With his chiselled features
and surly demeanour, Lee Van Cleef worked for most of his career in
the western genre with only a few diversions
into more action-oriented offerings, such as Escape From New York, in
the later years. Unlike most jobbing actors in the Fifties and Sixties,
he rarely appeared in the numerous sci-fi movies which capitalised on
the post-war fascination with technology and outer space. This hilariously
quaint Roger Corman offering was therefore one of Van Cleef’s only
forays into the realms of alien invasion, and the contrast between his
grizzled face and the sheer silliness of the story makes for a very entertaining
ride.
Van Cleef stars as Dr Tom Anderson, one of those vaguely defined Fifties
movie scientists and close friend of fellow boffin, Dr. Paul Nelson (Peter
Graves, of Mission Impossible and Airplane infamy). Nelson is troubled
by the fact that his space probes keep going missing once they leave
Earth’s atmosphere, but Anderson has figured out the reason why – they’re
being destroyed by aliens who want to keep mankind Earthbound.
How does he know this? He’s been chatting with one of them, a Venusian
creature named Beluah, via a radio set-up in his house. This is what
nerds did before internet chatrooms were invented, it seems. Beluah convinces
Anderson that he could bring peace to our planet, if only the human race
would stop thinking for itself and just do as he says. Anderson doesn’t
spot the crude metaphor for evil communism lurking in Beluah’s
worldview, and vows to help make it a reality.
Nelson sends up another probe, which sure enough goes AWOL like the others.
Unlike the others, this one hurtles back to Earth with a stowaway – Beluah.
Taking up residence in a cave outside of town, the alien then proceeds
to take over the minds of key citizens, as designated by Anderson. This
is achieved by sending out flying rubbery manta-rays which latch onto
their victims and brainwash them. Not the most efficient method, but
it offers the chance for some ropey special effects during the interminably
talky middle act, so let’s not split hairs.
The sheriff falls to Beluah’s power, and when the editor of the
local newspaper won’t play along, he shoots him dead in yet another
subtle indictment of communist ideology. Nelson witnesses this murder
and gently rebukes the sheriff for his troubling switch from lawman to
killer. “I’ve known you for five years”, he scowls, “You
just killed that man in cold blood. Why?”
Things get worse though, as Nelson’s wife (Beverley Garland) has
been taken over and tries to seduce him to Beluah’s way of thinking.
Nelson’s too much of a red-blooded American to sell out to some
commie brainslave though, and after a few seconds deliberation he shoots
his wife dead and sets off to confront Anderson about his traitorous
ways.
Anderson’s not faring much better. His wife has gone to confront
Beluah in its cave, and it’s through her that we get our first
glimpse of the fiendish beast causing all this mayhem – a laughably
squat cone-shaped critter with lobster claws and a grumpy rubber face.
Beluah makes short work of Anderson’s wife, and this finally helps
the dim-witted scientist realise that the Venusian utopia is a thinly-disguised
allegory for the communist menace. Or at the very least it makes him
hopping mad, and he grapples with Beluah – melting its eyes with
a blowtorch at the same time as the life is crushed out of him by the
creature’s pincers.
Exit Lee Van Cleef and enter Peter Graves to deliver the movies final
ham-fisted Don’t Listen To Commies speech. “When men seek
such perfection they find only death... fire... loss... disillusionment...” he
intones solemnly. The same goes for malevolent space turnips, evidently.
Need to know: It must be noted that, far from conquering
the world, Beluah barely manages to conquer one small town but such hyperbolic
exaggeration
was commonplace in the Fifties B-movie genre – the star of The
Beast With A Million Eyes was famously invisible. The lovably crap design
of Beluah was actually the second attempt at creating a menacing foe
for the film – the original design was so short that star Beverly
Garland simply kicked it over.
It Conquered the World also inspired Frank
Zappa
to write the song “Cheepnis”, which begins with a spoken
word description of Beluah – “sort of like an inverted ice-cream
cone with teeth around the bottom” - and includes the immortal
refrain “Got a great big slimey thing, got a great big hairy thing,
got a great big poodle thing.”
Honourable mention: Van Cleef also appeared as an army corporal in The
Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, but as that movie featured a great Ray Harryhausen
monster and helped to inspire Godzilla, it gets a free pass.
Availability: It Conquered the World was released on video in the UK
in the Nineties, as part of a range of B-movie classics, but is now out
of print and surprisingly hard to find.
