Terror filled Mondays!

So, it’s hard for me to believe I’ve already done 11 of these things. I can’t imagine it will go longer than a year but, I guess you never know.


This week’s entry into Terror filled Mondays! is a classic of the genre. So much so, it was lampooned many years later!

In the film, “Project Skyhook,” a U.S. effort to launch a dozen satellites, is visited by a flying saucer. A misunderstanding leads to the aliens being fired on, and they respond by immediately attacking in retaliation. The sequence of events quickly spirals out of control and leads to a full scale invasion. Flying saucers attack Washington, DC, Paris, London and Moscow. In the end, the alien saucers are defeated over the skies of Washington by a device using high-power sound.

Tim Burton’s 1996 film Mars Attacks! consciously spoofs several aspects of this film, especially in the design of its flying saucers (right down to the ray weapon deploying from the bottom of the spacecraft) and the climactic battle over Washington, DC—specifically the famous scene of the collapse of the Washington Monument crushing bystanders, which in Mars Attacks! becomes a deliberate act on the Martians’ part. The weapon used to defeat the aliens is also similar, sound, although in the case of Mars Attacks! this happens to be country music in particular.