Invasion from Inner Earth (1974)

Invasion from Inner Earth (USA, 1974) 94 min color DIR: “Ito” (aka- Bill Rebane). PROD: Bill Rebane. SCR: Barbara J. Rebane. DOP: Jack Willoughby. CAST: Paul Bentzen, Debbi Pick, Nick Holt, Karl Wallace, Robert Arkens. (Arrow Films)

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The first of Bill Rebane’s Wisconsin-lensed features is a bizarre science-fiction film which began in 1973 as The Selected (perhaps a more appropriate title), released the following year as Invasion from Inner Earth, which he co-produced, co-edited, and also directed under the oft-used pseudonym of “Ito” (to perhaps give the impression that one person didn’t do everything on the film). The script by his wife Barbara attempts thrills and allegory in equal measure, but the result is a mishmash that somehow has struck a chord with some viewers, this author included. In the opening, we are bombarded with a pandemonium of images with people running, close-ups of eyeballs, red smoke rising from the swamp, a papier-maché UFO, lens flares… what is going on? That is a question the viewer asks for the next ninety minutes, without getting a satisfactory answer. People everywhere are dying of a mysterious plague, however our five protagonists sit around a snowy lodge and talk, and talk, about what it could be.

The film has a weak introduction to our main characters, as siblings Jake and Sarah Anderson (Nick Holt, Debbi Pick) tend to the lodge and see off their scientist guests, rich bitch Andy (Robert Arkens), stud Eric (Karl Wallace) and bearded funny guy Stan (Paul Bentzen). Jake is also a pilot who flies them back to the mainland, and here is where the movie has potential as a halfway decent thriller. They are shooed away from one hangar by an ill traffic controller, and seek refuge at another runway which is mysteriously deserted. Finally, Jake and the scientists return to the same lodge from which they came.

Meanwhile, they are menaced by a red light that shines on them, and a heavy-handed voice that speaks to them on the CB radio. (Remember the monotone alien voice “You-have-two-seconds-left” in the “Corbomite Maneuver” episode of Star Trek? That may have been the inspiration.) Stan is convinced that the voice is of an alien, since it constantly asks for their location. (Wouldn’t they already know, if the humans are besieged by the red light?)

To show how global this epidemic is (or to save the viewer from the relentless tedium of seeing these people pontificate forever in the cabin), the Rebanes cutaway to more scenes of people running down the city sidewalk, as well as a drunk staggering out of a bar into a red cloud, a DJ ranting and raving, and even a late-night TV talk show that suddenly blacks out during their discussion of UFOs with some local yokels. In between all the talk, however, our protagonists individually get picked off by the red light: Andy when he selfishly tries to escape in the plane; Jake in his benevolent hunting for food; and Eric perishes in their supposed flight to freedom once the survivors realize they’re sitting ducks in the cabin. Then, we cut back to the DJ still sweatily ranting, wondering aloud on the air if he’s the last one alive. Finally, Stan and Sarah walk (and walk and walk) through a snowy small town, and then mysteriously the film changes from its grey wintry locale to a vibrant green meadow in which an adolescent boy and girl hold hands and frolic off into the garden. Fleetingly in the background, we see a UFO. The end.

This mind-blowing conclusion comes out of left field, but in truth it’s no less baffling or senseless than most of what precedes it. Despite the way-out theory given by furry, funny Stan, about how Martians are instead invading us from the earth’s core than their own planet, there is really no rhyme or reason given for the film’s strange occurrences or the people responsible for them. Perhaps Ms. Rebane’s screenplay was intended all along as an existential tome, much like Hitchcock’s The Birds. The conventions of a science fiction invasion story are used as a modern-day Biblical treatise, where the aliens are instead a deity using the plague much like the flood, systematically eradicating humankind so that Stan and Sarah can inherit the earth, as its new Adam and Eve. (Maybe the DJ is the snake.)

This movie fails in acting, writing, suspense and logic, however it has a strange atmosphere which still somehow compels me to watch it again. After several viewings, I still am no closer to deciphering its appeal than on my first, way back in 1986, on Citytv in an unforgettable twin bill of late-night movie badness, shared with the Dave Hewitt-James Flocker jaw-dropper, The Lucifer Complex.

Because I have an affinity for stories set in the North and the cold, Rebane’s films appeal to me for their isolated snowy surroundings, which heighten the helplessness of their characters, and distinguishes them from other low-budget thrillers of the time. Invasion, set in Canada although shot in Wisconsin (usually it’s the other way around), has that atmosphere in its least stagy moments. Often, however, Rebane takes a curiously childlike approach to adult material, favouring playfulness to serious matters, further (perhaps unintentionally) exemplified with his often baffling electronic scores which often sound like a kid run amuck on a Casio. This film is especially infamous for its synthesizer score ripping off the theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly! 

Inner Earth was available on VHS by Genesis (see misleading artwork above), and is featured on Mill Creek’s Nightmare Worlds 50-movie pack, with the alternate title of They. It is now available on Blu-ray in Arrow’s awesome boxed set, Weird Wisconsin: The Bill Rebane Collection. It is paired on the same Blu-ray as his infamous 1965 production Monster A Go-Go! (I’ll eventually review that one as soon as I can wrap my head around it… I even excluded it from my overview of his career back in 2011, so confounding is it.) Invasion from Inner Earth, of all titles, taught me at an early age how fragile is the art of film preservation, because no version I’ve seen to date is as pristine as the print I viewed on Citytv all those years ago. Even the print for the Arrow set has a pinkish cast (which I guess enhances its “grindhouse” feel). Like all other versions, this release presents the film in 4×3 ratio, and it will probably be as good as you’ll ever find it now.

Included on the Arrow Blu-ray is the short Straight Shooter: Bill Rebane on Invasion from Inner Earth (9:58) in which the 84-year-old director discusses his career leading up to this film (excerpted from the feature-length documentary, Who Is Bill Rebane?, featured elsewhere on this set). There is also the 15-minute Kim Newman on Bill Rebane, in which the typically dapper author-genre scholar offers a serviceable crash course on Rebane’s career, ending with the admission that he’s never been able to view Inner Earth in one sitting because he kept falling asleep! I see his point of view, in that the film’s glacial pacing in the cabin can easily put one into REM mode, but for me, this film is so bizarre that it makes my brain dance. Extras include Rebane’s 1960s shorts Twist Craze and Dance Craze (also featured as bonuses on the out-of-print Synergy DVD of Monster A G-Go!, which I’ll still hang onto, for Rebane’s feature-length commentary track, which is sadly missing here), and his 1973 industrial short Kidnap – Extortion, plus stills and posters for both features on this Blu.