This modest science fiction film from Ray Bradbury's short story "The Meteor" is perhaps the most-imitated film in the history of cinema.. The screenplay for this feature was written by Harry Essex, with direction by veteran action-film expert Jack Arnold. It is set on the edge of the desert, and involves in its storyline the crash of a mysterious meteor. Investigating it, a scientist living nearby discovers it is an alien spacecraft; he glimpses an ugly amoeboid creature like an octopus with a giant eye. Its next efforts cause a landslide which hides the spacecraft under a landslide, so no one else can see what he saw. The next development, when no one believes him, is that local people, law-enforcement and others, start acting like zombies; his wife believes him, but when the folk start coming into town he knows he needs to do something. Heading to the site again, he contacts the alien minds who tell him they only wish to escape Earth, where they do not belong. He gives them the help they require and the ship takes off the next day, heading home and leaving hi,m, and us, with a genuine mystery and an important question about parochial attitudes and out fitness to extend man's reach into the Galaxy when this urge has not been conquered. The production in B/W is a very good one for a "B" film, I assert., Joan St. Eigger did the hairstyles, Rosemary Odell the costumes, Russell A. Gausman and Ruby R. Levitt the sets, with Bud Westmore handling the unusual makeup challenges. The very fine art direction was done by Bernard Herzbrun and Robert A. Boyle, with luminous cinematography by Clifford Stine. In the solid cast are Richard Carlson, Barbara Rush, Charles Drake as the Sheriff, Joe Sawyer, Russell Johnson and Kathleen Hughes. it is arguable that Richard Carlson talks too much about the mysteries of the desert in this film, as n allegory for the dangers of the unknown, the wild, the as-yet-untamed--for space itself; but the dialogue is good-enough, the situations genuinely eerie and the style of the film, its crisis and its and pacing far-above-the-expected. In lesser hands, this production could have been less effective; this has become a classic example of how to handle several sci-fi situations. It earns the stature of being fundamentally scary; yet it is also thoughtful and interesting at the same time, by my standards. This is sci-fi noir of a very high sort.
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Universal Studios could always be counted upon to devise some interesting stories in the sci- fi genre at a time when the genre simply exploded. Also among their undeniable classics during this period are gems like Creature from the Black Lagoon, Tarantula, and The Incredible Shrinking Man. This particular tale (although the final screenplay is credited to Harry Essex, the original treatment by Ray Bradbury was left largely intact) explores that theme of mankind seemingly always fearing and distrusting anything it doesn't understand, and reacting to it with aggression.
Likable, earnest Richard Carlson stars as John Putnam, an amateur astronomer in the small town of Sand Rock, Arizona. One night he (and others) witness a "meteor" violently crashing to Earth (in one of the most startling introductions to a film of this kind). The aliens on board stealthily go about abducting local citizens and altering their appearance to look like these people. All they really want is to be able to work on their ship in peace, and leave before too long, but naturally there are humans who don't want to get with the program, like hot tempered sheriff Matt Warren (Charles Drake).
Lovely Barbara Rush is Carlsons' appealing leading lady in this extremely well directed, succinct film with as much moody black & white atmosphere as one could ask from this kind of entertainment. One will notice that all we get at the beginning is the title; the cast and crew credits are all saved for the final few minutes - an interesting (but not THAT uncommon) innovation for an older film. There's fine use of stock music from such composers as Henry Mancini, and the cinematography by Clifford Stine is excellent. The aliens are effectively hideous looking in their natural guise, but they begin to be revealed perhaps a bit too soon into the story. The alien P.o.V. shots are pretty cool.
As was said, Rush is very appealing, but it's unfortunate that her role keeps requiring her to scream at things: a Joshua tree, a kid in a costume, an undisguised alien (well, at least that one is understandable). The supporting cast is impressive, right down the line: Drake, Russell Johnson, Joe Sawyer, George Eldredge, Bradford Jackson, Dave Willock.
Although originally filmed in 3-D, "It Came from Outer Space" works just as fine without it.
Seven out of 10. -
In the Arizona desert, the writer and amateur stargazer John Putnam (Richard Carlson) and his girlfriend, the schoolteacher Ellen Fields (Barbara Rush), are in his house planning to get married. Out of the blue, they witness a meteor crash in the desert. They fly to the location with their friend Pete in his helicopter and John decides to go to the bottom of the crater to investigate. John sees a spacecraft but there is a landslide and the ship is covered by earth. John discloses his discovery to Sheriff Matt Warren (Charles Drake), who is his rival and is also into Ellen, and to the inhabitants and they believe he is a daydreamer. John wants to prove his finding and meets his acquaintances Frank Daylon (Joe Sawyer) and George (Russell Johnson) repairing telephone cables on the desert and they find disturbance in the cable. The workers follow the cable and meet an alien that takes the form of George. Soon John and Ellen note that a group of dwellers are acting strange and they believe they have been possessed by the aliens. When Ellen is also abducted by the aliens, John contacts them and discovers their intention. Are they friend or hostile invaders?
"It Came from Outer Space" is another delightful sci-fi from the 50's with a story of Ray Bradbury. Years before Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", the writer John Putnam has an encounter with aliens that explains that we are not ready to contact them. The low budget of "It Came from Outer Space" is not a problem since the story is very well constructed. My vote is seven.
Title (Brazil): "A Ameaça Que Veio do Espaço" ("The Treaten That Came from Space")
Note: On 23 August 2015, I saw this film again. -
Bruce_Cook23 November 2001Jack Arnold directed this screen version of Ray Bradbury's short story, `The Meteor', about a crashed spaceship in the mid-western desert. The alien crew kidnaps several inhabitants of the local town and assumes their form. A writer of science articles (Richard Carlson) who lives on the outskirts of the town witnesses the crash, although he thinks it's just a meteorite. When he goes down into the smoking crater, he sees the open hatchway of the spaceship and an alien creature within it, but when the alien closes the big hatch it starts a landslide in the crater which covers the ship. Afterwards none of the local authorities will believe Carlson's story about a buried spaceship filled with alien invaders.
A moody and beautiful movie, with fine music by Henry Mancini. Many fans of Jack Arnold's sci-fi films consider this one his best (although personally I prefer `The Space Children' -- and so did Jack Arnold, according to his own statement).
Charles Drake (`Tobor the Great') is the skeptical sheriff. Russell Johnson plays both a human and an alien (a treat for genre' fans). The supporting cast includes Joe Sawyer and Kathleen Hughes. Special effects by David S. Horsely and the great Clifford Stine. Makeup by Bud Westmore, of the famous Westmore family who contributed much to all the `Star Trek' spin-offs.
Originally released in 3-D. A 3-D tape was available a few years ago, but the quality was not good . . . sad to say. -
Scarecrow-8811 July 2015That old adage of "we kill what we don't understand" can be applied to It Came from Outer Space, another solid classic bit of sci-fi B-movie from director Jack Arnold, with a screenplay inspired by Bradbury's The Meteor. Supposedly a meteor lands in the Arizona desert near a small town, but in fact it is a space ship carrying an alien race quite repulsive to humans. With a smart script that questions our inability to wait before pulling out our guns and firing, and telling us that the aliens aren't always a threat to humankind, It Came from Outer Space tried to provoke our thoughts away from believing that those from outside our world land here to hurt us. Richard Carlson is kind of a B-movie icon for many of us, mainly due to his association with Creature from the Black Lagoon and this film. He is the lone scientist (a "star gazer" in this film, considered by the papers who mock his claim that it was a space ship that landed in the desert, not a meteor as suspected) who tries to speak for the aliens, hoping to convince the sheriff (Charles Drake) that using guns won't solve anything except perhaps hurt those "taken captive" by them in order to use their likenesses in town to secure hardware needed to fix their vessel (and produce a weapon to protect themselves).
With Barbara Rush as Carlson's love interest (and eventually kidnapped herself, naturally), and Russell Johnson (of Gilligan's Island fame) as the employee of an electrician (Joe Sawyer) in the cast, this is actually a respected sci-fi film, not relegated to the cheesy conversation of many of its ilk. There are some imaginative first-person perspective shots "seen through the eye" of the alien as it descends upon and spy on humans. The special effects aren't the bright spot of this one: its budget is obviously low as the alien is a rubbery monstrosity that could have been made by Paul Blaisdell, and the ship is basically a ball (probably inflatable). I always find myself engaged in the presentation, though, as it has that Invasion of Body Snatchers meets Day the Earth Stood Still feel to it.
Carlson was always reliable and interesting, and he conveys the frustrations/dismay of being dismissed for his claims of the spaceship/alien presence, conflicted, agonizing anxiety at if he should believe in what the race of aliens are telling him regarding peaceful non-threatening motives on earth (just repairs and accidental crash on the planet, not willing to confront the earthlings due to our "shoot first, ask later" response to beings unlike us), and struggle to maintain a posse led by the sheriff when it appears the townsfolk are being kidnapped and possibly in harm's way.
The setting in Arizona (actually shot in California) is quite refreshing (THEM also has that, as does Arnold's own Tarantula), and it is used expansively. One good scene I like has Joe's electrician listening to "strange noise" through the power lines with Carlson getting an ear of it, commenting on how the desert has its own voice. The Joshua tree even gets a good bit of ooga-booga use as Rush screams when it is shadowed in darkness, as she believes it is the alien. The zombie-like movements of alien clones of the human locals is quite pod-like, and the simple small town rural sense of place within the enveloping desert landscape does create a bit of "perfect cover" for aliens needing to get their ship in order or else. The reliable scores of these kinds of 50s sci-fi shows itself effectively here in this film as well. -
LebowskiT100022 August 2002I always find it hard to judge films like this when I wasn't even relatively close to being born when this film first came out and how different films are of today compared to then. You can't really give it an objective review because we've been spoiled with superb, more-contemporary science fictions films. But nonetheless, I try to be as objective as possible and while I watch a film like this I try very hard to keep in mind when this film was made.
With all that said, I'll get on with the film review. I thought the story in this film was pretty interesting and well done. The story really does have some cool things in it, although it is a very simple plot.
The special effects are very light in this film, which shouldn't be that surprising, being made in the early 1950's. But, when they do use them, they're pretty good and somewhat impressive.
The acting in this film is nothing terribly great, but it certainly isn't bad either. The acting is pretty much what you'd expect from a 1950's sci-fi movie, lots of screaming, scared looks and what not. But all in all, there's nothing really to complain about.
I wouldn't recommend this film to everyone, but I would recommend it to anyone that truly loves the sci-fi genre (like myself) or just wants to compare this film to sci-fi films made today. I think it's good to see a film like this so that you can appreciate how far we've come with film making and special effects and all that great stuff. Anyhow, if you do see the film I hope you enjoy it for what it is. Thanks for reading,
-Chris -
If you can file away your hypercritical eye to sit back and view It Came From Otter Space, you'll enjoy it. This era the 50's through the early 60's gave birth to the best Sci-Fi storytelling since "talkies" came to be. Film Noir came of age in that same decade and a half as well as the greatest of the Musicals. If you haven't seen "This Island Earth", "When World's Collide", "THEM", "Earth vs The Flying Saucers", key a eye out for them on local late TV, or the movie channels. Without Computer Aided Graphics the backgrounds look a little cheesy by comparison but the stories and acting are superb. My one complaint, "Would it have been all that difficult to have actually filmed ICFOS in Arizona?"
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gavin69422 March 2016A spaceship from another world crashes in the Arizona desert, and only an amateur stargazer and a schoolteacher suspect alien influence when the local townsfolk begin to act strange.
The screenplay by Harry Essex, with input by Jack Arnold, was derived from an original screen treatment by Ray Bradbury; screen legend says Bradbury wrote the original screenplay and Harry Essex merely changed the dialogue and took the credit. Unusual among science fiction films of the era, the alien "invaders" were portrayed by Bradbury as creatures without malicious intent toward humanity.
No doubt helped by Bradbury's script, this is a strong outing in the career of Jack Arnold, who made many memorable (but cheesy) science fiction films. This one seems more serious, more intelligent, and even the alien (when finally shown) looks excellent by 1950s standards. -
krydor200230 March 2005I just saw "It Came from Outer Space" on DVD today. The last time I saw it was in 1954 in a small town theaters on the Saskatchewan prairies. I was ten years old at the time and my world did not extend a hundred mile radius. I still remember that film until today. Beautiful Barbara Rush, calm, cool,intelligent Richard Carlson. Joe Sawyer could have been one of my neighbors. Full of suspense, intrigue, and mild fear, this movie was indeed a classic. Not knowing what the "It" looked like added to the mystery and wonder. Surprisingly no one was ever seriously hurt. Wearing those 3_D glasses and watching those rocks coming at you was pretty cool in those days. I was glad to see it again and relive those 50 years that have gone by.
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ma-cortes22 August 2010Fifties sci-fi classic deals with John Putnam (Richard Carlson) as an aficionado astronomer who along with his beautiful girlfriend (Barbara Rush) during an evening in Sand Rock ( Arizona ) watch a fiery ball fall from the clouds into the desert . They investigate and John observes a ship and is convinced something is inside. Some stones fall burying the saucer before any one else can see it and now no one will believe him . After that , he becomes the aim of jokes and giggles from local townspeople when the newspapers publicize the story and Sheriff Matt Warren (Charles Drake) thinks he is nutty . When two locals, Frank Daylon (Joe Sawyer) and George (Russell Johnson), start to act rarely ; John is convinced that they have been taken over by an alien being that assume their identities. He can't convince anyone of the UFO crash he sighted and the aliens who have taken human form while repairing their ship aren't making it any easier.
Excellent adaptation of Ray Bradbury's story with smart , thoughtful screenplay by Harry Essex who distinguish with snappy pacing, a genuine heartfelt enthusiasm for the genre, and plenty of scary atmosphere and eerie events. The picture contains supremely suspense , thrills , tension , spooky scenes and acceptable special effects by that time . It deals with outer space creatures taking over the bodies of earthlings and was the first time to utilize this issue , subsequently ordinary theme on the science fiction genre . Moody black and white cinematography by the cameraman Clifford Stine . Solid acting by Richard Carlson usual actor in sci-Fi genre and a gorgeous Barbara Rush . This exciting Sci-Fi results to be a classic picture of the golden age of the 50s along with ¨Them¨ , ¨Forbidden planet¨, ¨Invaders from Mars¨ , ¨War of the worlds ¨ ,¨Destination moon¨ , ¨Earth vs flying saucers¨ and ¨When worlds collide¨, among others . The motion picture is well directed by Jack Arnold in his first foray into the Sci-Fi genre. He reigns supreme as one of the greatest filmmakers of 50s science , achieving an important cult popularity with classics as "The Creature from the Black Lagoon," and its follow-up titled "Revenge of the Creature" that was a nice sequel . "Tarantula" was likewise a lot of amusement . "The Incredible Shrinking Man" attained his greatest enduring cult popularity , it's a thought-provoking and impressive classic that's lost none of its power throughout the years . Arnold's final two genre entries were the interesting "Monster on the Campus" and the outlandish "The Space Children¨ . And of course ¨It came from outer space ¨ that still hold up today . It's followed by an inferior remake (1996) for TV . -
phubbs21 February 2019Well here we are again with another Ray Bradbury story ('The Meteor') given the big screen treatment. But this time the movie just happened to be the first 3D release by Universal International, the first movie in the big 3D science-fiction wave of the 50's. Not only that the picture was directed by the one and only Jack Arnold who was no stranger to this genre. What could go wrong?
Well first things first, the plot is kinda unexciting to be honest. You're stereotypical smartly dressed (dare I say...white) leading couple happen to spy a meteor as it crashes to Earth...once again in the deserts of the American West. Of course it isn't a meteor but a crashed alien spaceship, of course. The duo try to explain this to the locals but no one believes them and a rockslide has since buried the ship. Soon enough various locals start to disappear and then reappear but in a zombie-like state. This eventually leads to the Sheriff believing the story and delving deeper.
Having tracked down the entrance to the crashed alien ship through a mine, our protagonist attempts to communicate with the aliens before the Sheriff blows them away with his trusty gun. He discovers that the aliens are quite harmless and merely crashed on Earth whilst on route to another destination. They are in fact shape-shifters and take the form of humans they have kidnapped in order to move around and gather the materials they need to repair their ship. The kidnapped humans are not harmed. That's literally it! That is the plot in its entirety.
So as you can imagine the story is the usual slow pace you would come to expect from a picture like this. That's not a bad thing but when the plot is as thin as this it ain't great either. Most of the run time is spent following the protagonists around as they literally drive back and forth through the desert to various locations to speak to various people (usually the same ones!). I swear you see the same locations and backdrops in shots over and over (but I guess the desert does look similar). Yep as with most of these old sci-fi flicks its all desert desert desert.
You'd think the movie might have become more creepy or fun when people start disappearing and reappearing as zombies, nope. People pop up in a zombie-like trance and merely walk around without showing any emotion. Sure the musical score does it best to try and convey pending doom and terror but it doesn't really work. It might have been more interesting to see some kind of mark or defect on the zombie humans to add intrigue. Admittedly you are thinking that the aliens have taken over their brains or killed the humans replacing them with copies, but alas it's not that cool.
The aliens themselves aren't seen much at all. We get a small glimpse of them towards the finale as one leaves the mine. What do they look like? Well they look like large pulsing slimy blobs of veiny jelly with a single big eye slap bang in the middle. They also appear to have tiny arms with claws. I believe they move like snails as they leave a shiny glittering trail of something on the ground as they go.
They basically look like H.G. Blob in 'Futurama' or the pleasure GELF Camille in 'Red Dwarf' (both probably inspired by this movie). Its a good job they are shape-shifters though because their original form would be no good for anything...such as basic construction. Naturally they are also hyper-intelligent and seem to be able to project holograms of themselves or appear in spirit form before people? I dunno. We get these weird sequences from an alien point-of-view as they watch and approach people in the air...or something, like an apparition. Still, they are admittedly quite eerie looking.
Gotta be honest, I wasn't all that impressed with this one. Having read up on it the movie did relatively well and is now seen as a bit of a classic! Personally I don't see this. It's not a bad movie it's just very slow with nothing much to show in the outcome. Heck the movie even carries on for some time after we have discovered the aliens are friendly and merely trying to rebuild their ship, yet still nothing really happens. I mean, there's nothing wrong with the plot, the movie just feels like a waste of time. It feels like maybe it should have been a 'Twilight Zone' episode.
I guess the one highlight in this movie is the fact the aliens are, for once, intelligent friendly. They have to hide their true forms because they know humans would be afraid. They try not to cause panic and alarm (although kidnapping people was a wrong move). In the end the aliens are actually more afraid of humans, or at least alarming humans, than the humans are of the aliens. Although I'm not sure if the aliens are genuinely afraid of Humans simply hurting them, or afraid to allow their technology to fall into Human hands. Inadvertently giving a dangerous aggressive species more potential to cause harm. Not wanting Humans to know of life beyond the Earth.
Anyway, it looks good, well shot, solid acting, and a solid looking alien, but overall so very dull and aimless overall.
4.5/10 -
twanurit29 May 2002This is director Jack Arnold's first science-fiction effort and one of the earliest to use a desert setting. Richard Carlson is very believable as an astronomer who, along with his fiancée (Barbara Rush), witnesses a meteor crash-landing that turns out to be a spacecraft. No one in the small town believes him until disappearances occur. At one point, Carlson discovers his closet has been ransacked and wardrobe stolen!
Arnold uses Theremin music to great effect, the photography is eerie, dialog (by Ray Bradbury) poetic, and the alien is a large crawling mass with one bulging eye that leaves a snail-like trail in its path. Incognito as humans so as not to terrify earthlings with their unique physicality, the aliens are NOT bent on destruction - an interesting precursor to Steven Spielberg's expensive "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977) - even its main titles are also at the end.
In an unconscious insight into social behavior, a scene has Carlson speaking to the sheriff (Charles Drake) while watching a spider on the desert ground ("...Why are you afraid of it? Because it has 8 legs, its mouth moves from side to side, instead of up and down? What would you do if it came towards you?"). The sheriff squashes it. This holds true for animals, as well as people (who have different coloring, etc.), avoiding, ridiculing, harming or destroying, sadly. The classic Twilight Zone episode "Eye of the Beholder" (1960) is a fine example: most of the "monsters" in these science-fiction/horror films just look different than humans, we might be "monsters" to them. This is low-key, intelligent, satisfying drama. Russell Johnson, Joe Sawyer, and Kathleen Hughes co-star. -
Reviews_of_the_Dead16 October 2023This was a movie that I first heard about thanks to the opening song from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It is one that also has popped up on a couple of podcasts that I listened to as well. It is one of the sci-fi films that was referenced there. This went on a list of ones to check out for my Traverse through the Threes for Journey with a Cinephile: A Horror Movie Podcast. Other than that, I didn't know much about this one.
Synopsis: a spaceship from another world crashes in the Arizona desert. Only an amateur stargazer and a schoolteacher suspect alien influence when the local townsfolk begin to act strangely.
We start this off seeing a flaming ball crash to Earth. We then learn that we are near Sand Rock Arizona. John Putnam (Richard Carlson) and Ellen Fields (Barbara Rush) are together. She is preparing to leave when they see the flaming ball go by. They were outside with John using a telescope when it happened. He noticed it crashed near a local mine.
The duo rushes over to enlist the aid of Pete Davis (Dave Willock) who is a pilot. They takes his helicopter to the crash site. John goes down into the crater. It is there he sees what the cause was. He can't explain it, but it looks like a spaceship. There is then a landslide that John must escape from and it buries the ship. It is around this time that Sheriff Matt Warren (Charles Drake), Dave Loring (Alan Dexter) who is a reporter and others come out to the area. John says what he saw and no one believes him. Due to loving him, Ellen does.
The couple has an encounter on the road with seeing something out of this world. They stop but can't find it. The next day and around this same stretch, they come across two guys working on the telephone lines. Frank Daylon (Joe Sawyer) is the boss and his employee is George (Russell Johnson). They hear something strange. These workers head up to see what is causing it while the couple go the other way. The latter two don't find anything and go back the way they came. Our two workers though, encounter something that could be from space.
People start to act strange around town and even Sheriff Warren starts to believe that John might be right. It takes Ellen disappearing to get him to round up a posse of men to save her. John meets with the alien and it tells him what they want. John must decide to let them complete their mission or fight to save the people from the town.
That is where I'll leave my recap and introduction to the characters. Where I want to start then is that I left off things that would fall into spoilers. There isn't a lot to the story here, as it is basic. This runs for 80 minutes as well. Delving into what we get, this is a body snatcher story at the heart of it. This is common for the era. I'm not sure that I fully buy into this being an allegory for communism like Invasion of the Body Snatchers is or at least thought to be. We do have similar elements. An alien comes from space and then it takes over people from the town. There is more to this though that gets revealed later.
What I think is great here is that this is based off a story and treatment from Ray Bradbury. This movie is more critical of humans and our nature. The alien might not be the villain here. Their plan requires them to fix their ship. The people they're taken over are being used to gather supplies. Part of this is that the alien would stand out. These people would be able to move about without drawing attention. The problem is that their loved ones know there is something off about them and that raises the alarm. Their fear is realized when Sheriff Warren gets a posse together to rescue the townspeople. John knows what their plan is and asked to stop them in good faith. He is torn, not knowing if he can trust these extraterrestrials. Something interesting though, John is trying to help them where they aren't giving much of a reason to believe them. That is a bit of an issue I noticed.
That should be enough for the story so I'll go over to the acting. I thought this was solid. Carlson does well as this guy who knows what he's seen but can't prove it. He tries to get Dr. Snell (George Eldredge) to back him up. The evidence isn't there. I thought Carlson's portrayal of the motivations for John were good. Rush is solid as his love interest. She does fall under the power of the aliens, but I like how she does that. It requires showing no emotions. Throughout we saw her doting over John so when the change comes, we know. Drake is good as our 'military' guy. He is no-nonsense and will fight for survival. Other than that, I thought Sawyer, Johnson and the rest of the cast rounded this out for what was needed.
All that is left then is filmmaking. Now I'll be honest, the DVD cover for this made me think this was going to be schlocky. This was a Universal-International film. It is lower budget, but not lower quality. The cinematography was good. This was filmed in 3D. Watching it in 2D didn't detract as they didn't focus so much on making this pop. What they did was natural. The effects were done cheaply, but still practical. I would have liked to see more of the alien. What we did though hit me in the soft spot. I like the effect when we're seeing from the alien's eye. The soundtrack also worked and fit what was needed. Credit as well to the design for giving us an eerie noise simulating the alien.
I'm also going to take a section here to go over things I picked up from watching a featurette on the DVD, Universe According to Universal and watching this a second time with commentary on. What I didn't know was that Universal has been a leader in the cosmic/space horror subgenre. Dropping the atom bomb influenced these movies in the 1950s, which makes sense since it showed us the impressive power of that weapon. There was also the Red Scare and fear of the outsider. The commentary was done by film historian Tom Weaver and he echoes a lot of these things. His wealth of knowledge about this movie and the industry is amazing. He gave me interesting insight into things like Bradbury being upset he didn't pen the screenplay, but also isn't bitter. He was sassy though. There were different things that Bradbury, director Jack Arnold and others wanted to do with this movie. The studio had the final say. It sounds like we wouldn't have seen the alien if not for the studio heads. This was also the first 3D sci-fi film and the first widescreen film to be shot this way. That was impressive. Learning how things were done gives an interesting insight. I'd recommend both if you like this and just want to learn even more. It gave insight that I didn't normally have.
In conclusion, this was a solid sci-fi/horror film from the 1950s. It is light on the latter elements though if I'm honest. The best part here is the story. I love the commentary on humanity and how we might be the dangerous ones. The acting was solid. It brought the characters to life and made it seem like a difference to the ones under alien influence. This was well made. Cinematography and sound design as the bright spots. The practical effects were cheesy, but I love that. Not one I'd recommend to everyone. If you like this era of cinema or sci-fi movies like this, give it a watch.
My Rating: 7 out of 10. -
writtenbymkm-583-90209713 March 2022This is one of those early 50s sci-fi movies that require you to check your brain at the door. It might have made a good entry for Joel and the bots. I found it absolutely unbelievable and actually very annoying. First, you have to believe that incredibly advanced aliens would have made the absurdly stupid mistake of "accidentally" crashing into a planet (Earth). Then you must believe that they not only survived the crash but were able to escape from their spaceship from beneath tons of rubble -- one minute their ship has buried itself in the desert, the next minute they're out of the ship and wandering around. This movie is an example of how aliens are always hideously ugly, and always have super powers that include (of course) the ability to change themselves into anything at all, including humans. These aliens, having "escaped" from their crashed ship, hole up in an abandoned mine to rebuild their destroyed ship, using a few electrical parts stolen from a local hardware store. Must be awfully easy to build an advanced spaceship with a few wires and a screwdriver! Another thing I couldn't believe, the aliens quickly begin abducting humans and holding them hostage in the mine. Why? I didn't get it. Bottom line, I found the entire premise utterly unbelievable. Richard Carlson's hysterics didn't help. Two thumbs down.
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sowr6 February 2001First of all let's get rid of that absurd notion that science fiction films of the fifties were merely a sub-conscious attempt to personify the threat from communism - this is a hackneyed idea, and far from the truth.
This is a thoughtfully crafted film, which like other good science fiction films of this era starts out portraying the aliens as monsters, only to reveal that they are benevolent and superior (how does this fit into the "Red Menace" theory?).
The screenplay was penned by Ray Bradbury and is full of very good dialog and ideas, especially the notion that we are not ready to meet such advanced civilizations. The scenes in the high desert are very atmospheric and creepy, and although the renderings of alien technology at first seem somewhat adolescent, there is a genuine sense of wonder when the internals of the alien ship are revealed. Something missing from today's, blase, computer generated, over the top, excesses.
The 3D is a useless appendage, and not worthy of discussion.
If you like science fiction pre-scifi channel and post-golden age, rent this movie and enjoy the atmosphere. -
AaronCapenBanner31 October 2013Jack Arnold directed this Ray Bradbury story that stars Richard Carlson as astronomer John Putnam, who, along with his girlfriend Ellen Fields(played by Barbara Rush) witness a meteor crash in the desert of Arizona. They go to investigate, and John discovers that it is a spaceship, not a meteor that has crashed, along with a strange-looking alien. Unfortunately, he's the only one that does, and the suspicious local sheriff(played by Charles Drake) is highly skeptical. When two local telephone pole workers(played by Joe Sawyer & Russell Johnson) are replaced by alien lookalikes, John knows that something sinister is happening, and must be stopped... Early science fiction tale is rather good, though does show its age in some ways(a bit melodramatic at times!) Overall though, entertaining and thoughtful.
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Hitchcoc12 December 2016In the desert an alien presence is made known. It looks like a disembodied eye and could have been a cheesy film. What follows, however, is a really intelligent movie where the realities of such a report are made to be realistic. The press is a factor. There is a sense of disbelief by some of the principle characters. Also, there is serious effort to get a handle on what this thing is. As time goes along, we begin to embrace the characters and their needs an wants. And the alien is enough of a mystery to force us to speculate. Most of the outer space personages of the fifties were killing machines rather than sophisticated beings. See this. It's pretty good.
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Red-Barracuda2 November 2017A huge meteor like thing crash lands in the Arizona desert. An amateur astronomer discovers that it was in fact a spacecraft before it is buried by a land slide. As is the way, no one in his town believes him and soon after, various people are replaced by automaton duplicates.
This bit of 50's sci-fi was originally released in 3D during the brief craze for the format at the time. Unlike two other studio releases from 1953, War of the Worlds and Invaders from Mars, this one was shot in black and white and was therefore more likely to have been considered an actual b-movie back in the day. In some ways though it is a more thoughtful feature than either of those two and is not a Cold War analogy in the traditional sense, as while it looks at themes of paranoia and xenophobia it tackles them from an opposite angle than was usual. The ugly looking one-eyed alien is at first presented as a killer monster of the unknown but once we get to understand the its perspective more we begin to comprehend that these beings are in actual fact benign creatures that are far more at risk from hostile elements of human society than we are of them. So I am guessing that the underlying message was one of not judging the 'alien' communists too rashly and to instead try to understand rather than attack and to be wary of lynch mob mentalities in your own back yard. A pretty radical message in those years of the so called Red Menace I would have thought.
It was the first sci-fi film directed by Jack Arnold who would go on to direct others such as the seminal The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). It also has additional kudos for being based on a story from one of science fiction's greatest writers Ray Bradbury, namely 'The Meteor'. So, there is certainly some talent linked to this one. The Arizona desert setting is also really very good and the alien is a memorable bit of design work for its time, with its point-of-view also imaginatively given via what can best be described as 'giant eye view'. There is also some Theremin music, which seems quite par-for-the-course now but which I am sure was pretty original and super-weird back in 1953. Because the story ultimately doesn't have typical alien villains, the dynamic is less suspenseful than is usual but this is offset by the more original cerebral approach to sci-fi which ensures that the film remains more interesting than many similar efforts from its time in other ways. It maintains the unorthodox approach right to the end too, by ending on a credit sequence (replete with images of the main characters to go along with it) rather than starting with one as was traditional, which again shows that they were actively trying for something different here in several ways. -
PimpinAinttEasy1 October 2015Beautiful long shots of barren desserts. And of cars going down empty American highways. Barbara Rush was easy on the eyes. Richard Carlson was sort of an all American leading man. He plays the only sane person in a small desert town which intensely fears the space ship that has landed in the desert.
The bubble like creatures from the space ship were good enough for the time this film was made, I guess.
Like other sci-fi movies of the time (eg. The Day the Earth Stood Still in 1951) the film portrays base human instincts as negative and violent. Even the background score is quite similar to The Day the Earth Stood Still. The movie is based on a story by Ray Bradbury.
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DonRhoden25 July 2005I'll admit I'm a sucker for the atmosphere of old SF B/W movies and B/W movies in general - something that can't be reproduced with the special effects heavy movies of today.
This movie is wonderful. It may have a simple plot, but it is effective at generating suspense and is well made. And the scientist/intellectual protagonist attempting to warn others of the menace from outer space is classic SF.
The locations are also great. The isolation of the Arizona desert...aliens could have landed there a million years ago (and still be there) and we'd have no idea.
Definitely worth a look. -
johno-216 April 2006This was a staple of late night television movies when I was growing up and I've seen this many times. Although not as good as some of the other sci-fi films from the fab 50's this is still a good picture. An object, thought to be a meteor falls into the Arizona desert and weird things start happening. This was the first Ray Bradbury adapted science fiction story to be made into a movie and was based on his story The Meteor. An early film from the career of director Jack Arnold who would go on to make some of the classics of the genre in the 1950's including Creature From the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, This Island Earth, Taranula, and The Incredible Shrinking Man. Even though Jack Arnold became well known with his sci-fi flicks they were still all B-movies and this is only the third film of his directorial career so it's truly a B-movie. amazingly it won a Golden Globe Award for Best Newcomer to Barbara Rush. Rounding out the cast are Richard Carlson, Kathleen Hughes, Russell Johnson and Charles Drake. Screewriter Harry Essex did some good screenplays in his career and wrote for some well-known films like Creature From the Black Lagoon and The Sons of Katie Elder. He had some good material to work with here in Ray Bradbury. I would give this a 7.5 out of 10.
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Libretio2 March 2005IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE
Aspect ratio: 1.37:1 (Universal 3-D)
Sound format: 3-track magnetic stereo
(Sepia)
A small-town astronomer (Richard Carlson) witnesses an alien spacecraft fall to earth in the Mojave desert, but no one believes his claims that alien intruders have stolen the identities of several townsfolk.
Archetypal 1950's sci-fi thriller, rendered all the more luminous in 3-D, which turns the bleak, endless desert into a thing of otherworldly beauty. Carlson is a bland but likable hero (essentially the same character he would play in another 3-D classic, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON), and the plot is a typical mixture of eerie thrills and paranoid fantasy, with a neat structure and predictable outcome. But it's the imagery which lingers in the mind: The huge spacecraft lodged in the side of a mountain, towering over Carlson just before it's buried beneath an avalanche (watch out for those flying rocks!); the humanoid figure which rises out of the desert gloom to flag down a car driven by heroine Barbara Rush; the telephone wires framed against the sky, transmitting unearthly sounds which betray an alien presence. The aliens themselves may induce giggles in today's audiences (they look like a one-eyed blancmange!), but no one can deny the visual impact of Clifford E. Stine's black and white photography (try to see it on the big screen) and Herman Stein's theremin-charged music score (try to hear it in stereo sound). Directed by Jack Arnold.
NB. Projected at 1.85:1 aspect ratio in some venues, though the movie was clearly photographed with Academy 1.37:1 ratio in mind and screened that way in most theaters. -
preppy-329 June 2005A meteor crashes out in the desert near a remote town. John Putnam (Richard Carlson) and girlfriend Ellen Fields (Barbara Rush) see it and investigate. What John finds is an alien spaceship...but an avalanche covers it up. Over the next few days townspeople start to act very strange...like an alien mind is controlling them...
This was originally shown in 3-D. I was lucky enough to see it that way in a theatre back in the 1980s. There was real restraint of it--it didn't come up much. My favorite was when Carlson swung a telescope to the audience--I actually thought it would hit me! And the aliens POV shots had them looking through a bubble--cause it looked good in 3-D.
3-D aside this was a well-made and deadly serious movies about aliens. The script was pretty intelligent--for its era. Also this is the rare sci-fi movie where the aliens were NOT evil. Still they looked pretty gruesome (gave me nightmares as a kid).
Carlson is surprisingly very good--he has some difficult lines but pulls them off. Rush isn't given much to do but look beautiful--which she does well!:) And there's a very funny sequence with Kathleen Hughes playing a blonde bombshell. Also it's fun to see Russell Johnson in an early role before he became The Professor from Gilligan's Island. Nice eerie music score too.
Considered, quite rightfully, as one of the top sci-fi films of the 1950s. Recommended. -
Doylenf16 April 2005Although some of the time it seems like watching a one hour TV teleplay of the sort popular in the '50s, this interesting early sci-fi story by Ray Bradbury has earnest performances (especially from RICHARD CARLSON in the lead) and taut direction with great help from a theremin-flavored musical score for the alien theme.
The special effects are the problem. They seem crude and primitive by today's standards, and yet the film survives this drawback. The B&W photography is stark in portraying a desert setting where a scientist and his girlfriend (BARBARA RUSH) first experience contact with the alien from outer space. For plot purposes, no one in town believes them until the thing starts taking over some of the townspeople, a la INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS a few years later.
The chilling background score by an uncredited Henry Mancini is an added dimension that gives the alien menace a much needed grip on the audience. Richard Carlson plays it all straight and gives a convincing and heartfelt performance as the scientist struggling to make others believe.
Carlson gets nice support from Barbara Rush, Russell Johnson, Charles Drake and Joe Sawyer.
Considering when it was made, this is an interesting early start to the sci-fi films that followed. Bradbury fans won't be disappointed. -
AAdaSC26 July 2009A meteorite crashes into the desert and John (Richard Carlson) and Ellen (Barbara Rush) along with friend Pete are first on the scene. John goes deep into the crash site and sees a spaceship buried in the rubble before things start crumbling around him and he heads back up to safety. The scene is now covered with rubble and no-one believes his story. Furthermore, he believes that some alien life-forms have escaped from the spaceship. They have. And they can take human form which they do. They take up residence in a disused mine-shaft before the finale....
The problem with the film is that there is no suspense. It is never really very exciting. There is a good confrontation at the end between John and Ellen, who is really an alien, in the mine-shaft but that is the only real stand-out part of the film. The aliens are laughably bad when we see them.
Its a film with silly creatures that's OK. It runs its course and that's that - not very interesting really.