Mention Swedish cinema and the first thing that usually comes to most peoples' minds is the work of Ingmar Bergman; films full of excellent acting, obscure symbolism and profound psychological insights. Well, "Invasion of the Animal People" is proof that not every Swedish film- maker was up to the standards of Bergman. In fact, this one isn't even up to the standards of Edward D. Wood Jr. A lot of people consider Ed Wood's "Plan 9 from Outer Space" to be the worst movie ever made, but clearly those people have never seen "Invasion of the Animal People".The movie begins with an over-long and obviously spliced-in monologue delivered by John Carradine, a monologue that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. That is followed by another long and also obviously added- on sequence filmed in the United States, that seems to have no relation to the remainder of the movie. The rest of the movie involves a space ship that lands in Lapland, in Northern Sweden. This film probably enjoys the rare distinction of being the only science-fiction movie ever produced that features the people known as Laps (also referred to as "Sami"). The UFO is duly investigated by a team of scientists accompanies by a female Olympic figure skater, niece of one of the scientists who, apparently, just happened to be doing her training in Lapland. The aliens resemble the character of "Death" from Ingmar Bergman's film, "The Seventh Seal". Have they landed in Sweden in order to play chess with Max von Sydow? Since no other reason for their presence is ever presented, I suppose that is as good an explanation as any. The aliens are also accompanied by a 30-foot-tall troll (I guess that's what they would call it in Scandinavia). How they ever managed to fit it inside their small spacecraft, and why they should have wished to being it with them in the first place, are questions that are never addressed.Some of the other reviewers have pointed out that there exists a Swedish-language version of this movie that makes more sense. Admittedly, I have not seen that Swedish version. However, "more" is a relative term, because the version of this movie that I did see makes virtually no sense whatsoever. Nevertheless, connoisseurs of really bad 1950s science-fiction movies will definitely want to add this one to their list.

Invasion of the Animal People (1962) * (out of 4) A brief introduction to director Jerry Warren who is the worst in my opinion. Warren would buy foreign movies, cut out the dialogue scenes and then add newly directed scenes so that he could then sell the movie off as his own. These added scenes usually have nothing to do with the "original" movie scenes surrounding them but that can sometimes add to the charm. This film was originally a Swedish production called Terror in the Midnight Sun but Warren chopped it up, added a few scenes with John Carradine and had him serve as the narrator. A spaceship crashes in the mountains and out gets a huge, hairy creature who stalks some scientists. The look of the creature is certainly dumb enough to get a few laughs but this doesn't happen until the final ten minutes and what follows that is pretty hard to get though. Slow, boring, stupid and simply badly made. The added scenes are equally poor. However, it must be said that this is still a lot better than Warren's Attack of the Mayan Mummy and Frankenstein Island.

If you like watching a bunch of people skiing around, you'll love this. An alien saucer lands in the opening round of the movie, and just sits there for about an hour of film running time before anything else involving it happens.I saw this on one of those late night live-monster host shows, and the riffs the guy did kept the movie from being pretty boring. There's some scientists that want to see the "meteor" that came down, a romance between a couple who flirt on the ski runs, and some other folks that do a reenactment of the mob scene from Frankenstein. You have to wait a long time to see the creature, a really really big hairy guy with ugly teeth, and his brief scene is pretty campy. Still, I liked the Jolly Neanderthal Giant. As for aliens, they show up only once too, just staring at somebody. (One is seen a couple of times from the back, always watching TV).Innocently silly and mildly amusing. There's loose ends at the end deliberately left for you to ponder. Or laugh at.

I have seen a lot of obscure films and am pretty sure that this one must have had the lowest budget in making it. There is a man-like creature that is HUGE- he probably stands 40-60 feet tall. Anyway the Eskimo villagers throw fire torches at it.As for the plot- there may not even be one, other than these people go out into the frozen tundra to look for a cheapie spaceship and then end up skiing half the countryside. I do however, appreciate this show's obscurity- there is , as far as I've ever seen, nothing quite like it- It makes "Plan 9 From Outer Space" look like "Gone With The Wind".