Target Earth (film)

Target Earth is a 1954 independently made American black-and-white science fiction film, produced by Herman Cohen, directed by Sherman A. Rose, that stars Richard Denning, Kathleen Crowley, Virginia Grey, and Whit Bissell. It was written by James H. Nicholson, Wyott Ordung and William Raynor based on the story "Deadly City" by Paul W. Fairman (writing as Ivar Jorgenson) in the March 1953 edition of the magazine If: Worlds of Science Fiction. The film was released on November 7, 1954 by Allied Artists Pictures Corporation.

Set in a large, deserted city, the film's storyline follows a small group of people overlooked during the city's mass evacuation, carried out because of a sudden invasion by hostile robotic beings believed to be from the planet Venus.

Target Earth was a typical product of 1950s-filmed science fiction but could never rise above its low budget underpinnings. One of the few notable aspects of the production was that the film was one of the first to explore the subgenre of alien invasions, following the successes of George Pal's The War of the Worlds (1953) and William Cameron Menzies' Invaders from Mars (1953). Target Earth was also produced by Herman Cohen, making his producing debut, who would become one of the most prominent B movie producers of the 1960s. Director Sherman A. Rose, who was a prolific editor in both television and film, would go on to make only two other films.