What Happened to The INVADERS?

so whatever happened to that super cool and somewhat spooky 1960s TV show The Invaders let's find out movies music and monsters danger danger hey guys Dan Monroe here talking about movies music and Monsters ah 1960s television shows so different so cre creative and thankfully the early predecessors for a lot of the great shows we got in the 1970s and 80s which were in some ways at least partially the result of the creativity from these classic shows that's why looking back at a lot of these super cool classic movies and shows from Years Gone by has such a wonderful and nostalgic feeling and that leads us to the 1960s classic TV show The in Vaders starring Roy thinis as David Vincent a man on the run with a secret he is desperately trying to expose the show didn't last long and we'll get to that in a minute but we did get two seasons of 43 60-minute Color episodes the first season generally being a fan favorite but overall the entire run of the show was very creative very well acted and in a weird way very creepy and briefly for those of you who maybe haven't seen this show the Invaders was an American Sci-Fi TV series created by Larry Cohen a Quinn Martin production that aired on ABC about a man who unintentionally and quite reluctantly stumbles across evidence of an Alien Invasion From Outer Space the Creator Cohen drew his direct inspiration for the series according to Cohen himself from Invaders from Mars in 1953 and the Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1956 which were two of his favorite films when he was a kid he also drew a ton of inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock movies like sabur The 39 steps and of course North by Northwest in 1959 starring carry Grant now originally and I didn't know this but the initial concept was to do the Invaders as a twice a week TV seral similar to what they were doing with Batman with a cliffhanger at the end of part one inviting people to come back later in the week for part two the series didn't end up going that way but who knows might have been interesting unlike a lot of other really good TV shows from the time this show actually got two seasons in 1967 and 1968 although the second season was this show got its start primarily because the extremely popular TV show The Fugitive was in 1967 coming to an end so I guess it seemed only fitting that Larry Cohen the series Creator wanted to replace the fugitive with something similar albe it with a slightly different Twisters was a pilot from uh same people who did The Fugitive it was a very interesting idea and we shot it in Tula California of all places it turned out to be a lot more successful than we had thought I didn't think it was going to catch on frankly it's kind of cool before each episode you'd see a little promo bumper the Invaders In Color keep in mind color was a pretty big deal back then and ABC was surprisingly the very last Network to start creating shows in color as was generally the case with most Quinn Martin Productions the very talented William Woodson provided the super cool narration for the entire show I always thought it was pretty cool that each of the episodes was clearly identified as taking place in different acts which was kind kind of a typical calling card for Quinn Martin Productions at the time the very cool and somewhat jarring Theme by Dominic Frontier was originally heard in the outer limits in 1964 and why the heck are the aliens invading Earth in the first place well of course because their planet is dying and they want to take over ours the actor Roy was so awesome in the lead role as David Vincent he not only starred in this show but also starred a couple years later in the British sci-fi fiction film doppelganger which was known outside Britain as Journey To The Far Side of the Sun he basically got his start in Hollywood by appearing on General Hospital from 1963 to 1965 as the philandering Dr Phil Brewer while I got involved with the Invaders my agent came to me and said Quinn Martin wants you to do a series for him he said but it's science fiction and I said no it was a problem in my mind uh this idea of doing science fiction because my concept of Science Fiction was always Saturday Maes when I was a child and it was all of this craziness I'm so pleased that I did because it uh was quite an adventure and has been ever since this is kind of interesting his future second wife actress Lynn luring actually appeared in the show's 14th episode the Panic then after the cancellation of the Invaders Roy went on to appear in some really classic TV shows and movies including airport 1975 battl Star Galactica and get this he was also once considered by Paramount for the part of Captain John Luke Picard in Star Trek the Next Generation I don't know maybe the unique characteristics of the Invaders were really pretty cool and somewhat different from the other aliens and unearthly visitors seen prior to this Show's release they essentially look completely human on the outside which is a great way to save a ton of money when producing a Sci-Fi TV show but they are able to be killed and when they die they turn this bright red color and disintegrates eliminating all evidence of their existence God I wish ex-girlfriends could do that and these guys were weird no pulse no heartbeat they don't bleed and they are periodically required to regenerate operate on a regular basis so they can continue living in Earth's atmosphere and they had that weird deformed finger that sort of gives them away as aliens if anybody's really paying attention and I'm not really sure why but by the end of the second season they sort of forgot all about the finger thing and dropped that story aspect alt together you know one thing I really loved about this show was the way it not only connected with audiences back in the day but the way it connected with me personally so that's why I'd like to talk about today's sponsor gentle bands these guys have created an entire collection of rings and they were 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Rings are really out of this world see what I did there okay back to the Invaders similar to tons of other Sci-Fi movies and TV shows from the 50s and 60s once again the spaceship is of course a flying saucer and believe it or not and probably not surprisingly they never actually built a full-size UFO prop for the show they built the bottom half of the UFO with stairs but the upper half of the ship was matted in using a model miniature and if you look really close you can tell this was the case because in the shots where the upper half of the ship was matted in the ship doesn't cast a shadow but the actors do man I love that kind of stuff real honest to goodness practical Hollywood effects they had these really cool dis shaped weapons with five glowing lights which was basically used to kill humans by applying it to the back of the head or the neck simulating I guess a death of natural causes naturally they had the typical alien ray guns and this really weird spinning device with crystals that conveniently had a bunch of different purposes depending on the script it was either used as truth serum a memory wiper or a device to force the humans to mindlessly do the evil bidding of the Alien Invaders the Invaders had an enormous and quite frankly amazing list of spectacular guest stars including Rody McDow Suzanne plette Ed Asner Jean Hackman and Francis James Whitmore Don Wells Burgess Meredith Wayne Rogers Michael reny and the list literally goes on and on and on but why was the Invaders eventually cancelled without a third season well by the time the second season rolled around and much to the dissatisfaction of Roy thinis the concept of the Believers people who actually believed that there was an imminent Alien Invasion happening was added to the show which according to Roy really damaged the premise of the primary essence of the series and of course he was right because the ratings dropped so hard and so fast that the show was not picked up for a third season like we've seen so many times in the past Network EXA tives messing around with the Thematic formula of something that really works well which eventually leads to the demise of a great show God Network Executives okay but whatever happened to the original UFO filming miniature from the Invaders well this is kind of a cool story The 4 foot Invader saucer Studio model was made by production models shop the exact same people responsible for making the original 11t Star Trek Enterprise model the 4ot filming miniature had interior lighting that created that really cool circling effect in the upper Dome and it also had these really cool fader lights in the bottom of the engine area this guy named Mel Keys was the sole model maker on this amazing saucer ship because the rest of the Productions model Shop crew was on vacation when the job came in to create the prop now in the 1970s the ship was sent out to be restored and here it still is at least as of 2018 still hanging in the shop of the guys who restored it well the Invaders came and the Invaders went but that certainly wasn't the end of this classic 1960s TV show CBS DVD which was distributed by Paramount released the entire series on DVD in 2008 and CBS home entertainment released the Invaders the complete series on DVD in 2018 I'm not really sure if it's available on Blu-ray I don't think so but if you know let me know on the DVDs and this is really cool Roy thinis who played David Vincent did a whole bunch of audio commentaries and even filmed special video introductions for every single episode okay but what about the sequels remakes and God help us reimaginings well I wouldn't exactly call it a sequel but in 1977 Creator Quinn Martin basically remade the entire first episode of the series for another one of his shows called Quinn Martin's tales of the unexpected in 1995 the concept of the Invaders was used as the basis for a 4our television miniseries remake called the Invaders This Time starring Scott beula as Nolan wood once again discovering the alien conspiracy this is awesome Roy thinis actually appeared in his own character David Vincent briefly in one of the shows basically handing over the burden of alien knowledge to Scott bachula how cool is that this 4-Hour miniseries was released in some countries on home video but only after being recut into two separate 2hour movies gold key Comics published four issues of an invader's comic book based on the Series in 1967 and 1968 and keep in mind this was years before Marvel Comics published their own unrelated Invaders superheroes series Aurora models most commonly known for its classic monsters and sci-fi model kits put out a UFO flying saucer kit from the Invaders which was super cool and really hard to find if you can still come across one kind of cool and a little strange in 1977 the band sticks used the UFO flying saucer on the cover art for their single Come Sail Away the leading character of this show David Vincent was ranked number six in TV guides list of the 25 greatest sci-fi Legends in their August 2004 issue and if anybody out there wants to take a really deep dive into the Invaders I highly recommend an article written by stevenh W Bowie for the website classic tvhistory tocom check it out Link in the description even though this classic 1960s TV show The Invaders only ran for 2 years it was definitely considered an inspiration to Future writers and filmmakers within the genre Paving the way for such memorable and well-loved movies and shows like the andr strain the deadly spawn and strange Invaders life force the arrival Independence Day signs and so many more we could be here all day but that my friends is the topic of another video I really hope you guys enjoyed that deep dive into the TV show The Invaders and if you did and you like this kind of stuff please consider subscribing to the channel I've got a whole ton of new videos coming up really soon that I know you guys are just going to dig as always if anybody has any questions drop them down in the comments and I will do my best to try to answer them for you and please feel free to stop back anytime as we continue our conversation on movies music and monsters movies music and monsters Danger [Music]

Channel: Dan Monroe / Movies, Music & Monsters

Views: 76,751

Keywords: dan monroe, classic television, lost in space, robot, the invaders, roy finnes

Id: qqY5wFcTaHE

Length: 18min 34sec (1114 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 05 2024