Cast: Helena Carter, Arthur Franz, Jimmy Hunt, Leif Erickson, Hillary Brooke, Morris Ankrum, Max Wagner, Milburn Stone, Janine Perreau, William Phipps, Luce Potter
David MacLean (Hunt) wakes to see something from above land just out of view in the field out back. Both afraid and excited, he wakes up his parents, George (Erickson) and Mary (Brooke). They don’t believe what he tells them, but to humor his son, George goes outside to look. Mary is distraught when George does not return, and she calls the Police. The authorities fail to return George, but he reappears in the morning, behaving strangely. A mark at the back of his father’s neck and his uncharacteristic behavior make David suspect that something bad has happened to him. When his mother begins to behave in the same strange manner, David thinks it all has to do with the alien thing that now lies under a sandpit behind a rise near his home. His appeals for help are ignored and David fears more and more of the people in town are being taken over by an evil alien influence. The boy reaches out to Dr. Pat Blake (Carter) and scientist Stuart Kelston (Franz), two adults who are the first not to ignore him. When Pat investigates David’s disturbing story, she meets unfeeling adults that offer stilted explanations. Something in the explanations does not ring true, and before long Pat and Stuart come to suspect that David is right, that they face something horrid, alien invaders with the power to compel human behavior. David and his adult friends struggle against mankind’s worst fear: a superior and implacable enemy with a fatal purpose. The special effects by Jack Cosgrove and the eerie music provide a fittingly frightening background to Menzies’ often menacing Expressionist sets. Story by John Tucker Battle.
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