“Invaders From Mars” is an odd movie from 1953, in which a smart little boy interested in astronomy sees a UFO landing in the field behind his house, then becomes convinced that his parents have been possessed by space aliens. The movie is structured and filmed so as to have a dreamlike feeling, and in the original American version it is actually implied that the whole thing is a nightmare. The British version, which is the version on Netflix, changes the ending in a way that makes this unclear, and it does not help an a movie already burdened by numerous nonsenses.

For one thing, the aliens have the technology to get all the way from Mars to Earth, but they only bring enough weapons for about one out of every ten soldiers. The rest of them are totally unarmed. Admittedly, this is not as ridiculous as that M. Knight Shyamalan movie where the aliens actually try to conquer the Earth with their fists alone, but it's close.

The reason for the invasion is that the Earthlings are building a rocket ship powerful enough to get to their planet, and they are quite reasonably scared. But the alien master-plan for dealing with this menace is to send a small team to Earth and stage a few, scattered arson attacks. Their leader- a head in a jar- is supposedly the highest possible development in human intelligence, but he clearly has no idea what is going on, since he keeps asking everyone else to tell him. The only way to make a smidgen of sense out of this movie is if you assume it's all a little boy's bad dream, which is apparently what was originally intended. But that's still not enough to make it a good movie- not by a long shot!