It Came from Outer Space (1953)

 

It Came from Outer Space (1953)

 

SF all but disappeared in the English-speaking cinema after 1936, seemingly interrureasopted by the more serious business of the then-inevitable WWII (the last major SF release was from the UK, “H.G. Wells: Thing to Come” which devoted almost a third of its running time to an Apocalyptic Prophesy of that coming War).

 

Its return in 1950 was extraordinary fast (after essentially nothing except Juvenile Serials, in that year the USA saw three feature-films pitched at a Grown-Up Audience USA plus two more Juvenile Serials). In 1951, SF was already a major contributing factor to USA cinema production (nine features pitched a Grown-Ups Audiences, another five Juvenile Features or Serials, and the first SF for grown-ups in the new medium of TV with two surprisingly sophisticated Anthology Programs, “Tales of Tomorrow” and “Out There”). This rapid transformation was inevitable because though the Hollywood studios hadn’t seen it, there was already an audience obvious to all others because; even as SF disappeared from the cinemas, it grew in popularity and quality in prose.

 

Though the Horror Genre never disappeared, WWII diminished it value in the eyes of the studios. There had been an incredible string of masterful motion pictures from a single studio we now call the Classic Era of Universal Monsters which stretched from 1923 through 1941. Though the Universal was still cranking them out after then, the product went into remarkably fast decline, reduced mostly to Juvenilia and franchises of diminishing returns. It worth noting that the last truly great one of the Classic Era, 1941’s “The Wolf Man,” was set in then-present-day Whales but made no mention the already-on-going War in Europe.  

 

There was some SF among the Universal Monsters: Mad Scientists, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Invisible Man, and both Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but the film versions were distant from the SF Genre proper and, after 1941, increasingly comedic (during the Classic Era, Jekyll and Hyde didn’t get a Universal film, it was the one Classic Monster they missed, but those two did show up in an Abbott and Costello movie in 1953).

 

1953’s “It Came from Beyond Space” is of historical significance: It’s an early entry in SF’s revival, the redemption of the Universal Monsters, and marked the arrival of Director Jack Arnold, who would define the style and content of ‘50s SF/Horror like no other person.

 

Arnold was working from a screen-story by the already famous SF,F&H Author Ray Bradbury. Bradbury published his first short-story in 1939 at the tender age of 19-years, was winning literary awards by 1947, in 1950 had published his Timeless-Classic SF novel, “The Martian Chronicles,” followed in 1951 by “Fahrenheit 451.”  

 

Here Bradbury gave us Monsters, clearly Villains because they engage in Kidnappings, Identify Theft, and other Deceptions, but it was really a commentary of how our own Paranoias were a greater Threat than reality of having an Enemy. Bradbury’s Monsters were clearly influenced by the Alien Invaders from then-recently published SF novel, “The Puppet Masters” (1951) by Robert Heinlein (the only USA SF writer of equal fame to Bradbury at the time). Heinlein’s work was an explicitly anti-Communist Parable and the threat of the Alien is met with Genocidal Savagery by Heroic Humans. Bradbury took the Monster but rejected the Savage Solution; much of SF is like this, not really obsessed with brand-new ideas (because there really aren’t that many of them) but evolving ones, wherein one Author’s work was quite consciously in conversation with the work of another.

 

Without saying it explicitly so, Bradbury was preaching what is sometimes called the “Reasonable Man Theory” which has its roots in Aristotle’s “spoudaios” and Plato's “lover of wisdom.” It’s an attempt to provide "a better empirical basis for the reflective account of human affairs." This was applied to Cold War Politics through the emergence of Game Theory (wherein it's modified and called "The Rational Man Doctrine") and the recognition that devastating conflict is often avoidable and the best way to achieve that avoidance was to start with the assumption that the opponent has reasonable needs and desires that you must address those in order to achieve one’s own reasonable needs and desires. It’s at the root of the “Truman Doctrine” of “Containment” against the further advancement of the USSR’s recently-expanded Empire.

 

The Truman Doctrine was largely designed by George F. Kennan in 1946 – 47 and the was guiding light of USA Foreign Policy when this film came out and all the way to President Nixon’s Administration.

 

Though the Truman Doctrine was driven by the Reasonable Man Doctrine it was, in fact, was quite aggressive, being the foundation of the thinking behind the proxy-Wars of Korea (the Armistice was signed one month after this film’s release) and later Vietnam (we incrementally escalated there starting 1945 and went full-out War in 1963) wherein it can be summarized as "I'll tolerate you getting this far but no farther, so we intervened on these newish Battlefronts but we didn't intervene in Czechoslovakia's "Prague Spring" of (1968), but still less-Reactionary than the Heinlein novel or what was preached by Real-World USA Generals George Patton and Douglas McCarther, as well as Presidential hopeful Barry Goldwater.

 

The Truman Doctrine’s greatest flaw was that it made no room for long-term resolution of Cold War issues. The Reasonable Man idea was even better reflected in Kennan’s thinking following his public break with the policies he helped create; in 1948 Kennan started preaching “Positive Engagement” with the USSR just at the very moment the Cold War went full-on. This would ultimately cost him much of his stature in the Foreign Policy community because the Joseph Stalin still ruled the USSR and he was a greater Genocidal Monster than even Germany’s Adolf Hitler.

 

The Moralisms of Bradbury’s story was closest to Kennan’s post-1948 thinking. As Kennan was Celebrity Intellectual, Bradbury would’ve read about everything in the last four paragraphs in the newspapers of the day, so, most likely, Bradbury didn’t build his Parable soully on his own inherent Humanism, he was probably conscious of Kennan as he wrote. The films Social and Political themes are clear, but Bradbury’s famous and lyrical Compassion kept the messaging from being brow-beating.

 

Bradbury has said "I wanted to treat the invaders as beings who were not dangerous, and that was very unusual,” He’d offered two story outlines to Universal, one with Malicious Aliens, the other with Benign ones. "The studio picked the right concept, and I stayed on." He was hired to expand on his treatment but he delivered more than asked for, "They got, in essence, an entire screenplay for the grand sum of three thousand dollars, which was my final salary for the four or five weeks I had stayed on at the studio. With the treatment in hand, they fired me and hired Harry Essex to do the final screenplay (which, he told me later, was simply putting frosting on the cake). Why had I made it so easy for him, he asked when I met him later. Because, I replied, I was a fool, and I was in love with an idea - a good combination for writing but a bad one when you find yourself back out on the street supporting a family."

 

1953 was a pretty big year for Bradbury having also gotten an on-screen credit for “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.” In one of those ironies of the absurdity of Hollywood, he got too little credit for this film and too much for the other. As Bradbury was famous, the studio bought the rights to his short story “The Foghorn” (1951) to buttress the marketing of “The Beast from …” but the film was already in production by then and almost no one involved had read Bradbury’s unrelated short story before that point.

 

As was often the case in an Arnold film, the Director also contributed to the final screenplay of “It Came from …”

 

Director Arnold came to Universal as an unknown even though he was already an Oscar-winner for the Documentary, “With These Hands” (1950). When he switched to feature films in 1953 he cranked out three in that single year, two efficient but forgotten Crime Dramas and “It Came from …” which became a Classic. It proved a wonderfully moody film; it was set in then-present-day Planet Earth but infused with an Alienness in almost every frame because of the decision to shoot on-location in the Mojave Desert (thereafter a favorite location for SF films, both Arnold’s and those made by others). This was nicely expressed in one particularly evocative line of dialogue is spoken by a Lineman (Russell Johnson), "You can see lakes and rivers that aren't there and sometimes you think the wind gets into the wires and sings to itself." Critic Phil Hardy noted, "Dark desert roads and sudden moments of fear underline Arnold's ability as a director of Science Fiction films, and Essex's/Bradbury's lines match his images superbly"

 

Though didn’t have a big-budget, it wasn’t a cheapie either, it was shot both in wide-screen and the new gimmick of 3-D (first time employed by a major studio). The somewhat expensive 3-D might have been a mistake as the story really didn’t have the “pitching” (throwing things at the camera) associated with most 3-D films of the day (“Bwana Devil” (1951) and “House of Wax” (1953)) and Arnold wisely played to the story over the gimmick. As most of us saw it of TV in the ‘60s and ‘70s so we were denied the beauty of the wide-screen compositions but also spared the dumb gimmick. Here the two Art Directors must also be credited, Robert Boyle (a favorite of Director Alfred Hitchcock) and Bernard Herzbraum.

 

It begins with a Romantic evening out between a New-Comer to the Small Town of Sand Rock, Arizona, Novelist and Astronomy-buff John Putman (Richard Carlson) and his brand-new girlfriend, long-time Local, and School Teacher, Ellen Fields (Barabara Rush). John’s musings establish the setting, “It's a nice town, knowing its past and sure of its future, as it makes ready for the night, and the predictable morning. The desert blankets the earth, cooling, resting for the fight with tomorrow's sun. And in my house near the town, we're also sure of the future.”

 

Their date is interrupted a Meteor Crash, far enough for their safety, but close enough to be reached by helicopter. The town of Sand Rock was isolated enough to have had its own Bush Pilot, Pete Davis (Dave Willock), and the trio go to the crash-site. Th e Town’s Isolation will prove an essential element of how the plot evolves.

 

Unwisely, John explores the Crater alone and sees that this was no Meteor, but a Space Ship. Unfortunately, he’s the last to get to see it because the Crater walls are unstable and he barely escapes being buried alive.

 

In that scene, and throughout the film, we see Arnold’s mastery of the POV shot. He understood better than many of his day how cinema can alter POV constantly and without confusion, a greater challenge in prose. His compositions are most often rigorously mannered (and this is also apparent in the Acting styles he most preferred) relying on medium shots more than close-ups, putting the audience in the shoes of the Character by stressing the Characters relationship to the environments around them. That’s evident is this scene, but combined with Quick-Cutting we are also allowed a few seconds of seeing through both John’s and the Alien’s eyes.

 

Despite the evidence of the Crash itself, John’s testimony of the Space Ship is met with skepticism.

 

Paranoia takes root as Townspeople start to disappear, and when they return, they are behaving bizarrely. Soon the Skepticism of John’s story disappears and many deduce correctly that the missing had been kidnapped by Aliens and replaced with Doppelgangers. Sheriff Matt Warren (Charles Drake) intends to meet this Threat with the maximum available Force (no more than a Posse armed with shotguns and dynamite) but John wants to communicate and hopefully Negotiate. Even though John’s initial assessment was redeemed, but he's still an Outsider in the tightly-knit Community, so his less-violent ideas are dismissed.

 

An important expression of the intelligence of the film is that Matt is cast as a Villian by circumstance, but there’s no Villainy in him, nor is he irrational; the film offers two choices, both logical, follow John or follow Matt, John is right and Matt is wrong, but there’s no handwringing in that fact.

 

The Aliens are admirably Alien-looking, not men in Rubber-Suits but jelly-fish-like and with one giant eye. The design was bold in its day but beyond the reach of the FX team (credited to Davis S. Horsely and Roswell H. Hoffman) so it was wisely, mostly, kept in the shadows but unfortunately not nearly enough so. Bradbury complained, “...the studio couldn't resist shoving back in some of their bad ideas. I warned them not to bring the ‘monster’ out in the light - ever. They ignored my advice. The bad moments in the film come when the monster does just that: stops being mysterious, steps out, and becomes a laugh riot."

 

The Aliens extreme bizarreness is a Plot-Point, John knows that there is no way he could bring the Aliens, already guilty of Aggression, to the already scared Townspeople; the Townspeople who could only react with disgust and violence. In a telling scene, John tries to explain the Alien’s dilemma to Sheriff Matt by pointing to a spider and asking what Matt would do if the spider reached out to embrace him.

 

Matt steps on the innocent spider.

 

John learns from the Aliens that the Space Ship Crashed by accident and the Kidnapped Townspeople are being held, unharmed, while the Aliens Shapeshift into those forms to enter town and gather materials for the Repair work. Seeing that the Aliens are in a vulnerable position, John was confident that should they be allowed to Repair their Ship; they seem not to want to Conquer and they should be allowed to leave in peace.

 

Given the film exploited the Xenophobia, specifically referencing the metaphors associated with Communist subversion, that were flooding the consciousness of the USA, it resolves itself with impressive optimism. The threatened Blood-Bath doesn’t take place though two Aliens do fall to the hands of the Mob, and the Captured Humans are safely returned to their loved ones.

 

The film ends with John saying to Ellen that the Aliens will return, and that’s a good thing, “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."

 

As often the case in Universal’s less-expensive productions, the excellent score was provided by many great Composers working piece-meal and ultimately un-credited. Here, the bits and pieces were Composed by Irving Gertz, Henry Mancini, and Herman Stein and under the Supervision of Joseph Gershenson, also uncredited. This was just one more indication of how Universal disrespected its ‘50s SF/Horror films (though Universal did this to all their lower-budget films, regardless of Genre) that proved so triumphant for them, and why their new-born edge over other studios would disappear after 1957.

 

Mancini wrote of his time at Universal, where he did many scores and was never credited, “… composers Frank Skinner and Hans Salter … were given complete pictures to score … at my level … we … were assigned the overflow, several of us working on various parts of the same picture. Joe Gershenson would call in Herman Stein and me to look at a picture ... [and we] would decide where the music would go … I would get my five reels and Herman his five. If the love theme fell in his half of the picture, he’d write it. And if he used it in the first half of the picture, I would use it in the second half … you’d go to the library and [say], ‘Give me the music from so-and-so and so-and-so’—pictures you thought might have some things you could use. You’d get a big stack of music by eight or ten different composers and proceed to create a score out of it.”

 

This score was part of the trend to use newly-invented electronic instruments, in this case the Ondes Martenot, to create the unworldliness that SF requires. Though that instrument never became as famous and the Thermin, it certainly was a competitor in quality.

 

Still, over-all, this only-modestly-budgeted feature was mostly treated well by the Studio. Arnold had been given two choices regarding the Alien design and chose the more Alien of the two. The other was more Humanoid, but also more Horrifying, and used for the "Metaluna Mutant" in the later and bigger-budgeted “This Island Earth” (1955, and Arnold had a role in that production as well).

 

It was a quality film and its take on ideas that were simultaneously new and quickly becoming cliché and that was clearly part of its success. Its box-office exceeded some of Arnold’s later and superior films.

 

Actress Rush so impressed Critics she won a Golden Globe for Most Promising Female Newcomer, likely in response to her distinctive double-role, the appealing Ellen and her more attractive, but sinister, Doppelganger.

 

Richard Carlson already had a niche, he was cast in films for his ability to project Intelligence and Integrity, essentially the perfect for the 1950’s highly-mannered Heroes, and this would lead to his type-casting in many of the stylistically similar SF that followed. Unlike many other type-cast Actors who were parodied by the Filmmakers who grew-up on these films, Carlson’s performances couldn’t be brought down it being mocked of by the Character of the Professor (played by this film’s Russel Johnson) in TV’s “Gilligan’s Island” (first aired 1967)  the way our view of Bela Lugosi’s cinema is now filtered through the spoof Character of Count Von Count (Jerry Nelson) from the Children’s TV show “Sesame Street”  (show first aired 1969, Character first appeared 1972).

 

It received mixed reviews, the best that any SF of the day could hope for. On the positive side was Variety, "Direction by Jack Arnold whips up an air of suspense in putting the Harry Essex screenplay on film, and there is considerable atmosphere of reality created, which stands up well enough if the logic of it all is not examined too closely ... [the] story proves to be good science-fiction for the legion of film fans who like scare entertainment well done.”

 

Meanwhile, the New York Times complained, "the adventure ... is merely mildly diverting, not stupendous. The space ship and its improbable crew, which keep the citizens of Sand Rock, Ariz., befuddled and terrified, should have the same effect on customers who are passionately devoted to king-sized flying saucers and gremlins.”

 

But the Times did praise Arnold’s compositions, noting how Arnold avoided endless pitching to justify his 3-D, “As viewed through polaroid glasses, scenes from high on an eminence in the desert gave impressions of depth and true vastness, as did some medium shots of the principals against a backdrop of mesas and grotesque cactus.”

 

Over the next few years, Arnold’s redemption of the Universal Monsters was driven by all-new Creatures, but the popularity of any Genre is inevitably full of Generational memory, and every revival of popularity of any Genre is full of nostalgia. Universal’s Classic Era Monsters would soon get their revival in the form of remakes by UK’s heavily Gothic Hammer House of Horror. That coincided, probably not coincidentally, with Universal turning their back on Arnold’s SF/Horror.

 

Soon, Arnold’s Monsters would evoke the same nostalgia as those of the Classic Era. The play-then-film “Rocky Horror Picture Show” (1973 & 1975) included this film in its list of Classic ‘50’s film in its opening song “Science Fiction Double Feature.”

 

Not long after, Writer Bradbury attended a screening of
“Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977) and was approached by its Director Steven Spielberg:

 

Spielberg: "How did you like your film?"

Bradbury: "What?"

Spielberg: "Close Encounters wouldn't have been born if I hadn't seen ‘It Came from Outer Space’ six times when I was a kid. Thanks."

 

Given Spielberg’s age, he grew up watching “It Came from …” on TV, just like I did.

 

Still later, the film “Night of the Comet” (1984) was brimming with references to ‘50s SF cinema, this film among them.

 

The “92 Degrees” (1986) by the band Siouxsie and the Banshees samples this film’s sound-track.

 

Finally, a sequel was made, “It Came from Outer Space II” (1996) which wasn’t actually a sequel, but a remake. I haven’t seen it, but it’s generally disregarded. 

 

Then came “Alien Trespass” (2009) a Homage/Parody that was quite good and framed some shorts very carefully after the original.

 

Trailer:

It Came From Outer Space (1953) Official Trailer Movie HD - YouTube