A mysterious cone is found outside Riverdale in Illinois with dead animals littered around it.  Also of strange coincidence are a number of the townspeople having disappeared as well under strange circumstances.  A man named Powers heads on down to disprove the alien theory as pure bunk, believing no such thing could exist.  Meeting up with Dr. Kettering, he blusters and demands until the doctor crawls inside to figure out just what is inside the indestructible cone.  Eventually after much time has passed, he emerges to report that the cone is empty and receives news that the missing mayor has returned.  Visiting the mayor, they find he has a strange creature-like parasite that has attached itself to his back and neck.  And what does it do?  Essentially, it eats away at the brain and the nervous system and takes control.  Obviously having the townspeople infected with an alien parasite is not a good thing, and so our brave protagonists head off in the hopes to stop them and figure out just what is going on with that spaceship.  As the film progresses they learn that the aliens want to actually ‘help’ us and can only do so by taking us over.

The film has some very familiar vibes, almost channeling Invasion of the Body Snatchers from two years previous.  Where that film was quite excellent by any standard, this one was only okay.  The two did have a couple of similarities such as the taking over the human race element, as well as using mankind to work against himself to do so and to accomplish the job, Invasion used alien duplicates; this film used parasites attached to the backs of unwitting victims with the end result being the same – a hostile takeover.  A major difference between the two films though is that this one did not have the doom and gloom ending that Invasion had.  In the end, our heroes triumphed, which of course is always the safer route to go when making a film.

For a movie with a low budget, they did do a remarkably good job.  While the special effects might have been lacking, the film is another example of using a decent script to tell a decent tale over the use of visuals.  There is definitely some overacting going on, particularly by Ed Nelson as Kettering, but aside from that, most of the cast does a fairly good job.  One item of note which was a nice little surprise was seeing ‘Leonard Nemoy,’ his name spelled incorrectly in the credits, in an early role.  The film may never go down as a classic, but it is an all right little piece of science fiction history.

3 of 5