I knew where Mars was—huge green men with ray guns came from there in a flying saucer to take over a whole town. In those days even my mother went regularly to the pictures, but all I recall are a set of disjointed images which, at a much older age, I was able to attach to their appropriate movies. Invaders from Mars was the first film that I remembered all of, probably because the hero was a little boy—about twice my age but still a character I felt an affinity with. To be honest, he was the most irritating and silly little boy in all cinematic history and the true wonder of the movie was that, having encountered him, the Martians didn’t pack up and go straight back where they came from. But maybe such an awful boy was something I could relate to all the more.
    Young David McLean (Jimmy Hunt) wakes up in a storm to see a flying saucer land in his backyard, and dig itself in beneath the sand dunes. The back yard is a pretty unreal sort of place, even without the flying saucer and subterranean aliens. His father goes to have a look and disappears underground. So do the two policemen who go to look for him. But then they all turn up safe later, denying their disappearance and thereby cause David to become the boy who cried wolf. And very annoyingly too.
    By the time half the town has gone under the influence of the aliens, David finally gets a couple of astronomers to listen and they in turn get the army interested, which is rather a pity because the film then spends a tedious period entirely composed of shots of military equipment getting into position.
    Then, just when the army reckons it has it all under control, David and the nice lady astronomer are grabbed by the Martians and taken into the space ship. There they confront the bodiless boss of the Martians, but the army breaks through and David saves the world. It was all so terribly exciting and frightening that the film makers were obliged to add a silly ending in which it is revealed that David was just having a bad dream. Cowards!