utgard14 A group of people wake up to find their city deserted due to an invasion of alien robots from Venus. While the military tries to figure out a way to fight back, these people hole themselves up in a hotel where they are safe. That is, until a psychopath shows up! After an impressive start, it drags some as they sit around the hotel room scared of the robots outside. The cast is decent, with stars like Richard Denning and Virginia Grey leading the way. Both were somewhat successful but should've been bigger than they were in their respective careers. Beautiful Kathleen Crowley and character actors Richard Reeves, Arthur Space, and Whit Bissell are also good. Robert Roark, however, is another story. According to the trivia section here on IMDb, he got this part because his father would only invest in the film if they cast him. I can believe that as he's the weakest part of the cast and seems to be imitating characters he saw in other movies.The interactions between the group are pretty clichéd and cheesy but somehow I couldn't help but like them (except Roark) due to the charisma of the actors. It's kind of funny to watch Denning deduce the invaders are from Venus because of stuff he learned from reading his friend's sci-fi magazines in college. The inevitable romance between he and Crowley comes on super fast, with them falling for each other hard within hours of meeting. This is made all the more implausible when you see how much of a jerk he is to her in the first part of the film.As others have pointed out, the special effects are limited. There's one rather silly-looking robot that they keep filming yet they tell us there's supposed to be a whole army. Look, '50s sci-fi was the best but sometimes its charm was in its goofiness. The robot here is pretty goofy. The actual invasion stuff takes place off-screen and stock footage is used a little too much. Still, despite its shortcomings, it's an entertaining movie.

zardoz-13 "Tank Battalion" director Sherman A. Rose' black & white, science fiction horror thriller "Target Earth" concerns an alien invasion of Earth with huge, hulking robots constructed of surgical steel combing Los Angeles after the authorities have evacuated the city. Producer Herman Cohen points out in his audio commentary track that the desolate shots of L.A. were lensed on Sunday mornings when the streets were bare of humanity. The monster robot--only one is seen whenever it is shown--looks like it was modeled after the alien robot in director Robert Wise's landmark sci-fi thriller "The Day The Earth Stood Still." Rose and his writers introduce audiences during the opening half-hour to a handful of survivors in Los Angeles who were overlooked during the evacuation. Frank Brooks (sci-fi leading man Richard Denning of "Hangman's Knot") stumbles across Nora King (Kathleen Crowley of "Sabre Jet") in the street when she encounters a dead woman's body and turns around to find Frank looking at her. Initially, Nora is afraid, but she calms down long enough for Frank to convince her that he doesn't represent a threat. "Target Earth" unfolds with Nora awakens after the city has been evacuated. Later, we learn that she tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills after her male friend died in a car crash. As Frank and Nora are scouring the city, they run into Vicki Harris (Virginia Grey of "The Women") and Jim Wilson (Richard Reeves of "Riot in Juvenile Prison") in a restaurant boozing it up. The two couples get together run into Charles Otis (Mort Marshall of "Skullduggery") and Otis tries to get away from the robots by fleeing through the city streets during the daylight hours. Predictably, the robot zaps Otis dead with a death ray. Meantime, the two couples take up residence in an abandoned motel and stay on the top floor. Rose and scenarists William Raynor, James Nicholson, and Wyott Ordung concentrate on the survivors for a half-hour and then they shift the focus to the top military brass coordinating the attack against the aliens while the scientists probe the remains of a robot to determine the best way to destroy it. Basically, for the remainder of the action, Rose cuts back and forth between our survivors and the military. Eventually, the survivors confront another survivor, a gun-toting killer named Davis (Robert Roark of "Killers from Space"), and he muscles his way into their habitat. Meanwhile, Tom, Chief research scientist (Whit Bissell of "Side Street") and his researchers discover that they can use an oscillator to destroy the robots with sound waves. Up until this epic discovery, the military has hurled their most powerful weapons against the aliens to no avail. Although it was a success when it was released in 1954, "Target Earth" seems bland compared to mega-budgeted movies such as "Independence Day." There is a spooky quality to the bare city streets during the opening half-hour, but around 28 minutes later, the first robot appears and zaps Otis, and the film settles into the formulaic rut of a war movie with the military scrambling to figure out how to obliterate the robots. No, the aliens who control the robots are never seen and Earth never receives an ultimatum from the alien invaders. Rose winds things up with a cliffhanger type ending. "Target Earth" is mandatory viewing for sci-fi fans who want to study the films of the 1950s.

MartinHafer Considering that this film was made on a tiny budget that wouldn't even allow the creation of more than one robot costume for the film (as well as the robot looking awfully silly), this is an amazingly successful film. That's because despite the budget, the writing was awfully good and the lesser-known actor (Richard Denning) who played lead was very good as well. Denning is best known for playing the recurring role of the Governor in "Hawaii 5-0 but here in a much earlier role he's more than up to the task.The film begins with a lady awakening to find that the city is deserted. What few people she does find are dead. Eventually, she finds Richard Denning alive and well. It seems both had been unconscious during the night when some evacuation was ordered--but why was the city evacuated and how did the people who were left behind die? Later, they meet several more stragglers who are left and they find a newspaper that announced that the city was being invaded! By whom is discovered quickly when they see a killer robot walking the streets--the invasion was not from our planet! So how are they able to make this idea work? Well, the writing was very good and excelled when the film investigates human nature--the sign of a good sci-fi film. How the people react (some good, some bad) and how the humans are able to eventually defeat the robots is pretty exciting stuff.

oscar-35 I am a robot fan. I bought this film just for that. I had not seen this film in many many years and wanted to get a film of the EARLY 50's B/W era. After seeing the film again, I was struck that many of the plot elements were 'no budget' copies from 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'. They say, 'if you are going to steal, steal from the best'. The robot use was too limited and sparse. The two couples lost in the city were very one dimensional and boring. Only when the two 'Redshirt' characters showed up did the bland lead actors had to add some real drama to this story. The scientist and military scenes needed to be pumped up more and interlaced better in this film story line. I am really sorry to point out, one robot is not that menacing. This film could have been more with some fine tuning. On the back of the film box: A large city is ordered to be completely evacuated as an army of robots, believed to be from the planet Venus, organize a city-wide attack in search of planetary domination. As the army and a group of scientists seek means of destroying the robots, the few people left in the city run for their lives. Nora(Katheen Crowley) and Frank(Richard Denning, governor of Hawaii 5-0) are two strangers who happen to later meet Vickie(Virginia Grey) and Jim(Richard Reeves) having a private party in an abandoned café. The two couple manage to escape the robot patrols and take refuge in a large hotel. There they confront a new danger, in a psychopathic killer Dave(Robert Roark). Our hearty group of survivors must now dodge the alien robot threat while avoiding the earth-bound maniac killer. All the while, scientist are racing against time to save the Earth from annihilation.