Back in the 1950s and ‘60s there was a UFO craze connected to Cold War paranoia. One example is the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, combining science fiction with film noir in a story of aliens who come to earth and take over people’s bodies.
I remember seeing this 1960s British puppet animation show Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons when I was young. (The same people did Stingray and Thunderbirds and Joe 90.) The Mysterons were a people on Mars who’d kill earthlings and take over their bodies. Fighting against them were a secret agent organization called the Spectrum, where every agent was named for a colour, like Captain Blue or Captain Green. (They were commanded by Colonel White.) Captain Scarlet was an agent whose body the Mysterons tried to take over, but he wasn’t quite dead, and he ended up indestructible. So every episode he’d get shot or crushed or blown up or something, but he’d be back in the next episode. Sort of like Wile E. Coyote. There were also these lady pilots called Angels who’d fly off to rescue the agents. And there was Captain Black, an agent who did get taken over by the Mysterons.
It had a theme song that went:
Though the Mysterons plan to conquer the earth,
This indestructible man will show what he’s worth!
There was something odd about these British puppet dramas. You know brutalist architecture, like the Robarts Library? These were like the brutalist school of kiddie cartoons. Captain Scarlet would feel at home in the Robarts Library…
You know the Hong Kong action movie star Chow Yun-fat? Something about him resembles Captain Scarlet!
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