It Conquered the World
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| It Conquered the World | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster. |
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| Directed by | Roger Corman |
| Produced by | Roger Corman |
| Written by | Lou Rusoff Charles B. Griffith (uncredited) |
| Starring | Peter Graves, Lee van Cleef, Beverly Garland, and Sally Frasier |
| Music by | Ronald Stein |
| Cinematography | Fred E. West |
| Editing by | Charles Gross |
| Distributed by | American International Pictures |
| Release date(s) | July 15, 1956 |
| Running time | 71 min. |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
It Conquered the World is a 1956 science fiction film about an alien from Venus trying to take over the world with the help of a disillusioned human scientist. It was directed by Roger Corman, written by Lou Rusoff (with uncredited contributions by Charles B. Griffith), and starred Peter Graves, Lee van Cleef, Beverly Garland, and Sally Frasier. The film was the inspiration of a song by Frank Zappa, Cheepnis, and was later featured on an episode of the television series Mystery Science Theater 3000, which mocked the film.
[edit] Plot synopsis
Lee van Cleef, later star of many "spaghetti Western" movies, plays Dr. Tom Anderson, an embittered scientist who has picked up the voice of a Venusian alien in his radio transmitter. The alien wants to take over the world with its mind-control devices and thus make a new home for itself. To the naïve Dr. Anderson, however, it claims only to be bringing peace to the Earth through the elimination of emotions. Anderson agrees to help the creature in this ploy, even recommending that the creature assimilate his friend Dr. Nelson and his wife. The alien's first action -- similar to The Day the Earth Stood Still -- is to suppress all electric power on Earth (or at least in southern California), including the ignition systems of motor vehicles, leaving Dr. Nelson resorting to riding around on a bicycle.
After killing a flying bat-like creature which carries the mind-control device, Dr. Nelson finally persuades the paranoid Anderson that he has been wrong about the alien's motives and that he has made a horrible mistake, allying himself with a creature bent on world domination. They hurriedly leave when they discover Tom's wife has picked up a rifle and gone to the alien's cave to try to kill it. The monster succeeds in taking the life of Mrs. Anderson before the two doctors make it to her rescue. Finally seeing his hubris and the loss of everything he holds dear, Dr. Anderson kills the monster, sustaining lethal wounds of his own in the confrontation. The film closes with Dr. Nelson speaking philosophically about the grisly fate of his late friend, his rather lengthy soliloquy beginning with "He learned, almost too late, that Man is a feeling creature, and as such, the greatest in the universe…". (In the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode which featured the film, this monologue was repeated four times before, during, and after the end credits as a point of humor.)
[edit] Trivia
The French two man electronic music group M83 samples dialogue from the film in their song "Facing That," from their self-titled 2001 debut album; most notably a conversation between Dr. Tom Anderson and the alien where the alien is speaking to Anderson (audible pauses denoed by ellipses):
"This is Anderson, acknowledge... Where are you? ... Yes, yes, it's true I am your only friend, no one else even knows you exist ... but they will, it'll be the greatest day in the history of mankind..." his wife: "Come to bed Tom."
On the album Roxy and Elsewhere, Frank Zappa performs an on-stage ad-lib about cheap monster movies before performing the song Cheepnis.
. . . I'll tell you, a good one that I saw one time, I think the name of the film was "IT CONQUERED THE WORLD," and the . . . Did you ever see that one? The monster looks sort of like an inverted ice-cream cone with teeth around the bottom. It looks like a (phew!), like a teepee or . . . sort of a rounded off pup-tent affair, and, uh, it's got fangs on the base of it, I don't know why but it's a very threatening sight, and then he's got a frown and, you know, ugly mouth and everything, and there's this one scene where the, uh, monster is coming out of a cave, see? There's always a scene where they come out of a cave, at least once, and the rest of the cast . . . it musta been made around the 1950's, the lapels are about like that wide, the ties are about that wide and about this short, and they always have a little revolver that they're gonna shoot the monster with, and there is always a girl who falls down and twists her ankle . . . heh-hey! Of course there is! You know how they are, the weaker sex and everything, twisting their ankle on behalf of the little ice-cream cone. Well in this particular scene, in this scene, folks, they, uh, they didn't wanna re-take it 'cause it musta been so good they wanted to keep it, but they . . . when the monster came out of the cave, just over on the left hand side of the screen you can see about this much two-by-four attached to the bottom of the Thing as the guy is pushing it out, and then obviously off-camera somebody's goin': "NO! GET IT BACK!" And they drag it back just a little bit as the guy is goin': "KCH! KCH!" Now that's Cheepnis!
