Major Muncaster (Barrie Ingham) and his radar operator are monitoring the night sky when they see something strange on their screen. They try to radio their observations but can’t get through. Then the radar equipment stops. Outside they hear a strange noise coming from the sky. A spacecraft crash lands nearby. The army goes to investigate and finds the crashed ship.
Meanwhile, Lawrence Blackburn (Anthony Sharp) is driving with his mistress, Elaine (Stephanie Bidmead) down a dark country road when they hit a man (Eric Young) walking down the middle. Lawrence drops his mistress off at his home before taking the injured man to the local country hospital.
On duty at the hospital are Dr. Mike Vernon (Edward Judd) and Nurse Lim (Tsai Chin). Mike calls Dr. Claire Harland (Valerie Gearon) to come in and analyze a blood sample from the injured man. After seeing strange results from the blood test, Claire takes more blood and redoes the tests. Claire and Mike are astonished to find that the blood is not human. In addition, an x-ray of the patient reveals an implant inside his brain. When the man regains consciousness, he tells them that he is an alien from the planet Lystri. He says he crashed while transporting two female Lystrian prisoners to another planet.
Back home Blackburn hears a noise outside his house. When he investigates, he is startled by the sight of the female Lystrians (Yoko Tani and Cali Raia). He has a heart attack and dies. Not finding the male Lystrian there, the two females track him to the hospital.
At the hospital Mike finds that a mysterious force field has surrounded the hospital and that the temperature inside the force field is rising to uncomfortable levels. One of the hospitals administrators, Brian Carter (Lyndon Brook), believes that the alien is the leader of his empire and attempts to drive away to contact authorities only to be killed when he runs full speed into the force field. Claire finds out from the alien that he is actually the prisoner, and the two females were his jailers. As the army runs around looking for the aliens, Mike tries to find a way to get past the force field.
“Invasion” was released in 1966 and was directed by Alan Bridges. It is a British science fiction film. The film was based on an original story by Robert Holmes.
Holmes is better known for writing scripts for various television series from the 60’s through the 80’s, primarily Dr. Who. Holmes reused some of the movie's plot elements for one of the actual Dr. Who episodes, “Spearhead from Space” in 1970. This was the first episode of season 7 which featured Jon Pertwee as Dr. Who.
British science fiction is a little more drama based than American science fiction films, at least in the 60’s. They have a tendency to be a bit slow moving and this one is no exception. There isn’t a lot of violence, but what is there is shocking and fast. There also aren’t a lot of special effects so most of the story is in the dialogue. It has a similar feel and flow as the Quatermass films, “Day of the Triffids” 1963 and “The Earth Dies Screaming” 1964, lots of drama and emotional intensity. It’s actually not a bad little forgotten film.
I’m not sure what the underlying reason was for making the actors that play the aliens Asian.