DALEKS-INVASION EARTH 2150 A.D. [1966] [HCF REWIND]

Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966)
Directed by: Gordon Flemyng
Written by: David Whitaker, Terry Nation
Starring: Andrew Keir, Bernard Cribbins, Peter Cushing, Ray Brooks

HCF REWIND NO. 170: DALEKS-INVASION EARTH 2150 A.D. [UK 1966]

AVAILABLE ON DVD AND BLU-RAY

RUNNING TIME: 80 min

REVIEWED BY:Dr Lenera, Official HCF Critic

“Obey motorised dustbins? – we’ll see about that”!

London cop Tom Campbell is knocked down during a jewellery robbery and, running to what appears to be a police box to call for backup, enters the Tardis and encounters Dr Who, his niece Louise and his granddaughter Susan. Who pilots the Tardis forward in time to 2150, where they find that London is now an empty landscape of demolished buildings. Campbell saves Susan from a falling beam but the resulting falling rubble prevents entry into the Tardis. After finding a dead man, Louise and Susan encounter some people living underground, while Who and Campbell see a flying saucer, than a Dalek. It seems that the Daleks have invaded Earth and driven those few humans whom they haven’t enslaved underground….

I had really fond memories of Daleks-Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. as an action-packed alien invasion movie full of battles and spectacle. When you see a film as a kid, sometimes the memories of that film can be rose-tinted and the film be a major disappointment when viewed decades later. Well, watching the follow-up movie to Dr Who And The Daleks revealed it to be not as great as I recalled it, but it’s still a thoroughly entertaining science-fiction actioner that is superior to its predecessor. It’s also a bit different, more downbeat and, while it still contains comedy, darker. In this one, people do get killed and lots of them. Again, it was a remake of a Dr Who serial called The Dalek Invasion Of Earth, though on a slightly larger scale. Though another commercial success, it was a somewhat troubled production, with several injuries and accidents on-set, while Peter Cushing was ill throughout and required some re-writing to reduce his on-screen appearances. Roy Castle and Jennie Linden were both unavailable, so Ian and Barbara became Tom and Who’s cousin Louise. Bernard Cribbins would later appear as a recurring character in the TV series.

The main title music, played over the usual trippy visuals [though probably paint being mixed this time] is even groovier, hardly setting the tone for what is to follow, though Bill McGuffie’s score often contains passages that seem musically inappropriate. In fact, there’s also a bit too much of it, but it’s a fun diverse listen nonetheless. As with the first film, the story gets underway immediately with no messing about, though this time the interior of the Tardis has had a major tidy up and there’s not a wire in sight. We quickly arrive into the future and some impressive sets and matte paintings of destroyed London. Though its budget was higher than that of Dr Who And The Daleks, this was still a moderately budgeted piece, and sometimes it shows, for example the Daleks only appearing to have one spaceship, and a spaceship that not only has visible wires but sometimes looks green or yellow due to the poor matting, but it’s a cool craft of the flying saucer type anyway with its two revolving upper levels. We first see a Dalek in the water, and the machines have a bit less screen time throughout, something that works for the film, and in any case we also have the Robo-Men, humans turned into robotic slaves with leather suits and truly way-out helmets. Bernard Cribbins, like Roy Castle, is the ‘funnyman’, and his best scene has him pretending to be one of the Robo-Men, even having to eat their food, which looks like coloured pills.

About half an hour in there’s a pitched battle with humans fighting Daleks and Robo-Men, and the serious flaws of being a Dalek are adroitly shown when one is shoved down a slope to topple over at the bottom. After this it’s mainly skirmishes until the climax, which involves another bomb, but the pace never slows and there are even a few surprises in store, such as a black market dealer who isn’t on the side you think he is. The fighting is only a step away from the “zip” and “pow” nonsense of the Batman TV series, but the Daleks kill a lot of people on-screen and are merciless bastards, even killing humans who help them. One well staged scene has a guy in a wheelchair hold some Daleks back before sacrificing himself. There’s a surprising sense of hopelessness throughout, though what the Daleks intend to do is both highly impressive and hilarious in its ambition, and the film just doesn’t have the money to do it justice. What is it? It’s to drop a bomb into a mineshaft to destroy the Earth’s core, which will make the Earth move and enable the Daleks to pilot Earth to their home world of Skaro [iwhich wasn’t named in the first film]!

The fast-paced story keeps the attention, the only major distraction being the inordinately [for the time] large amount of product placement for Sugar Puffs. Cushing looks visibly ill and even seems to have a weak leg in some scenes, but his character is less doddery this time round. Canon or not canon, his two Dr Who films certainly provide enough escapist entertainment to justify their existence, though I guess younger viewers will find them more quaint than anything else…but quaint can be a good thing too. There was actually going to be a third movie, based on the The Chase, a serial which I have distinct memories of because it has Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monster make brief appearances. How fun it would have been to see Hammer stalwart Cushing encounter them again?

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