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Post by wmcclain on Jun 18, 2019 12:13:28 GMT
It Came from Outer Space (1953), directed by Jack Arnold. I have an enduring fondness for 1950s science fiction movies, no doubt because I lived on them when young. Universal's titles, often directed by Jack Arnold in the California desert, were central to the genre, and this one played almost continually on TV back then. I think it's one of the best. I love the eerie theramin ambience and admire the boldness of having totally non-humanoid aliens. Barbara Rush is exceedingly beautiful and actually lethal in an evening gown. She screams as required. From a story by Ray Bradbury and he wrote the screenplay but didn't get credit. You can hear his dialogue in a few places, such as the musings on the desert by the linemen and prospectors. It was commended for its restrained use of 3D. I saw a 3D showing once and found the effect gimmicky, but I'm the wrong person to consult about that art form. I think the composition and photography are quite nice. The mixture of location, studio, and rear projection shots can be annoying, but in this case I think the mix contributes story-telling power. The DVD has a busy commentary track by a SF film authority. I thought he said that this was a widescreen picture, but I can't find references to it being other than 1.37:1. He also debunks the notion that this is a rare SF picture with benevolent aliens; they were not uncommon back then. On the other hand, these visitors don't give many reasons to trust them and he thinks our hero Richard Carlson is nuts to do so. While preparing this I heard that Ray Bradbury had died. He was an incredible writer. His Something Wicked This Way Comes was one of my favorites way back then and very strange: don't the boys climb a tree to watch an orgy? How did that get into the school library? I didn't read Dandelion Wine until I was an adult.
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Post by taylorfirst1 on Jun 18, 2019 16:15:30 GMT
I also grew up on 50's SF and totally love the genre. This is certainly one of the best.
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Post by teleadm on Jun 18, 2019 17:06:03 GMT
I remember liking it when I finally got to see the whole movie. We had one of those 8mm best of movies for a silent home movies projector.
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Post by wmcclain on Jun 18, 2019 17:32:23 GMT
^ Did you wonder why the film had nothing to do with the cover art?
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Post by teleadm on Jun 18, 2019 17:48:05 GMT
^ Did you wonder why the film had nothing to do with the cover art? My memory is a bit dizzy on the subject, but I think there were several Science-Fiction movies that had the same cover, and that they just changed the titles. The alien looks more like it belongs to This Island Earth 1955, now when I look closer on the cover.
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Post by hitchcockthelegend on Jun 19, 2019 7:52:37 GMT
Because you don't understand it, you want to kill it.
An alien ship crashes into the desert, at first it's thought to only be a meteorite, but small time scientist Richard Carlson gets to view the stricken ship before it is totally buried beneath the collapsing crater it created upon its crash landing. Nobody believes Carlson, but soon the aliens start taking on human form and it's then that everyone else must sit up and take notice before it's deemed too late.
It Came From Outer Space stands as one of the better sci-fi pictures to come out of the Cold War 1950s. Based on the Ray Bradbury story "The Meteor", the story leans heavily on anti-conformist themes and confidently trumpets something different to ourselves actually having the damn right to be different, and that is something I can personally truck with. As with most of the other films from the sci-fi/alien genre, It Came From Outer Space perfectly captures the paranoia of the people, the sense of mistrust befitting the atomic age, the fear of the desert never more evident than it is here.
Directed with some style from Jack Arnold (This Island Earth/The Incredible Shrinking Man), the film was originally shot in 3D, and though sadly I have never been able to see the picture in that format, I can certainly imagine greatly the impact of that certain scenes would have had. The picture is also notable for the use of POV shooting from the alien perspective, all fuzzy focus from a spherical single eye, it works real well and would be something that many other film makers would use from here on in. This is not a film that relies on its creatures to see it home safely, in fact we barely glimpse the creatures here, but we don't need that to be the case, for they make their mark regardless, all of which leaves It Came From Outer Space as a very knowing and quite often intelligent piece of work. 8/10
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