hrkepler "IT conquered the world," said Beverly Garland when she first time saw the prop of the monster on the set and then kicked it over. Yep, that's how ridiculous the monster looked, and the mysterious "It" doesn't look any good on screen either.'It Conquered the World' is typical Corman's cheese fest at its finest, and great example how great of an actors Beverly Garland, Lee Van Cleef and Peter Graves actually were - they had to be in the top of their game to play through that pile of cheese with such a serious faces without looking ridiculous. The film has nice interesting premise - a disillusioned and naive scientist Tom Anderson (Van Cleef) helps an alien from Venus arrive to Earth and gain control. Chaos brakes loose when brains of some authoritative figures are taken over by hostile alien and rest of the people are taken 'under protective custody'. Scientist's wife (Beverly Garland) and his best friend (Peter Graves) are trying to talk sense into the mad scientist, while 'It' slowly gains more control over humans, until the fiend (who looks more like ice cream cone) is taken out heroic actions in real Corman's style. The film nicely plays with some interesting ideas, but never getting them properly developed or getting any full use out of them. Well - it is a Roger Corman movie, what else one can expect from his style of rushed production. The film is still highly entertaining, and Beverly Garland's powerful performance (did I really just said something like that about Corman's movie) has a lot to do with that. Peter Graves' Dr. Nelson's final overblown monologue about human nature over the montage of dead bodies dramatically over serious but somewhat eerie ending to this campy monster film.Another fun exploitation flick, but with little bit substance (not well developed script, but rather on idea bases) under the covers of (extremely) cheap special effects and cheesy dialogues. In that department, 'It Conquered the World' surpasses most of modern big budgeted, glossy science-fiction extravaganzas with polished special effects.

Julian R. White Eh, I suppose it was a decent concept. It's rare that you see monsters in B movies like this, using sophisticated psychological warfare to get what they want. The monster looks like a pissed off unopened parasol so it gives you a good laugh or two, but it also almost gives you a sense that it's trying to METAPHORICALLY symbolize the dangers and realities of alcohol abuse, but that may just be my inner poet. Not a bad watch, but it wasn't quite what I was expecting.

Robert J. Maxwell 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.

MARIO GAUCI I would not exactly call this a good film but it certainly exemplifies what a guilty pleasure is – since it features one of the goofiest monsters ever (actually rivaling ROBOT MONSTER [1953]) in its clumsy carrot-shaped Venusian! In fact, I enjoyed it more than Corman's ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS (1957) – precisely because of its having well-known faces in the lead roles, namely Peter Graves (well suited to this type of film, as confirmed by the title which followed in my Halloween challenge i.e. Bert I. Gordon's BEGINNING OF THE END [1957]), Beverly Garland (though saddled with a one-note character) and Lee Van Cleef (too young to play an eccentric scientist in exile but this actually adds to the film's quirkiness). The 'invasion' takes the form of widespread power failure a' la THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951) and eventually an emotion-drained personality (after being pricked in the neck by a bat-like control device – perhaps a nod to INVADERS FROM MARS [1953]): as with many films of its ilk, the villain here is really Communism and, in fact, Graves brands Van Cleef a traitor for having led the alien to our planet in the misguided belief that it would solve mankind's problems! However, the film – running a brisk 68 minutes – balances its cautionary messages with action, movement (scenes depicting military maneuvers and the panic-stricken townsfolk) and even poignancy (Graves is forced to kill his wife after she has been 'taken over'); that said, we still have to contend with Van Cleef's 'climactic' tussling with the ultra-fake alien and the wacky combo of Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze (made to look and sound Hispanic) leading the soldiers!