s a generation of ex-G.I.s settled down across America at the onset of the 1950s, the real-life horrors they expe- rienced overseas were increasingly
sublimated onto movie and drive-in screens. With the start of the UFO sighting craze, most genre films of the decade were content to transplant the battle- fields of Europe to the stars – a virtual continuation of America’s determination to stop a hostile enemy – while a few brought in extraterrestrial scholars to scold us for unleashing the destructive power of the A-bomb. But not so with Jack Arnold’s It Came From Outer Space (back on DVD as part of Universal’s 100th Anniversary reissue campaign), a film just as interested in delivering eye-popping 3-D effects as it is with trying to depict the difficult adjustment to post-war peace. One of the most hopeful alien in- vasion films of the 1950s, it’s a rare entry that rises above the moralizing tone and military bravura of its peers by shifting the source of the horror from the unknown outside of us to the unknown in all of us. Unlike the extraterrestrials in other big-budget in-
vasion films that hit theatres in 1953 – The War of the Worlds and Invaders from Mars – It Came From Outer Space’s fantastically clunky eye creatures aren’t interested in enslaving society or destroying humankind, they just want to get off the planet with minimal fuss. While out enjoying the cool night air with his fiancée Ellen (Barbara Rush), sci- entist John Putnam (Richard Carlson) spots a meteor ripping across the sky and plowing into the desert. Upon ar- riving at the crash site, Putnam de- scends into the crater and glimpses a real UFO before it is covered by a rock slide. No one in town believes his claims, especially the hard- headed local sheriff (Charles Drake). But when two telephone repairmen return from the desert acting peculiar, Putnam dis- covers the aliens’ true reason for being there: their landing is simply an inconvenient stop for repairs on the way to a more important destination. The film, developed from a script originally
penned by Ray Bradbury, takes a surprisingly nu- anced approach to the aliens. As a scientist, Putnam is determined to reach a mutual understanding with
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by Paul Corupe
the extraterrestrials and herald their arrival, but he also realizes that if he does manage to save his rep- utation and convince the locals of a UFO, they may take unneeded violent action to protect themselves against the perceived threat. As the source of the tension switches from the possi- bility of interstellar battle to whether Putnam will be able to stall the townspeople long enough to ensure that the aliens can blast off safely, it’s clear that the horror in the film isn’t from the invading creatures, but in the erratic and ir- rational way that humans view and deal with potentially danger- ous threats. To this end, It Came From Outer
Space is strongly focused on see- ing beyond preconceptions and gaining perspective on the con-
flicts of the past, and the film is stacked with refer- ences to eyes and seeing. It’s a theme that carries through from the prominent alien peepers on the film’s poster to Bradbury’s dialogue, such as when Putnam’s early reports of seeing the aliens inside the UFO (itself resembling an eye with an iris-like opening) are immediately dismissed as “seeing
things.” (“If we’ve been seeing things, it’s because we did see them,” counters Ellen.) Additionally, a se- ries of point-of-view shots from the aliens’ wobbly sightline puts the viewers in the invaders’ slimy shoes as they kidnap – but do not harm – the nec- essary townspeople to finish their repair job; these scenes cleverly force the audience to sympathize with the aliens’ viewpoint and experience firsthand how they’re regarded by the locals. “If you want peace, prepare for war,” reads the
old proverb, but even as the world began to draw on its lessons from World War II, Arnold and Bradbury remained firm in the belief that antagonistic atti- tudes and fear-mongering breed conflict. Putnam knows that those who see everything as a threat en- danger not only others, but themselves as well and, as such, he looks to the stars for salvation. But his final speech in which he hopes that the aliens will return one day when these conclusions are fully ab- sorbed is as short-lived as the film’s progressive ap- proach was. As successors such as It Conquered the World (1956), Earth vs. The Flying Saucers (1956) and The Crawling Eye (1958) soon proved, audi- ences preferred to get their big-screen shivers by seeing the ways we’re misused and abused by ag- gressors rather than the ways we might mistreat others.