Target Earth (1954)

Four people find themselves in a deserted city after it was evacuated without them. A businessman (Richard Denning) was mugged and knocked unconscious, a woman (Kathleen Crowley) took an overdose of sleeping pills in a failed suicide attempt and a bickering couple (Virginia Grey, Richard Reeves) were drunk. What they can't figure out is why the city was evacuated until they come face to face with invaders from Venus! Based on the short story DEADLY CITY by Paul Fairman and directed by Sherman A. Rose. Despite its obvious low budget (the robot invader from Venus looks pretty cheap), this B&W "B" science fiction film manages to present an effectively realistic panorama of a deserted city, in this case Los Angeles shot in the wee hours of the morning before people and traffic could ruin the shots. Grey and Reeves go the extra mile and gives us some interesting characters, an unmarried couple together for 10 years tossing wisecracks and insults at each other but in the end, completely devoted to each other. The constantly interrupting scenes in an Army lab where they're analyzing how to defeat the robot army are pretty tiresome. The martial score is by Paul Dunlap. With Robert Roark as an escaped murderer and Whit Bissell as a scientist.