It Came from Outer Space (1953)
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It Came from Outer Space Movie Review
It Came from Outer Space is a 1953 science fiction horror film directed by Jack Arnold and starring Richard Carlson and Barbara Rush. It’s one of the most underrated SF flicks from this decade.
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“If we’ve been seeing things,
it’s because we DID see them“
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John Putnam, a stargazer, witnesses a spaceship landing in the Arizona desert, but none of the townsfolk believe him. Horror strikes when residents begin to disappear and it is up to him to solve the case. What he eventually discovers is that the aliens are entirely benign. They just crashed on the planet and want to repair their ship and go back, so they abduct humans to take their form while they search for repairs. It’s a fascinating, highly original story that set itself apart from countless other genre movies from this decade and even afterward.
This treatment of aliens as neither benevolent nor dangerous was ingenious and immensely authentic. They aren’t here to conquer the Earth nor are they here to help humans in any way, shape or form. They are just here by accident and they want to get back as soon as possible. This approach was both believable and unique while also lending itself for interesting themes about xenophobia and ignorance.
The movie’s portrayal of the police as these ignorant buffoons who will stop at nothing to destroy a made-up threat was unfortunately highly accurate and the film cleverly posits through one amazing speech that just because something is scary to us doesn’t mean that that creature is really menacing. Equating aliens to spiders was a brilliant point.
This level of thematic resonance elevated the movie to greater heights, but unfortunately there are some other aspects that held it back considerably. The alien design is a mixed bag for me. while on the one hand it was unique in its almost amoebic form, we rarely see it and they are used too much for the horror effect, thus contrasting awkwardly with the movie’s message.
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The horror elements in It Came from Outer Space are a distraction from its otherwise sophisticated script. But the effects done on those lasers and powers was truly fantastic for its time and those scenes were intriguingly menacing. The character development of the two protagonists was very poor and the acting is far from great, but at least the dialogue remained outstanding throughout and so did the pacing and directing. The movie is also gorgeously shot and very well scored.
