The Martians Are Coming! The Making of 'Invaders from Mars' (2015)
*** 1/2 (out of 4)
Another winning documentary from Shout Factory! has us taking a behind-the-scenes look at Tobe Hooper's remake of INVADERS FROM MARS. Hooper is interviewed here as is star Hunter Carson, composer Christopher Young and special effects artists Alec Gillis and Gino Crognale. Clocking in at 36-minutes, you get pretty much everything you'd want out of this documentary in terms of information. Hooper starts off talking about his three picture deal at Cannon and then gets into details about why he wanted to remake this film. From here we learn about the casting of Carson and the special effects guys talk about the various work they did on the picture.
I'm not a fan of this film and in fact I think it's pretty bad so needless to say I found this documentary to be much better than the subject matter. I thought everyone told some great stories and especially some about Karen Black who of course passed away before this was produced. The highlight of the documentary concerns a special effect that went terribly wrong, which led to a fire breaking out on the set. We also get to hear about the score that was disastrously wrong and everyone shares their thoughts about the film not finding an audience at the box office. Fans of INVADERS FROM MARS (or those who don't like it) will be entertained by this.
