FILM · 1986
Invaders from Mars
28 archived facts 7 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
28 Interesting Facts About Invaders from Mars
Interesting Facts (20)
- #001
- #002
- #003
The Martian drone creatures were operated by two people in a single suit, working in tandem. A small person was carried on the back of a normal-sized performer in a kind of backpack. The small person worked the drone's mouth and small arms (as seen when the drones load their weapons), while the full-sized performer walked the creature and used ski poles to move its long arms (as seen when the drone "salutes" Mrs. McKeltch). The full-sized performer faced the back of the costume and had to walk backwards so that the creature's knee joints bent in a "not-human" way while walking. Several performers took turns operating the drones, which meant that each performer doing the Martian's "walking" needed his own custom-made shoes.
- #004
- #005
Early on, the parents are getting David Gardner ready for bed and begin tidying things in the bedroom. The father picks up a magazine and starts reading it. The magazine was a slick fanzine from the late '70s called Fantascene. That issue contained an article about the making of Invaders from Mars (1953).
- #006
- #007
For the scene in which one of the Martian drones eats Mrs. McKeltch, a special "eating rig" consisting of only the drone's head (with moving chewing jaws) was built for the close-ups. The rig was built on a "seesaw" device so that the drone could tilt its head back to swallow. A short burst from a hidden fire extinguisher caused the drone's post-meal burp.
- #008
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- #011
Only two Martian drone costumes were built for the production. This is most noticeable in the scenes where the Marines encounter the drones in the tunnels leading to the ship. Clever editing and the use of a fully sculpted and painted but non-mechanized, illuminated "stand-in" drone (it can be seen coming up right behind David when Mrs. McKeltch spots him and threatens him) created the illusion that there was more than one Martian drone on the ship.
- #012
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- #016
For the creature effects of his Invaders from Mars remake, director Tobe Hooper first approached Rick Baker and Rob Bottin. Both were unable to sign on due to scheduling conflicts but suggested he contact Stan Winston; when concept artist William Stout joined, he drew some conceptual iterations that ultimately went unused, though some elements influenced the final creature designs. Winston began creating the creatures' appearance from scratch over a two-week period.
- #017
In another interview, Stan Winston added: "It was a very practical way to get into the design, and a very simple procedure. When the audience finally sees these giant creatures walking around, it won't look like anything they've seen before in the history of cinema. When they see them, they'll think they're stop-motion animation figures because they don't look like people in suits. The creatures could do things beyond what we thought they could do."
- #018
An impressive "intelligent-looking" mouth completed the appearance of the Supreme Intelligence's face, which did not evoke a masked man. Stan Winston added: "I designed the Supreme Intelligence to be oversized. Its head was very large and the mouth-eye relationship was closer than a human's because there was no nose between them. It was impossible to create such a face on a human with makeup, but it still had a very organic, very alien look." In another interview, Winston added: "So it didn't just look like a man's makeup face, I also designed it as a big head. Such that the proportions and positions of these eyes relative to the mouth and the size of the head could never imply a man in makeup or a man in a suit." In fact, "One of my main obligations on a project like this is to give the audience something they can connect with and, wherever possible, to go beyond the concept of the man in a suit or the man in makeup, making it something more interesting to look at, especially in a situation that is supposed to be alien."
- #019
The Supreme Intelligence's mechanics were designed by David Nelson and Rick Lazzarini. The tentacles were initially to be cable-controlled, but in the end they had to be cable-operated. Shannon Shea said: "Unfortunately for Dave and his team, the tentacle was an inverted triangle, narrowest at the base and widest at the tip. No matter how much Dave tried to design the body, he couldn't overcome the leverage problem, and it was decided that it had to be 'flown' via external cables at the head."
- #020
The Supreme Intelligence's head had radio-controlled eyes, eyebrows and cheeks, and a mouth puppeteered by hand from below. According to Shea, Nelson "had an innate ability to understand the subtleties of nature and facial expression, and for the first time I was seeing an eye mechanism with a 'slave lower lid.' This meant that even if the puppeteer could close the eyelids or blink, the lower eyelids automatically moved with the eye's movement like a real eye."
Production Story (1)
- #021
For the practical design of the Drones, Stan Winston drew inspiration from concept artist William Stout's drawings. "In one of Stout's sketches the knees went the wrong way," he said, "which gave me the idea of a man wearing a suit backwards, and I said, 'That's a great idea: let's go with a man standing backwards in a suit.'" The artist was also influenced by the simultaneous production of Aliens, where the arms of the full-size Alien Queen were worn inside its body by two artists; this was something Invaders set up early in pre-production. Winston first discussed hiring two contortionist artists to be photographed and using their combined silhouette as a starting point. He recalled: "I told Tobe it would be really great to put a few people like that together and photograph or draw them in strange positions and design a character around that." Aware of the related technical difficulties, Winston devised a similar idea: an artist walking backwards carrying a small person on his back. He said: "My idea was that the small person would be placed on top of the bodybuilder in a specially designed backpack, with his face opposite the bodybuilder's; under the claim that this would be a six-legged creature, we would use the small person's arms and the bodybuilder's arms as four extensions, use the bodybuilder's legs for mobility, and finally use the small person's legs to mechanically operate the creature's mouth, so that the knee bending was achieved. It didn't look like a human contortion. The direction of the legs was reversed, and that gave the monster's basic configuration a non-human look." Winston built a prototype with small-scale armatures, then photographed the mechanism. From the resulting silhouette, Winston created the first Drone designs, which excited Hooper greatly. Once this basic concept was approved, Winston began looking for performance artists. "I didn't do any more design until I knew exactly what I was doing," he said. "I put together a very strong team" of bodybuilders based on how well they could walk backwards. He also came up with the idea of having the big person hold ski poles below as the third and fourth extensions, so that all four legs touched the ground. "I put the small people in the backpack rig, put the bodybuilder in his most dynamic, most comfortable position, watched how he walked backwards, and then photographed it." Winston derived the final design sketches of the Drones from photographs of the people inside the suits. He called this a "form follows function" approach. "I wasn't designing something that wouldn't work technically," he said. "So the Drones are actually a concept drawn and designed from the inside out. It worked beautifully. A great design: fun, silly, big and cumbersome. It has all the utility of a man in a suit because it is literally a man carrying a man around, but it doesn't look like it."
Behind the Scenes (1)
- #022
Prosthetic makeup artist Shannon Shea described the staging of the Intelligence's first appearance: "The Supreme Intelligence emerges flying through a portal above an altar-type structure, and the altar-type structure was on the second level of the set. While the puppet and controls were hoisted into the air using a scissor lift, team members including head mechanic Dave Nelson carried the puppet onto the platform." He also added: "Two long tentacles were attached to the sides of its body for the 'flying' it does; these were separated and wrapped behind the altar. Then two mechanical tentacles were fitted to the sides of the altar and their controllers were hidden. Three puppeteers then moved beneath the Supreme Intelligence's body through the hollow altar and opened the skin. This gave two puppeteers access to directly puppeteer the mouth and the two small arms in front. The creature's final puppeteer, which Dave Nelson affectionately called the 'croissant,' hooked up to a series of valves controlled by a special keyboard to operate the air bladders in the creature's body. What this meant for the team was that whenever we weren't helping and dressing the Drone artists, we were busy maintaining the Supreme Intelligence puppet." The scene in which the Intelligence is shot required a different rig. Shea continues: "Gino Crognale was now strapped to a slanted board inside the Supreme Intelligence in a Superman flying pose. During the action, Dave Nelson and Everett Burrell pushed the slanted board down from behind, causing the creature to rise and move in agony as the bullets burst. Inside, Gino was puppeteering the 'croissants.'".
Characters & Cast (1)
Easter Eggs & References (2)
Deeper Meaning (2)
- #026
Although the film never states it directly, it strongly implies that the entire story takes place in David Gardner's imagination. The story is told entirely from David's point of view, and many of the camera angles are shot from a lower perspective, as if at a child's height. The general dialogue and behavior of the adult characters, who take what a 12-year-old boy has to say far more seriously than they normally would, also suggest that David is having a dream in which he himself is the hero. Finally, David actually wakes from the story as if it were a dream, but only then appears to relive the nightmare.
- #027
The Supreme Intelligence's body and tentacles were sculpted by Gillis and Woodruff. There were two sculpted faces that could be swapped depending on the shot. A "resting" face was sculpted by Tom Woodruff Jr., and a "pain and agony" face was designed by Winston himself. "Stan sculpted a face of it that was a screaming face," Gillis said. "For the scene where it gets shot, there would always be a mirror there while he sculpted, and he'd look at himself. So it kind of looked like Stan to us. It was a joke that everything Stan sculpted looked like him."
Life & Family (1)
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Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- IMDb
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