Invasion from Inner Earth (1974)

In recent years, producer Jason Blum has made a fortune with so-called “contained horror” movies, stories that often unfold within the confines of a single location. When it works, the formula is ingenious, reflecting universal fears about the dangers of the outside world visiting us where we feel safest. Yet before the term “contained horror” came into being, lesser filmmakers than Blum tried similar maneuvers, often with disastrous results. Hence garbage on the order of Invasion from Inner Earth, a no-budget regional production about dudes hiding in the Canadian woods while signs indicate that some sort of supernatural disaster is unfolding elsewhere. Things get off to a rocky start with confusing scenes introducing several interchangeable characters, but eventually one half-decent scene happens—while in a tiny plane approaching a remote airstrip, characters receive radio warnings not to land because some terrible plague is killing people at the airstrip. This being a bad horror movie, the folks in the plane land anyway, and vague intimations of carnage ensue. The team behind this schlocky venture didn’t put much cash into special effects, so we never really see monsters—just lots of colorful lights and repetitive music indicating the presence of monsters—and the characters are so witless that most of the movie comprises people wandering around the same handful of locations and muttering, “What’s going on?” Even patrons of bad cinema are encouraged to avoid Invasion from Inner Earth, since there’s so little to grasp here it’s difficult to muster ironic amusement.

Invasion from Inner Earth: SQUARE