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During the climax of The Thing from Another World, the local mad scientist, Dr. Carrington, begs the soldiers to stop the attack. He appeals to the creature's wisdom and knowledge, praying that its plant-kind and mankind could work together. In another movie, this would be the melodramatic turn where empathy and understanding can overcome the differences of two kinds of life. In The Thing from Another World, the monster swats Carrington done and then charges at the heroes. Because Carrington's ideas of "wisdom" are utterly psychopathic, and the monster is only that, a monster.
But anyway, here's that other movie.
1953 has two different alien invasion movies, Invaders from Mars, and our movie, It Came from Outer Space, with the same plot: Our hero spots a flying saucer crash into a deserted part of their small town. Their story is ignored by most authority figures, while slowly, the aliens begin replacing members of the community with disturbing, zombie-like imposters. Eventually the authorities are convinced and the films both end on attacks on the alien bases built deep underground.
We could easily cover both movies for this series, but Invaders from Mars ends on a terrible "it all a dream" ending. That movie is bad. The Eighties remake is also disappointing.
But there is definitely something happening in the Fifties with Body Snatching. To spoil the series, we have a movie coming about certain Snatchers, potentially of the Body variety, possibly Invading. Right after that I want to do Village of the Damned, where again, aliens are infiltrating us secretly, this time right into our families. Before that, there's the second Quattermass movie where space rocks build fascism in Britain. Plenty of writers have speculated how all this fits into Cold War paranoia. In 1953, we are right at the height of McCarthyism, where Americans are terrified that any nice-seeming White family that bakes casseroles and drives Plymouths might also secretly be wiring information to Moscow. Red Panics will continue all the way to the end of the Cold War. In sense that a foreign alien force could subsume humanity into a single collective, a twisted evil modernity, and you'd never notice until its too late.
I have another theory though: alien special effects are expensive. You can save a lot of money if your villain can just be an actor standing rigidly and talking like a robot. It Came from Outer Space does have a few alien special effects, they are quite cool if you can appreciate their cheesy quality. But the majority of the alien "attack" scenes are done through POV. That way you can have your actor react to the monster, give a good scream, as they're taken down by space goo from behind. This movie does that same attack a half a dozen times. Always without needing to pull out the clunky alien prop.
I don't think the prop could move at all, since we see it so rarely. Half the time it is half-invisible, superimposed into the frame, since the aliens have some kind of psychic power. The creature looks cool at least, with a single eye-stalk popping out of its rectangular screen-shaped face. I would describe the appearance as a fleshy Dalek. We also get a better look at the alien ship this time. Which is not the classic flying saucer. Instead it is a ball with a hexagonal pattern and hexagonal port holes. We get a decent effect of the ship crashing and an even cooler special effect scene of it taking off at the end.
Anybody born post the Kennedy Administration will struggle with the dated aesthetics of this era. You have to grade on a curve with black and white films. That said, I like the vibes of It Came from Outer Space. Jack Arnold is an effective horror director of this period, his work is efficient. He will go on to make Creature from the Black Lagoon and then Tarantula, a movie that feels like a stealth remake of Outer Space in terms of plot. Arnold makes the most of the desert as a place of mystery. There's something creepy about our heroes all alone in the vastness, knowing something is out there, something watching them. Strange noises traveling down the telephone poles is a solid spooky concept, no matter what year it is.
This story is about John Putnam (future Black Lagoon star Richard Carlson), an amateur astronomer and writer distrusted by his community. He's dating Ellen (Barbara Rush), who is over John's house alone, doing nothing at all un-chaste, when the aliens crash down. The local sheriff (Charles Drake) also has an interest in Ellen, complicating matters. John is quickly laughed away as a crackpot when he starts talking about alien spaceships. He shouts against skeptics, demanding a "willingness to believe that there are lots of things that we don't know anything about", before going on a rant about how once upon a time people believed the Earth was flat. Eventually John also becomes the only person in town willing to even talk to the aliens. The sheriff is instead gathering a lynch mob, trading disbelief for xenophobia with ease.
It Came from Outer Space was written by Ray Bradbury, a SciFi legend, who would unfortunately evolve/reveal himself to be a libertarian conservative. Bradbury had quite an interest in solitary man of reason versus the empty-minded barbarism of society plots. Fahrenheit 451, he was at great pains to say multiple times in his life, was not about government censorship, but a screed against willful ignorance. That sort of individualism can be great if you're fighting the mob mentality of anti-communist witch hunts. It is also a sword against any kind of collective action. One can see how late in life Bradbury ends up libertarian and basically a Tea Party guy.
It Came from Outer Space at its heart is a horror movie about overcoming xenophobia. We get the Star Trek ending. At the end, our hero gets to fight off both alien ray guns and a posse of dumbass rednecks who could accidentally blow up the Earth if they shoot the wrong gizmo. The aliens are strange, they kidnap lots of characters, including Ellen - who they impersonate in a low-cut little black dress. However, no humans are actually hurt. All they want is to get out of here. This is no invasion, it's a wrong turn. They just need to a few hours and some tools to get their car started.
"It wasn't the right time for us to meet. But there will be other nights, other stars for us to watch. They'll be back."
Next time! An early cosmic horror film! Can the Brits do better with alien invasions in The Quatermass Xperiment?
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