The lead actor looks like Peter Graves

SPOILER WARNING

"It conquered the world" is a classical science fiction movie, made by Roger Corman in 1956. There is also a later version by Barry Buchanan, "Zontar: The Thing from Venus". The films are almost identical, apart from the monster. In "Zontar", he, she or it looks like a badly mauled bat, while Corman's original monstrosity is a gigantic vegetable with crab claws! Unfortunately, the bad special effects draw attention away from the plot, which actually has a philosophical message.

The main protagonists are a rocket engineer and a "mad scientist". The latter feels misunderstood and underrated, and decides to betray humanity to a race of bizarre aliens from Venus (the previously mentioned vegetables). Naturally, the mad genius thinks he is actually doing humanity a favour, saving us from ourselves by letting the aliens control our minds and extinguish our emotions. In this way, peace and harmony will finally prevail. By contrast, the rocket engineer is a veritable wonder of patriotic duty, humanist values and upright behaviour. The scientist's nagging wife doesn't believe in him either. Naturally, the coming utopia turns into tragedy and mayhem, as Zontar (one of the Venusian aliens) comes to Earth and attempts to take over a small town and a military facility. The mad genius finally realizes his mistake when Zontar kills his loving wife. The grand finale leaves much to be asked for, and was actually better (!) in the even more low-budget remake.

I think it's obvious that Zontar and the evil, authoritarian, brain-washing, collectivist aliens who pit family members against one another and infiltrate our military, are really metaphors for Communism. The misunderstood genius is presumably a metaphor for elite intellectuals who fall for the Communist message, while the upright rocket scientist is The American Citizen At His Finest. Of course, the metaphors aren't necessarily conscious, but this *was* 1956, when the Cold War was at its coldest. It's interesting to note that the U.S. Army confront the alien monster in the original version, while it remains completely passive in the remake, where the poor scientist has to confront Zontar all by himself.

For various reasons, I actually liked this story, despite the Cold War propaganda and the stuffed vegetable. The film would have worked pretty well even without it! One final embarrassing detail: all through the film, I kept gasping at the fact that one of the lead actors looks like and sounds like Peter Graves. Then I looked at the credits. The reason for these remarkable facts is that the lead actor...ahem...*is* Peter Graves. Ooops.

Five (red) stars from the Underground Zontar Liberation Army. :D