Aliens from a planet in the Orion constellation have been on Earth for some time now. Their plan is to take over the planet by creating a nuclear world war that will annihilate mankind. That will leave the planet free for them to inhabit. The aliens are made up of pure intelligence. They take over the bodies of Earth people at the moment of their death. They have been working on this phase of their project and have taken over the bodies of important scientists, military leaders and politicians. The aliens still retain the memories of the bodies they inhabit but their race has advanced to the point where they have done away with all emotion.
The organizer of the project is the alien they refer to as Chief (Rolf von Nauckhoff). The latest person to be inhabited is Ambassador John Farnsworth (Robert Cunningham). Farnsworth was known as a peacekeeper and was good at his job. Farnsworth had been in a plane crash in the Mexican jungle and was the only survivor because he was taken over by an alien intelligence. His secretary is an Earthling, Ginny Desmond (Maria Perschy). The main hit man for the aliens is Armand de Guedez (Gustavo Rojo), an alien who likes his job far too much. His latest victim, and now associate, is Vera Svenson (Karen Blanguernon). Vera became one of the aliens when she was tossed off a building and sent screaming to the ground. Another death was Dr. Hans Walter (Hans Elwenspoek) who fell off an ocean liner and was miraculously found and picked up by a freighter. General Roskovski (Stefan Schnabel) supposedly died on the operating table but came back to life.
Howard Moore (Uwe Friedrichsen) is a reporter who becomes suspicious of all these fatal accidents where no one seems to die. He begins an investigation into these strange occurrences. In the process he meets and falls in love with Farnsworth’s secretary Ginny. Farnsworth becomes fascinated with the relationship between Howard and Ginny. This concept of love seems to stir something in him that, as an alien, he was immune to. Now occupying the body of a human, it is a frailty that turns out to be more powerful than the alien intelligence fighting against it.
The Chief decides that in order to keep Howard from finding out the truth of what is going on he will have to be taken over by an alien. To that end the psychopathic alien Armand is charged with doing away with Howard. This is a job that Armand is normally made for but through a series of circumstances Howard is proving to be more difficult to kill than the usual Earthling.
"No Survivors Please." AKA "Der Chef Wunscht keine Zeugen" or “The Chief Doesn’t want Witnesses” was released in 1963 and was directed by Hans Albin and Peter Berneis. It is a rather obscure West German science fiction movie. It has overtones of a cold war Euro drama and is part of the alien invasion subgenre.
The movie is reminiscent of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” 1956 but podless. The main difference is that “Body Snatchers” took over people’s bodies while they slept. In “No Survivors” they are violently killed, and the alien intelligence takes over the dead bodies. These aren’t shambling shuffling zombies, but they are, for the most part, soulless if not a little boring. The film takes a little getting used to and is not for everyone. Some find it just shy of being a sci-fi parody, but some find it similar to the aliens themselves, emotionless and just plain strange.