Funny thing about this movie. Back when I was a little kid and reading those Crestwood House books about classic monster movies, I would read the list of books on the back of each. It Came from Outer Space was listed right below The Deadly Mantis and I thought that was all one movie: The Deadly Mantis: It Came from Outer Space. It took me a while to figure out that those were two separate movies. (Again, I was a moron when I was a kid.) Another ironic thing about this movie was that it was the first sci-fi movie Jack Arnold directed and yet it was the last one I ever saw: as late as when I was twenty-two. I'd heard a lot about it and read up on it, so I was intrigued. While it's not my favorite of Arnold's movies, I do think it's worthy of being regarded as a science fiction classic.
One quiet night in a small desert town called Sand Rock, Arizona, a mysterious object violent crashes in the near an old mine in the desert. John Putnam, an amateur astronomer, and his girlfriend go to investigate the crater and when John walks down into the center of it, he comes across an enormous spaceship. However, the ship is buried by a rock-slide and John's story is ridiculed by the townspeople, including the sheriff. But his story gains credibility when strange things begin happening in and around the town, including bizarre creatures appearing briefly in the night and people disappearing only to return acting strange and distant. John, being a firm believer, comes in contact with the aliens who tell him to warn the townspeople to stay away while they repair their spaceship. But the hotheaded sheriff's inability to wait may end up dooming the town.
This movie wastes no time in establishing a mood. When you see the familiar Universal-International logo, you're immediately hit by the eerie, theramin-heavy score and the first thing you see is the spaceship flying through the night sky, coming straight at the camera and exploding, revealing the title It Came from Outer Space. As this was Universal's first 3-D film, that must have been a jolting way to start it off. It's not even the actual scene, just a way to introduce the 3-D. The movie also starts right then and there, with no other credits. It's only at the end of the film that you get the credits you expect in a 50's film. That's commonplace nowadays but being a movie from the 50's, that really surprised me about this flick.
One thing this movie does incredibly well is creating an eerie atmosphere. The desert setting is used very well, with many camera pans across it that give you the feeling that something's out there (and, of course, we know something's out there). In one scene, John Putnam describes how, even though the desert looks barren and dead, it's really alive, waiting to swallow you up. In another scene where he joins an electrician who's listening to strange sounds in the telephone wires, John is told that when you work in the desert for very long, you hear and see strange things, like the wind whistling to you and such. Both of these scenes contribute to the atmosphere of the location. The desert has always been a strange place, according to them, but it's now even creepier because we know there's something roaming around out there that shouldn't be there.
The aliens themselves and the effects that come with them are also effectively created. We get many looks at the aliens as they really are: they basically look like walking masses of flesh with one enormous eye in the center. They do have arms, although you can't see them in the DVD release because of the aspect ratio. In addition to their looks, they have rather ghostly properties. They're apparently able to glide around, sometimes fast enough to get in front of moving cars, and when they abduct people, they surround them in mist. They're able to take the form of the people they kidnap, which looks particularly bizarre in one moment when you see the mist one alien creates form into a human hand. However, as would be repeated in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the aliens are not very good at seeming normal when they take human form, talking in robotic, echoing voices and seeming emotionally attached. Another precursor to Body Snatchers is when two women who have romantic attachments to two impersonated men notice how odd their lovers are acting and know something's wrong.
The most unusual effects in the film are the POV shots from the aliens that we often see. It looks downright bizarre, like a pulsating form of tunnel-vision with bubble-like characteristics on either side. (Apparently, this technique was created by blowing a specialized type of bubble around the camera lens.) The aliens also leave glowing, phosphorus-like trails that eventually fade out. So, all in all, the aliens in this film are very bizarre and downright creepy for sure.
The lead character, John Putnam, is played Richard Carlson, who, of course, would also star in Creature from the Black Lagoon the following year. Putnam is portrayed a curious amateur astronomer whose need to discover new and unusual things is piqued to the maximum when the spaceship crashes. Of course, no one believes him when he says he saw a spaceship in the crater, even a scientist whom he studied with. That's when we find out that Putnam has always been treated as an outsider by most of the townspeople because of his radical ideas and this alien business doesn't help his reputation with them. There's also a lot of friction between him and the sheriff, who is very protective of Putnam's girlfriend Ellen, and he doesn't want Putnam to drag her down with him in this alien craziness. But Putnam is undeterred. He knows what he saw and wants desperately to find out what the aliens are and what they want. He eventually does come into contact with them and even though they're wary, they trust him enough to tell him to warn the townspeople to stay away while they repair their ship. He also convinces the aliens to show him their true form and when the eventually do, he's horrified by their hideous look. Now he knows why the aliens won't show themselves and he's determined to not only help them get away but also to save the town from the destruction the aliens will cause if they're attacked.
Putnam is also good enough to enter the mineshaft where the aliens are hiding and try to warn them of the mob that's now coming for them. At first, the aliens feel that they have been betrayed and decide to destroy the town with a powerful weapon they possess. Putnam reasons with them and tells them that if they'll release the people they've taken prisoner, it'll show the mob that they mean no harm. The aliens do so and with that, the mob is stalled, the aliens are able to repair their ship, and leave just as swiftly as they came. The movie ends with Putnamsaying that they're not gone for good; it just wasn't time for mankind and their race to meet. To the very end, Putnam knows that the aliens never meant any harm.
Ellen Fields, Putnam's girlfriend, is played by the lovely Barbara Rush. Even though she, like many of the townspeople, doesn't necessarily believe Putnam when he says that he saw a spaceship in the crater, she does stick by him. She's even a lot braver than most women in these types of movies because when Putnam first goes down into the crater, she tries to follow him but he immediately nixes the idea. She also risks losing her job as a schoolteacher by running around with Putnam, looking for aliens. Eventually, she's captured by the aliens and is imitated by one of them (while wearing a rather sexy dress, I might add). That particular alien actually tries to trick Putnam into falling to his death in a pit in the mine when the aliens believe that he has sent a mob after them. Putnam is forced to kill that alien and she, along with the one imitating Frank, one of the telephone line repairmen, are the only two characters in the film who are killed. The real Ellen is eventually released by the aliens along with the other captured townspeople and rejoins her lover.
Charles Drake plays Sheriff Matt Warren. As previously stated, he's one of the many townspeople who thinks Putnam is crazy when he says he saw an alien spacecraft and doesn't like Ellen being involved with him. Warren does say that he used to know Ellen really well but it's never made clear if they ever had a relationship. Either way, he's very protective over her and doesn't want her to be ridiculed as well. But when strange things start happening that he can't explain, Warren has to face facts that there are aliens roaming around the desert. Unlike Putnam, he doesn't trust the aliens at all and fears that they may be lying, that they're actually planning some sort of attack. Their kidnapping Ellen further complicates things and Warren finally snaps, leading a mob to raid the mine the aliens are hiding in. Even though the mob does kill one of the aliens, they let them leave when their ship is finally repaired.
One thing that's unique about this movie is that the aliens are not evil creatures who've come to conquer the Earth. In fact, they never intended to land here in the first place. Their ship has been damaged, forcing them to make an emergency crash-landing and use their powers of imitation to get the necessary parts to repair it. They know full well that humans would be horrified by the way they look and would undoubtedly try to destroy them. Even Putnam, who is sympathetic to them, is revolted when one of the aliens shows itself to him. After that scene, Putnam has a conversation with Warren that drives home the main theme of the movie: tolerance. Whenever we come across something that we don't understand, we react with fear and destroy it. Putnam points to a spider crawling across the ground and asks Warren why he fears. Then he asks what he would do if it came too close to him. Warren proves Putnam's point by going over and stomping it. He tells him that's why the aliens are doing everything to stay away from the townspeople while they repair their ship. Later when Putnam confronts the aliens in the mine, one alien that has turned itself into him decides to destroy the town because he feels they've been betrayed. He says, "All we needed was time!" and apparently, these fearful humans couldn't even give them that. However, Putnam manages to make the aliens understand that they need to prove that they mean no harm and that's when they set their captives free. The aliens needed to trust one human as much as they needed him to trust them.
This was based on a story by the legendary Ray Bradbury and even though Harry Essex is credited with writing the screenplay, Bradbury's original treatment was actually kept with little changes here and there, while Essex took the credit. He has said that it was always his intent to write a story where the aliens weren't evil but he did give the studio a choice by writing an outline with evil aliens as well as what the final film became. Needless to say, Universal decided to go the more interesting route. Whether or not this was also Bradbury's intent, one who knows film history can't help but derive Cold War paranoia and xenophobia from the movie's story as well. Of course, as I said, three years later Invasion of the Body Snatchers would take the concept and really hammer it home.
The film's eerie music score was composed Herman Stein, Irving Getz, and Henry Mancini, who did many scores for sci-fi movies at that time. As Dimitri Tiomkin had done in The Thing from Another World as well as Bernard Herrmann in The Day The Earth Stood Still, the composers for this movie made extensive use of the theramin, mainly to signal the aliens' presence, even when you don't get the POV shots. There's also a lot of music in this film that you would hear in future Universal sci-fi flicks, like the threatening music that plays when the alien reveals itself to Putnam, the music that plays when the aliens finally leave at the end, and what plays over the ending credits. I'm not sure if any of that music was originally composed for this movie but this is the earliest film I can think of hearing it.
It Came from Outer Space may not have quite the amount of fame and critical acclaim as Creature from the Black Lagoon or The Incredible Shrinking Man but there's no denying that it's an effectively simple sci-fi movie. The characters are likable, the atmosphere is eerie and moody, the alien effects are quite chilling, and there's a great message of tolerance in the movie as well. Not my absolute favorite that Jack Arnold did (that would be Creature from the Black Lagoon) but I think it was definitely good enough for him to establish himself as a great sci-fi director.
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