well, I guess that's what all film-makers do, but for me, Hooper had a talent for devising and capturing incredibly powerful images - and they were powerful in a way which is quite difficult to describe. And he was especially effective at that when he had Daniel Pearl calling the shots, and they've conjured that magic again here. This little view of the path over the hill is a classic example of it.

Anyway, I will admit that the second half of the film, once the army gets involved, is not as strong as the first. At this point, I think a little bit of narrative momentum is lost, because our protagonists basically take a step back away from the danger they were in personally, and they get to just help figure out how to beat the aliens rather than run desperately for their lives, and there's just something inherently less dramatic in that.

But the first half of this film - man, if this thing had sustained that quality, this would be a five star movie for me. It is so fucking menacing. This might have an Amblin family adventure chassis, but it's got Hooper under the hood, baby, and that horror V12 is rumbling deep and loud. Along with the disturbing imagery of parents acting like emotionless robots and teachers eating frogs, I think it's worth mentioning Christopher Young's incredible score, which is incessantly unbalancing and subtly discordant. I mean, the atmosphere of this Body Snatchers-like set-up is so intoxicating in its sense of barely disguised evil - it's so heightened and unreal, playing out exactly like the bad dream of a pre-pubescent kid - and maybe that's what it is...