Knock it all they want to, IT CONQUERED THE WORLD delivers. Intense performances from the three leads, Lee Van Cleef ("We're all in a state of high hilarity."), Peter Graves, and Beverly Garland ("I hate your living guts!"), help make this one of the more enjoyable low-budget Masterworks to come out of the 1950s. Of course, Paul Blaisdell's assortment of Monsters are the REAL stars, as any true aficionado knows. The "It" of the title is especially photogenic, despite It's photo phobia (it hides in a cave until It's forced out into the light). As anyone who's ever tried to put together a No-Budget Monster Movie knows all too well, things can (and WILL) go horribly wrong when you least expect it; kudos to Corman and company for pulling off what amounts to a minor miracle. ("If it's a good movie, it's a Miracle!") (On a personal note: the "monster" at the end of one of MY Public Access Horror movies was- believe it or not- a sock puppet. You make do with what you've got...)

Is this plan one from outer space? Don't blame aliens, blame the commies when all of a sudden, power sources all over the world are affected by mysterious waves felt by military scientists. But of course, the audience knows almost from the beginning that this is bunk. They saw a space ship enter earth's atmosphere and a carrot like monster with shellfish like claws emerge, sending bat-like critters from its bottom out to attack various innocent passers-by. America goes into a panic, evacuating its cities as strange buzzing noises emerge in the sky. Those attacked by the bat like creatures from the alien's butt are basically body snatched as their minds are now controlled by the aliens, killing anybody who doesn't follow immediate orders to head to a camp for the ultimate conquest.Cult favorites such as Peter Graves, Beverly Garland and Lee Van Cleef headline the cast here, although the credits determine that an unbilled Paul Blaisdell was asked to wear the rubber carrot costume and flail the lobster claw arms. It's too bad that you don't see this costume among all the Elmos, blue breasted hookers and Spider Mans in Times Square. Even more astounding is that with the bat-like alien creatures, there seem to be no strings attached. Unlike Ray Harryhausen (who chose to deal with a giant crab by having him boiled in a hot water spring so those trapped in the forbidden world could have a lavish dinner even if there wasn't any butter or lemon in sight), this monster is a little harder to conquer.While the location footage is well shot, the indoor sets are extremely cheap looking. Van Cleef gets a speech much like Bela Lugosi's revelation in "Bride of the Monster" where his obvious madness is revealed. Graves (shiskababbing one of the bats) and Garland win audience sympathy. Still, there's a feeling of "Haven't we already seen this before?" and obviously each of them were done a bit better and didn't have the unintentional laughs that this one does. With classics out there like the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", this just fails to live up to the moralistic goals it implies. However, when they do retrospects of the history of science fiction movies, this one seems to always get a clip in there, even having been the film that Elvira shows in her "Mistress of the Dark" movie with the film's conclusion there for those who have not seen it to enjoy in all its campy glory.

This rip off of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" isn't as stupid as it might be. True, the story is unoriginal. The special effects are rudimentary. With some exceptions -- notably the two or three principals -- the performances have been bettered by some that might be seen in a high school play in Keokuk, Iowa. But if the whole affair is cheesy, it's at least not that no-fat, tasteless crap that has the texture of gum, with each slice wrapped in its own plastic. No, this is the crumbled Gorgonzola you find only in the specialty section of WalMart.A monster from Venus enlists the aid of Lee Van Cleef in taking over the earth. Lee Van Cleef is described as "an illustrious physicist," so you know you're in trouble right off the bat. Lee Van Cleef is not a physicist at all. He's a heavily sun-tanned guy wearing a flat-brimmed cowboy hat and a cape in some spaghetti Western, that's what he is.The protagonist is Peter Graves -- tall, handsome, earnest. And he has a really nice-looking wife, Sally Fraser, whom Graves deliberately shoots and kills after she becomes possessed by the monster's flying bats. (Don't ask.) The film was shot in something like five days on a minuscule budget and this must account for the almost casual way in which Graves goes around shooting friends he's known and worked with for years, with not a sign of chagrin. Can you imagine Kevin McCarthy picking up a .45 and deliberately shooting the pure, elegant, helpless Dana Wynter through the heart and then walking grimly away? No, you can't.Some of it is unintentionally funny. A squad of soldiers is led by the always enjoyable Dick Miller. They carry Springfield '03s and World War I bayonets bought in an Army-Navy store. Some isn't funny. The film closes on one of those dicta telling us that if we expect to be saved, it must come from inside us. "Man is a feeling being." He or she loves and hates, and we have to learn to control those emotions ourselves. Graves recites it ex cathedra.Actually, we don't seem to be doing such a hot job of it at the moment. Our cerebral cortex -- all that bulbous matter that is gray in death and pink in life -- has a much older infrastructure that prompts us to act irrationally. Well, let's not get into our imperfectibility except to make the observation, a mere aside, that we could use a little help from Venus now and then.

This 1956 "Roger Corman" cheese flick is about an alien from Venus trying to take control of people with by little bat-like pizza puppets. The alien also shuts down all stuff from clocks, telephones, cars and trains somehow. In the end the thing is killed by a blow torch to the eye. What I think: The alien looks like a goofy traffic cone with lobster claws and devil horns. How anyone can not laugh at is is near to impossible. However the movie is pretty decent. These idea's of loosing ones emotions and thing stopping for a while have been used before, most notably in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956), "The Day the Earth Stood Still"(1951) and Invaders from Mars(1953). How Corman is able to get away with this stuff is beyond me. But this does not mean I hate all of his films. despite all the movies problems, it is good for a late night watch.