Invaders From Mars (1953): Making Sci-Fi Feel Like a Fairy Tale
Framing the terrors of childhood, from Stranger Things to Spielberg to the monster matinees of the Atomic Age
Stranger Things (2016-2025) may have defined the ‘Kids on Bikes’ genre, but the roots of those stories reach back over 70 years, long before The Goonies came out in 1985.
The work of baby boomers like Spielberg (E.T. The Extra Terrestrial), Joe Dante (Gremlins), Chris Columbus (The Goonies) and Stephen King (pretty much everything) evoke a world of All-American folk memory in which resourceful kids discover monsters in dreamy small-town suburbia, a liminal playground that offers freedom and threat, but with home and safety apparently never too far away.
It’s this combo of the cosy and the terrifying that makes Stranger Things so appealing to modern audiences, over-informed, over-anxious, doomscrolled to death and wishing to God they could retreat to a state of blissful innocence.
But the books and movies to which Stranger Things pays such exhaustive homage are themselves a homage to childhood comforts gone by, specifically the Atomic Age monster matinees of the early 1950s.
One of these movies is a minor classic directed by a major talent and proved particularly influential…
