Bob O'Brien’s review published on Letterboxd:
"Little green men, eh?" - Police Officer answering a call at the station.
For some reason, when I was a kid and I first saw photos of the saucer-men in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine it terrified me to the point that it gave me reoccurring nightmares. It scared me so much that I carefully used paperclips to hold together the pages that featured their images so that I'd never again accidentally see them while paging through the issue.
Eventually the movie came on TV, and as I have such passion for horror and science-fiction films I decided to brave the storm and watch it. I remember thinking "I'm a little older now (I was maybe 6 at the time. LOL), and I've seen lots of scary movies, so I should be okay." Then it begins in a very whimsical way, with hammy music, cutesy story-book drawings under the credits, and an amusing voice-over narration, all of which immediately put me at ease. Then "The Riddler", Frank Gorshin, from the old Batman TV series shows up as a character, Joe. I'd never seen the actor in any other role, so that was a welcome distraction. When the saucer appears it wasn't very intimidating, and I recognized it from an Outer Limits episode that had used the same model. It also helped calm my nerves when they showed the narrator "Artie" (Lyn Osborn), an extremely funny-looking fellow that kind of resembles a cartoon monkey. This was turning out okay. But then... when the aliens make their first appearance- running out into the road I very nearly died of fright, and from then on I was in sheer terror as these creatures stalked the town's teenagers, moving creepily through the dark shadows of the woods. And it didn't help any that I had such a phobia of needles, and that these creatures would attack with retractable needles in their fingertips! Many nightmares followed.
I still find the creatures very effective, and enjoy the campy odd-ball nature of the film each and every time I revisit it. Good stuff!