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 A rocket ship flashes across the sky, witnessed only by a scientist and school
teacher. No one believes them since the ship gets buried in landslide. Then
"strange events" and "unearthly sounds" happen. The aliens escape from their
ship and the scientist learns that they have the power to be invisible "mists"
or any other shape, including humans. The aliens also have kidnapped some of
the people from town. "Can he save the rest of the world from these bizarre
celestial beings? Can he save himself?" 1953, 81 minutes, VHS
I've always liked to call It Came From Outer Space, the warmup picture for Creature From The Black Lagoon. One year before the Creature first menaced scantily (for 1954) clad chicks
in his smelly lagoon, director Jack Arnold and star Richard Carlson teamed-up
to make another 3-D monster movie. This time in place of the lagoon, we had
the equally strange locale of the Arizona desert. Carlson plays a hotshot
young astronomer named John Putnam who lives out in a singlewide near the town
of Sand Rock, AZ. There he makes goo-goo eyes and baby talk to a dark-haired
vixen of a school teacher named Ellen. They're babbling about maybe getting
married and about some egghead articles Johnny has had published by the school
newspaper or something, when all of sudden a big sparkly ball on a string
streaks through the night sky. It lands just over yonder with a terrific
explosion and John thinks maybe that's something right up his alley. The next
day he gets his good buddy with a helicopter to ferry them over to the location
where this thing landed and they see a really big crater. John goes down to
investigate and sees a spaceship or something. There's also a big avalanche
burying the spaceship so when he goes up to tell his friends that martians have
crash-landed, they're all kind of like, "are you on the chronic again Johnny?
Why don't we hold off telling everyone about this, Johnny until maybe you get
your bugged-eyed head out of your space-butt?" So Johnny immediately tells the
sheriff that based on the large round spaceship that he saw, he's fairly
certain that Martians have arrived intending to drink our Keystone and steal
our broads.  Sheriff Matt, like most sheriffs, is an overpaid goober, incapable of doing
much but breathing through his mouth and violating the Fourth Amendment, so
you'll understand it when he makes his concerns about the crashed spacecraft
known. He's worried that Ellen, the sultry desert school teacher, is missing
class. This becomes kind of Sheriff Matt's gimmick. Even though there are
dirty no-good commie space monsters running around the desert, leaving a
shining slime trail, Sheriff Matt keeps harassing Johnny and Ellen about
missing school. You see, ever since Ellen's dad died, Sheriff Matt promised
that he would play the somewhat unseemly role of father/jealous lover. So
you're subject to scenes where Matt rolls up on these two and says, "Ellen, you
need to be at work at the school," and "Johnny, it's just not right keeping
Ellen out here at the spaceship crash site, when the kids of Sand Rock are
waiting for Ellen's take on The Pearl by John Steinbeck." I would say that it is all very disconcerting that the
chief law enforcement officer of Sand Rock, A-Z is more concerned with whether
students at Sand
Rock High have a substitute English teacher than whether invaders from Mars have
landed to snatch our bodies because they need our women. But, at the same
time, education is important, so I guess it comes down to priorities for
Sheriff Matt. Be that as it may, Johnny has been pretty much written off as a
crackpot, when he happens into a couple of telephone linemen. They're out in
the desert checking or repairing lines or doing illegal wiretapping or
something when Johnny and Ellen (why isn't she at the school?) stop by to ask
if they've seen anything suspicious like, say, some slimy aliens that look like
they might have just gotten out of a crashed spaceship. Nope, say the linemen,
the only weird thing is the strange noise on the telephone lines. Johnny takes
a listen and immediately decides that it's verrrrry strange that someone is
trying to call Mars for a tow truck. What's really verrrry strange is that the
younger of the linemen is played by Russell Johnson, whom you may recall as
the Professor on the classic sitcom Gilligan's Island. I kept hoping that a bunch of headhunters would appear and chase everyone
around in really fast motion (like on Benny Hill) until they figure out that
astronomer John Putnam is really their godhead. Man, those were some good
times on that crazy island. Good times.  At some point, Johnny and Ellen (probably an unexcused absence by now) are
cruising around the desert when the have a close encounter of the yucky kind.
They get to see one of these alien things real fast before it disappears and
basically it looks like a giant greasy head with a single eyeball in the middle
and it kind of drags itself around the desert floor like some kind of souped-up
space-slug. They look behind as they drive by and nothing is there! Everyone
continues to think Johnny's some kind of publicity-seeking tard (except Ellen,
but she's his girlfriend so she has to believe him, plus she saw something out there in the car) so we have another run in with the phone people. This
time the Professor seems, different somehow. Maybe it's the utter lack
emotion in his voice as he speaks. Maybe it's how he looks directly into the
sun for several minutes with no ill effects. Maybe it's because Johnny sees
the outstretched arm of the other lineman laying on the ground, extended and
motionless from behind a rock. Johnny may be a crackpot alarmist who does his
Chicken Little act whenever a spaceship crashlands in his backyard, but he
knows when to say, "Okay, Prof, you tell the Skipper to keep it real, but I
gots to get the little lady to work before she gets her ass fired, cause God
knows I'm not exactly going to pay the bills in my capacity as scaredy-cat
astronomer. See ya!" They scram and Johnny tells Ellen that something's just
not right, but now they have all the proof they need that to convince the 5-0
that the alien invasion is ON! As you might have guessed, Sheriff Matt isn't too impressed with all this, but
goes out there anyway. Of course nobody is there except a dead coyote, so
Sheriff Matt glowers at Johnny and leers at Ellen and goes back to town. Soon
though, the linemen are reported missing along with some of their clothing.
Then Johnny sees them in town wandering around and gives chase. He corners
them in a doorway (so I guess they're aren't really cornered per se and could
have just kept on going into the door) and they give him the lowdown. You know
the drill: advanced alien race, transmission went out, not under warranty,
crashland, just want to fix ship to fly back to FancyPlanet, earth people not
ready to meet us yet, so bug off hu-mon! Johnny's like, "ohhhh, so it's going
to be one of those "misunderstood, humans rush to judgment screws up alien
contact" movies and not one of those "paranoid, the aliens are going to take
over our bodies and colonize our planet just like the Commie pinkos want to"
movies. The aliens nod and say, "you got it, Chief. Now get going, we've got
to
steal your girlfriend to ratchet up the suspense since otherwise this movie
would be about some space-greasemonkeys rebuilding an engine or something."
Sheriff Matt and Johnny then have one of these testosterone drenched
confrontation when Sheriff Matt spots one of the linemen and decides he's going
to bust his head open for stealing Ellen. Johnny is an alien apologist and says
to leave them alone and let them steal whatever car parts they need because
once they get their ship fixed, they'll fly home and never tell anyone where we
are so that our world could be plundered of its riches. At one point, Johnny
gets this blast off on Sheriff Matt: "Stop being a badge and start being a
human being!" Suh-weet! Then they brawl for awhile, then Johnny leaves and
Sheriff Matt immediately forms a mob of angry villages (pitchforks on your
left, torches are in the back!) to go out and shakedown the aliens.  It's a race to the old mines where the ship crashlanded. Johnny's already been
here earlier and had a face to face with the aliens about stealing his babe.
Somehow the aliens can assume any form they want to, but are unable to make
clothes, so they have to steal clothes whenever the decide to impersonate
someone. That explains why all these people have been acting so strange!
Everyone is safe, it's just their clothing that's in peril! Well, Johnny goes
into the caves and finds the ship up on a hoist being serviced by a bunch of
aliens and even sees a double of himself. He manages to rescue the people that
need rescuing, runs out to the front of the mine and asks someone if there's
any dynamite laying around. As is the case with most abandoned mines, there's
a whole box of dynamite marked with a sign saying "In case of alien invasion,
dynamite mine." So he dynamites the mine and seals it off from the outside.
He, Ellen, Sheriff Matt, and a mob of angry villagers watch as the ship blasts
off from the ground and off into space. This was a cut above the usual monster
from outer-space movies of the era, probably because it's from a story by Ray
Bradbury. He, along with Arthur C. Clarke, are probably the best at eschewing
the conventions of the genre and actually try to communicate some type of ideal
in their work. Obviously, this movie has been kind of dumbed-down for the
Saturday matinee crowd, with it's cheesy monsters and one-dimensional
characters, but I'll still give it points for not going the standard route.
There's obviously some body-snatching involved in a way, but it's not for the
purpose of conquering Earth or enslaving our minds. It's just so these guys
can get over to the NAPA store to buy an alternator. Their landing was an
accident and they can tell that we are still filled with a fear of the unknown
and petty prejudices of all things different. They want to leave unmolested
precisely because they don't want to be forced to waste us (thanks guys!).
Things even end on an up note with the aliens leaving, everyone getting rescued
and Johnny babbling about how these slimy bastards will return when we're
ready for them (yeah, with space-based weapons, baby!). Don't get me wrong,
this movie suffers from bad effects, bad dialogue and an exceedingly bland
Richard Carlson, but at the same time the source material is good enough to
elevate what would otherwise be an unremarkable affair. You should also note
that this is by no means Bradbury's best work (check out The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and the best book about the magic of being a kid in the summertime, Dandelion Wine), but I still think it merits a look.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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