Too much of everything

Awesome Movie

A Disappointing Continuation

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Outside Sand Rock, Arizona, amateur astronomer/writer John Putnam (Richard Carlson) and girlfriend schoolteacher Ellen Fields (Barbara Rush) are stargazing when a meteorite lands nearby. They get their neighbor to fly his helicopter out to the crash site and John discovers a spaceship. An alien had already escaped and a landslide buries the ship. Sheriff Matt Warren is leery of the outsider Putnam who has enticed the beloved Fields. The army and the media dismiss his story as a publicity stunt.The name itself is a sci-fi classic. It immediately invokes an era of 50's sci-fi B-movies. I'm not sure how well the 3-D works. Nobody is throwing things at the screen or coming at the camera. It does have some ghostly projection scenes which I would be curious to see in 3-D. The spaceship design is pretty good with the 50's feel. The creature design is a little odd as a cyclops blob. It's different but it's not great. The sound stage for outside desert work is a little too fake especially since so many scenes already have solid outside shots. The premise is a nicer body snatcher story so the tension is not raised that high. In the end, the alien is not the threat which makes this more akin to a Twilight Zone episode and inspired Spielberg's Encounters.

There were many outstanding 1950's Sci-Fi films as well as many not so outstanding. This is one of the former. It is profound at times but some of the dialog can be clunky. Yet, there are some thought provoking themes here and it is at its best fictionalizing and chronicling the Flying Saucer craze that was emerging and grabbing some headlines in real life.Adding to the mirroring of public awareness at the time is the notion of perceived outside threats, such as Communism, and the Movie asks us to step back a bit and be a little less paranoid and reactive. One line that can be read as an ominous Eisenhower era conformity plea...after witnessing and reporting his UFO sighting the Man gets this reaction from an authority figure..."he's an odd one...he's more than odd, he is an individual, a Man alone, a Man who thinks for Himself."That seems to be a threat to the establishment. But the irony is if everyone was so conforming and acted as a collective, that could be called Communism. But weren't they the enemy. So while deriding the Reds, we are told we should shut up, and walk in step. That's the hypocrisy.This is a creepy Movie and is a lot of fun at the same time. It has a number of glitzy looking sets with some futuristic designed apparatus. There are parts that are darkly lit with eerie shadowy figures and some piercing Music. Some cloned Zombie-Men and an effective use of SFX that try, and mostly succeed at being otherWorldly. While this is an excellent Movie, it can be seen as a precursor to a Great Movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).

First Contact from the Star Trek series explores a lot of the same issues that It Came From Outer Space Does. Of course First Contact was made presumably in this century when the optimistic Gene Roddenberry felt that man would grow up and mature a bit. As opposed to those humans in this small Arizona town who except for Richard Carlson who is an astronomer and writer believe in the old west tradition of shoot first.It Came From Outer Space is set in the paranoid Fifties and Richard Carlson who is courting Barbara Rush along with sheriff Charles Drake is on an outing with Rush when what he believes is a ship crashes to the earth and leaves a nice deep crater hole as it burrows into the ground.Carlson has his problems first authorities don't believe him, second when people start disappearing, everyone goes into panic mode. What's a thinking scientist to do. Remember it's not the scientists who were working on making First Contact that the aliens will be dealing with.These issues are explored and most carefully by author Ray Bradbury who wrote the original story on which It Came From Outer Space is based. The special effects are outmoded and the issue at times is dealt with simplistically, but the message is as strong now as it was six decades ago. I suppose it comes down to will enough of us on both sides of the First Contact be mature enough to handle it and respond appropriately.

For A Sci-fi "B" movie to be great it must be; Interesting, Have great looking aliens, have a good and original storyline and be original.Unfortunately, not all films are like this.This is my review on It came from outer space.The plot goes like this; A spaceship crashes on earth leaving a huge hole in the deserts of Arizona. Only one man,John Putnam, witnesses this and is sure that it is the first stage of an alien invasion. However, nobody believes his claims and he becomes obsessed with trying to prove his point. After excavating the site, John Putnam stumbles across the alien beings and their ultimatum becomes clear...Now don't get me wrong, it was a good flick. However it's flawed by a couple of issues.Firstly, the plot isn't really interesting and all the characters are as dull as could be. The main character, played by Richard Carlson, is very well acted, but lacks interesting qualities. His character seemed to spend most of the time trying to prove his point, which was alright for a while but slowly became monotonous. I know you only really watch B movies like this to see the aliens and, while they are interesting to look at, which I will move onto in a moment, They're "plan" is slightly boring. (Spoiler) They are only on earth because they just crashed and have no interest in invading the planet. I was expecting it was some sort of "fake crash" so that they would secretly crawl out and invade. I no, I'm making a plot line up, but I was sort of expecting something round those lines. The fact that it didn't live up to expectations might be part of the reason why I don't like the film as much as I could have.The Movie is very slow to start off with horrendous "talk" scenes that don't seem to add to the story what-so-ever, apart from how the ship got there etc.Now what was good about it. Although I said the alien's motives were boring, their appearance more than makes up for it. They are completely unique and they certainly stand high in my favourite alien list in terms of how they look. They are huge, rock-like monsters with one bulging eye and large tentacles sticking out. This alone makes the movie worth while.They do have some interesting scenes, especially when they first meet Richard Carlson's character, John Putnam. It's both suspenseful and fun to watch. It came from outer space also had a great ending scene with these aliens that made the film a lot better.Im not going to say the film was horrible, but there were a couple of unimaginative scenes in the movie that seemed either taken from another movie or just to dull to be any good. The film has lots of redeeming qualities that do make the film worth while but there is not enough of them to raise it above my final rating.Im giving It came from outer space a 7/10