Thoughts.com Blogs - Part 4-Invisible Zombies....

So time was running out! The fifties were almost over. Ed Cahn had proven himself as a master of the low budget genre yet he would save the best for last! He made 7 (!!) movies in 1959 but none more entertaining or influencial than INVISIBLE INVADERS!!! If this didn't influence George Romero than nothing did!

Somehow a scientist, Dr. Noymann (John Carridine) gets blown up after experimenting with atoms. Another doctor named Penner (Phillip Tonge, who died later in the year) gives the eulogy. A little later on he's visited by the reanimated corpse of the previous declared dead Dr. Noymann who's dead shell is in fact being inhabited by a race of aliens "far beyond our galaxy". They want the people of earth to surrender to them or else everybody and everything will be destroyed. They kill "thousands" with their acts of sabotage. But most frightening of all, the aliens inhabit the bodies of the dead andmake them rise from their graves to reek havoc among the living (at this point actually newsreel footage is shown!). The government decides to do something about it. They send various groups to underground bunkers to work on a solution....

Our story focuses on one such group: Dr. Penner, his daughter Phyllis (future mom to TV's Patty Duke Jean Byron), her kind of boyfriend Dr. Lamont (Robert Hutton, who had already solitified his B-movie career with THE MAN WITHOUT A BODY and THE COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK) and tough as nails Air Force Major Jay (John Agar in his third movie for Cahn and in one of his best roles). When the dead get up and start walking you can't help but see how this had an impact on Romero and NIGHT OF THE LVING DEAD especially with a small group in an isolated area terrorized by the resurrected dead. They even have a closed circuit TV to watch what's going on (scenes from Cahn's aforementioned Creature With The Atom Brain are shown here). Dr.Lamont seems like a coward even though apparently he wants to help but eventually Phyllis falls for the Major. Like many of Ed Cahn's films a narrator fills us in on what's going on, giving the whole a thing a documentary like feel, much like the TV scenes in NOTLD!

Invisible Invaders is a low budget classic full of great dialogue and scary scenes. It might best be viewed with friends after a couple of beers but it's influence on NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD can not be ignored. Sadly this would be Ed Cahn's last venture into the realm of science fiction. In 1960, he would release one more horror movie (more on that in the future..) but for the next 2 years, until his death his output would consist mainly of crime dramas and westerns although his last film would be a modest, well done, color version of "The Beauty And The Beast". Cahn, originally from NYC, died in 1963.

I seem to have gone off stray with my original topic. I think my real reason for writing this was to shed light on the somewhat forgotten legacy of director Edward L. Cahn, a forerunner who has yet to get his due!