Some of the films fall into more than one category, of course, so I’ve listed them in the one I think they best represent. With Battle LA unleashed on Blu-Ray this week , Falling Skies debuting on UK TV last week and Super 8 due out in three weeks … I decided to gather together my Brains Trust and have a conversation about Alien Invasion Movies. The fear of the mid 50′s was of Communists in our communities (the reds under the bed) and that you couldn’t tell them apart from ‘us’. This tale of perfect, identical ‘clones’ grown in pods was to articulate that fear better than anything else.  The Smart Ones, they regard this Earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely dispatch a fleet of flying saucers to whup our collective ass. The Dumb Ones work purely on instinct, they aren’t plotting to overthrow the human race, they’re just doing whatever they do to survive and we happen to be in the way. It very quickly became obvious that there are more of them, and a wider variety of them, than you might at first think.