I love this movie so much

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Nora King , a young woman in Chicago has survived a suicide bid via a barbiturate overdose . Stirring from what would have been her death bed she knocks on her neighbours door and no one replies . She finds no one seems to be in her apartment block . Wandering the eerie deserted streets of the city she is startled to find another survivor called Frank Brooks Okay you've seen this type of set up before . Protagonist wakes up , thinks " Oh hold on something isn't quite right here " and finds that the entire population has been rendered blind / turned in to zombies / Daleks have invaded the world / insert your own scenario here etc etc . . It's not an original idea but it's a brilliantly effective hook that draws the audience in to the story which is why it's a common occurrence in horror and science fiction . Off the top of our heads we can name a very long list of books , films and TV shows throwing up this scenario Where this very low budget film works best is during the deserted city scenes . I know everyone quite rightly raves about Boyle's dead London scenes in 28 DAYS LATER but stop to consider how the problems and pressure were eased by the director shooting that film on digital video . With TE let me just repeat this is a very low budget movie and camera technology in 1954 would have been very primitive in comparison to now . Even more astonishingly the trivia section of this site states the production team didn't have permits so did what we would now describe as " guerrilla film making " and shot on location in Los Angeles very early on Sunday mornings . There's not too much in the way of panning long shots but at the same time these location shots are far more convincing than in bigger budget movies such as THE OMEGA MAN where you're constantly aware of cars driving by in the distance . As Nora meets with Frank they wander around Chicago bumping in to other occasional stragglers my attention was held one hundred per cent As you might guess for a low budget SF B movie the film can't really sustain this . Chicago has been evacuated because an alien invasion has taken place the night before . Even if you ignore the implausible idea that a large city of this kind can be evacuated in such a short period you can't ignore the fact that the film doesn't have the budget to make this invasion from Venus credible in any way and is confined to one robot . Worse than that this robot just happens to look like it was constructed out of cardboard by a group of primary school children and does tend to drag the film down after its effective first third . Likewise from a narrative point of view we have distracting cutaways to a military base where the military reference to the recent invasion and you're painfully aware that these scenes exist only to give away exposition . Might it not have been more efficient having the survivors run in to a military patrol who say something along the lines " Oh you're a handful of survivors we haven't evacuated and therefore you don't know what's going so here's the plot that needs to be explained to the audience etc etc ?This is a film that this pulp science fiction in its most low brow form and yet some of it works brilliantly , so much so that for the early period you think you're going to be watching some sort of lost classic . Such a pity TE can't sustain its early promise . One can't help thinking that maybe the production team might have gone back to the drawing board and deleted all the rubbish about cardboard robots from Venus and come up with a premise of survivors battling to stay alive in a world where civilisation and the rule of law have been consigned to history , but I guess audiences always flock to stories that have a nice happy ending ? Even if the events leading up to the end are very silly

"Target Earth" is a a potential minor classic that falls short when the screenplay falters and the budget just can't back up the proper execution of the scenario.The director can be proud of the first ten minutes or so. The premise is set and the story is told with an admirable flow and economy - the impact of the eerie, deserted cityscape and the increasing unease of the heroine are well conveyed. When she finally bumps into the only other living human in the city (I liked this guy immediately - he had a intense eyes and a haunted expression that conveyed volumes) right after encountering her first corpse, and he chases her into an alley, it's a very cool climax. Then about 5 minutes later, we get our first glimpse of the invading alien.It's ridiculous, and the mood collapses almost entirely. The movie is still pretty good in fits and starts after that. But IMO it was a mistake to bring in the whole second story line with the army scientists looking for a miracle solution. Whenever the 1st story thread starts to build any momentum or atmosphere, the movie ruins it by stopping everything for marathon jabber/exposition sessions with a bunch of actors mouthing lines about cathode ray tubes and such. I think the movie's creators wanted to add to the suspense, but instead this kept dispersing the paranoia and claustrophobia that the first story line was trying to create. (Yes, a couple of fine character actors, including Whit Bissell, are in these scenes, but they can't save them.) Plus the fact that the characters in the second thread are completely disconnected from those in the first thread - they don't interact with them at all, or even know they exist. That makes for some problematic narrative structure for someone like me who is accustomed to movies where all the characters in the screenplay are part of an ensemble dealing with a situation,from modern big budget mega pictures like "Independence Day" to creaky "classics" like "The Beginning Of the End" (where special effects included post cards). There are some strange lapses in the plot now and then (for instance, the hero thinks of breaking into an electronics store to get a portable radio so he can get some idea of what is going on, but it never occurs to him to also break into a drugstore or a hardware store to get a battery for the radio). This doesn't help, but I can understand the need to keep the cast in the dark about why they are alone in a deserted city. Still, the climactic sequence at the end is pretty good, with the original couple are cornered by an alien and are about to be barbecued. But then the army up with its miracle science gimmick and easily disposes of it and the movie's ending deflates like a balloon.Too bad. I'm not sorry I saw it, but I can't say I am anxious to see it again.

Four people (Denning, Crowley, Grey, and Reeves) meet by accident on the streets of a city that has been emptied overnight of people, except for a few dead bodies. They learn from a newspaper that the city has been invaded and evacuated by everyone else. The cars have been disabled, so the four refugees hole up in the suite of a hotel, making do with candles, beer, and canned food. There WAS a fifth member of the group, a witless little character, but he ran out into the street and was rayed to death by a wandering robot. The invading army, as it turns out, consists entirely of these robots with their death rays. They're impervious to bullets and can destroy airplanes, presumably with the same rays. A gun-toting evil murderer invades the hotel sanctuary of the survivors and puts moves on Crowley (who has fallen in love with Denning after knowing him for only a few hours). The resulting fight sees Grey killed and Denning wounded before the burly Reeves manages to strangle the killer.The scenes of the survivors are inter cut with scenes of the requisite military and scientists trying just as hard as they can to devise a means of disabling these robots. They finally succeed -- surprise! When the robot army is exposed to sound waves of a certain frequency, it "cracks their cathode ray tubes." (Your television set is a cathode ray tube.) The army comes to the rescue at the last moment, too late, alas, to save Reeves but soon enough to whisk off Denning and Crowley.A cheap and boring movie, I found it almost impossible to watch. Well, sometimes the cheapness can't be helped. A budget will stretch only so far, as we all must know. But this thing could have been written and acted by members of the robot army, who look like they're made of Lego's or like unusually angular Gorts, although we only see one of them at a time.The dialog sucks. The plot is unoriginal. The special effects might better have been suggested than put on display. The logic of the plot is terribly flawed and the direction careless. (Carefully pruned, it might have been a decent episode of The Outer Limits.) I'll give just one example of a jarring lapse of common sense. The vicious murderer is holding the others at gunpoint and Grey suddenly remembers where she saw him before. He's the guy that murdered that hooker on Skid Row! That's right, admits the evildoer. His picture was all over the papers. They'll be looking for him on every street corner, Denning observes. Not if I slip out through the sewers and get out behind the enemy lines, the murderer sneers. The entire city has been evacuated and is now occupied by indestructible robots who kill people and repulse the military with unknown rays -- yet they'll be watching every street corner for some nobody who killed a hooker! Santa Clause could waltz past the army without interference under these conditions! Well, another example. At the very beginning, Crowley wakes up to find the city empty and she wanders the streets. She stumbles across a dead body and Richard Denning at roughly the same time. They introduce themselves and explain where they spent the previous night. Minutes of frippery go by while neither asks the question: WHAT HAPPENED? It could have been good, even with the inexpensive sets and the second-tier (but seasoned) actors. As it is, it's rather a painful experience except for those who really enjoy cheesy SF movies, and there seem to be legions of those.The producer, the late Herbert Cohen, provides an audio commentary on the DVD and he seems like a good-natured guy. He's generous with his credits and he didn't mind if people laughed at the crummy effects when the picture was released and he still doesn't mind.

Crackerjack opening: awakening from a deep, self-induced slumber, Nora King discovers a strange new world. Imagine, for a moment, you wake-up, after an evening of popping pills, to find that everyone has vanished. You are left alone in a quiet, empty metropolis. You search the city streets and edifices for signs of life. You find nothing. And fear begins to creep into your thoughts. Target Earth, a b-movie pioneer from the 50's, begins in such a manner. It's a powerful beginning. After about ten minutes of screen time, Miss King meets a business man, Frank, from Detroit. A few stops later they hear music and stumble across a married couple, bickering and boozing it up at a high class joint. A nervous fellow soon joins the quartet--but is dispatched quickly by one of the army (never seen) of robots from Venus. Of course this makes very little scientific sense on any reasonable level. But we are along for the ride, anyway. I enjoyed the performances by the four main characters. I also felt Robert Roark's "killer" was quite good and smart. Towards the end we get a burst of ice cold violence. Not unexpected. The one mechanical man we do see is properly menacing despite the crack in his view plate. I wish the final had been filmed on the roof of a real building, instead of an indoor set. And a few more shots of the robot vaporizing some soldiers would have been appreciated.