BONUS BLOG -- 1959: THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL

What’s it about?

Coal miner Harry Belafonte is trapped when the shaft he’s inspecting caves in, and five days later help still hasn’t arrived. He manages to dig himself out, but upon emerging on the surface he finds an apparently empty world. Driving to New York City, he sees the same emptiness everywhere -- abandoned cars jam the Brooklyn Bridge and the Lincoln Tunnel, but otherwise there is no sign of any people or what happened to them. Eventually he learns that a poisonous radioactive dust was released into the Earth’s atmosphere during a quick-brewing nuclear war. It engulfed the planet and killed everything within days (including most animals and plants) but then decayed into harmlessness in the five days before he surfaced.

The lone survivor sets up base in an apartment building in New York -- hooking up a generator, collecting food, searching for other survivors via shortwave radio, and rescuing books and pieces of art from the crumbling city. Unlike most last men on Earth, this one doesn’t have any zombies or mutants or even feral animals to deal with. He is literally alone (except for a couple of mannequins) until two other survivors also arrive. First a woman and then another man show up in New York, and they form an uneasy community where racial and sexual conflicts whirl just below the surface until they erupt into a final confrontation.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

Unfortunately, I watched this in probably the worst possible venue to see any movie. It was playing near the end of a 24-hour science fiction marathon, and even though I showed on purpose to see this particular movie, most of the rest of the audience were exhausted after an all night/all day vigil and could have cared less about some forgotten movie from the fifties about the end of the world. It’s a bit difficult to assess the quality of a movie that was continuously interrupted by snide comments and snores, but overall I thought it was pretty well done. It’s much more of a B-picture than ON THE BEACH, but this one is also more interested in the speculative aspects of the end of the world.

Regarding the apocalypse itself, a lot of seemingly important details are glossed over or ignored entirely. For instance, Harry Belafonte never encounters a single corpse and it’s never explained where they are all supposed to have gone. (Presumably the MPAA censors picked them all up -- yet 1960's THE LAST MAN ON EARTH is another end-of-the-world picture from just one year later that is rife with dead bodies.) It’s also not clear exactly how much of the Earth’s wildlife has been killed. Characters are ecstatic that a couple of tree branches still have enough life to blossom, but a very obvious flock of birds passes without any comment in another scene. But if you’re able to ignore all the hanging whys and hows concerning the nuclear attack itself, the movie does become a pretty gripping tale of lone survivors in a dead world. Harry Belafonte spends a lot of time by himself in the Big Apple, dealing with loneliness. (There are some neat shots of an abandoned Times Square here, just barely preempting I AM LEGEND by a mere fifty years.) Likewise, the relationship between the man and the woman is developed slowly -- and they just seem to be getting comfortable with each other when the third survivor shows up and introduces an entirely new dynamic.

Much of the first two-thirds of the movie does feel a bit familiar since it’s territory that’s been gone over so many times since 1959 -- but that’s no fault of THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL. But one interesting wrinkle (and part of the point of the movie) is the racial element. Harry Belafonte is black and the other two survivors are both white. Even when Harry Belafonte and the woman are seemingly completely alone in the world, they still share an uneasy understanding that they won’t be repopulating the world together any time soon, even though they are attracted to each other. This is frustrating to a modern viewer, but the characters seem unsure what the rules of the new world will be when other survivors eventually show up. And frustrating or not, it does point out how deeply some conventions can be ingrained in people. It is in fact the arrival of the white man that forces them to honestly face their feelings. The rapid descent of the two men into competitiveness and then violence is fairly predictable, but it’s never totally clear how things will resolve themselves until the final shot of the movie.

1959: ON THE BEACH

What’s it about?

American submarine commander Gregory Peck brings his boat to harbor in Melbourne after the northern hemisphere is wiped out by nuclear war. But the Australian refuge is only temporary, as winds are expected to sweep lethal radioactive dust across every part of the globe within five months. While ashore, Gregory Peck strikes up a friendship with lonely party girl Ava Gardner -- but memories of his wife and family cause him to reject her romantic advances.

Meanwhile, the remnants of the military command send the submarine on a last-ditch mission to investigate wireless signals broadcasting from the vicinity of San Diego. Young Aussie lieutenant Anthony Perkins and scientist Fred Astaire accompany the submarine’s crew on the mission -- but all the while time slips by and hope dwindles, and the crew feels the pangs of being separated by duty from the rest of humanity during their last months.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

No movie that stars both Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire can be all bad. And Ava Gardner and Anthony Perkins (looking his gangliest and most baby-faced) are no slouches in the acting department either. The story and dialogue sometimes drift into maudlin and formulaic territory, and the movie is quite a bit longer than your average sci-fi flick. But the actors are mostly terrific, the characters are interesting, and the premise is so grim that I only occasionally got restless. The movie is not exactly your average sci-fi movie and not exactly your average Hollywood romance -- and even though it won’t win any prizes in either category, the mixture is unique enough to be interesting.

ON THE BEACH is also one of those restrained and dignified science fiction movies where characters barely seem to want to mention the fantastic elements. Fred Astaire talks a little about the nuclear war that brought the world to the brink of destruction, but always in vague terms. In fact, nobody in Australia is even really sure who started the war or why, and it’s never explained exactly what kind of weapon poisoned the air. The movie is also only intermittently interested in how an entire nation would react to its own impending destruction. There’s some occasional speculative flashes -- most notably, the government plans to hand out suicide pills so people can spare themselves the horrors of radiation sickness. But otherwise, the movie seems to think that people would just go on doing the same things they’ve always done, only more grimly and sardonically.




The effects of radiation sickness are also never really shown. The symptoms are described, but there aren’t any scenes of hospital wards full of the afflicted. Nor do we ever see any dead bodies -- though, to be fair, there’s no reason for there to be any corpses in Australia yet, and a crew member who goes ashore in San Francisco does describe what he sees. But primarily the movie is concerned with only a handful of personal reactions to the coming catastrophe: Gregory Peck is duty-bound, Ava Gardner is heartbroken, Fred Astaire is fatalistic, Anthony Perkins is soulful. It’s all more or less what you’d expect, but it’s a good enough movie (and, in places, a dark enough one) to be worth watching. It’s also unusual in the sense that there aren’t too many movies from the 1950s that had both all-star casts and sci-fi themes.

Finally, I’d say something about the Australian location, but I can’t really comment on its authenticity. I can report that there aren’t any Crocodile Dundee caricatures -- the Aussies all seem fairly normal and civilized. In fact, they greet the coming eradication of life on their continent with admirable reserve, stoicism, and a lack of looting.




What else happened this year?

-- 4D MAN is a pretty great little sci-fi potboiler about two brothers who develop a process that allows people to walk through walls. As in Universal's version of THE INVISIBLE MAN, amazing powers inevitably bring out insanity and cruelty in those who acquire them.
-- William Castle’s THE TINGLER is worth seeing for a handful of memorable scenes -- among them one in which Vincent Price becomes the first person in a movie to drop acid, and another in which the titular monster famously breaks the fourth wall and goes after the audience.
-- This was also a banner year for horrible movies. The most well-known is no doubt Ed Wood’s PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, but many others almost equally incompetent were also released the same year.
-- Although many of the B-movies of 1959 would drive anybody to despair, TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE will please people who appreciate such things.
-- THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL puts Harry Belafonte in Will Smith’s I AM LEGEND shoes in one of the earliest movies about lone survivors in an empty world. There are no zombies or vampires, but there are unconventional racial and sexual politics (for 1959 at least, and possibly even for today as well).

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1959...

Though it's not the best movie ever made, I think the one from this year that I'd most like to see again is THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL.

BONUS BLOG -- 1958: I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE

What’s it about?

After leaving his bachelor party, a man has an encounter with a horrific alien on the road home. The alien imprisons him, assumes the man’s form, and is subsequently married to the man’s fiancee the next day. The new wife almost immediately notices the difference in her husband, but isn’t sure at first what to make of it. A year later, the situation comes to a crisis when the woman starts to worry both about her inability to get pregnant and her husband’s apparent penchant for killing animals. Following him one night, she discovers that he is reporting to an alien spaceship hidden on the outskirts of town.

The woman tries to convince others that her husband has been taken over by an alien being. At first afraid that others will think she’s crazy, she soon begins to realize the real danger is that others in town may also be aliens themselves -- including the police. Desperate to escape, she finds that all communication has been cut off with the outside world. After begging her doctor to investigate the site where the spaceship is hidden, she returns home and -- at her wits’ end -- confronts her husband with her suspicions.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

Somebody could probably take this premise and make a truly fantastic movie about the ways that people discover strange new truths about the people they marry. This is not that movie -- but it’s nevertheless a very interesting thriller with some neat sci-fi excitement and spookiness. But what really makes the movie interesting is how much of it is underplayed. There’s a generous helping of aliens and spaceships and ray guns, but there are also plenty of scenes where the husband merely appears to be irritable and secretive, and the wife uncertain and confused. Except for a brief moment when the husband vents his frustration with inhuman strength, it would be easy to believe that this was simply an ordinary young couple who were starting to feel the strain of married life.




Much like EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956), the alien invaders here have a sympathetic story to tell -- their women were all killed in a planetary cataclysm, and they need to find a way of mating with another planet’s women or else their race will die out. But also like that other movie, these alien bodysnatchers display moments of intense and off-handed cruelty -- as when the husband strangles the family dog, or when a cop casually executes a human who has learnt too much about his alien nature. The contrast makes for a great tension, especially since the actor who plays the husband is a pretty physically terrifying guy. He often looks on the verge of snapping, and it’s easy to understand why his wife is so afraid. The aliens also react differently to finding themselves in human bodies -- some are disgusted, others simply resigned, and others actually enjoy the experience. It probably wouldn’t take much to find some subtext about human reactions to marriage in all of that.

The final confrontation between alien and wife also reveals that the aliens are slowly becoming more human the longer they stay in their bodies. Unable to love or feel happiness at first, they begin to experience emotions by the end of the movie. So even as the humans begin to close in on the hidden spaceship, there are more and more reasons to be sympathetic towards the invaders. After all, the alien version of the husband is the one that we’ve known for almost the entire length of the movie. If the “real” husband is brought back, then he would be more of a stranger than the alien (at least to the audience). All in all, this is a pretty terrific movie and one that I would definitely recommend. The plot is obviously pretty similar to that of many other bodysnatcher movies, but the movie is just so compelling and intense that the familiar situation doesn’t seem trite or worn at all.

1958: FIEND WITHOUT A FACE

What’s it about?

A U.S. air force outpost in Manitoba conducts experiments with atomic powered long-range radar, but can’t seem to generate enough power to keep their equipment working consistently. Meanwhile, mysterious deaths near the air base cause the locals (already suspicious of the Americans) to question whether they want the GIs there at all. Things only get weirder when autopsies of the victims reveal that their brains and spinal cords have been removed through tiny holes in the back of their necks.

Military investigators -- convinced that the atomic reactor can’t be the cause of the deaths -- begin to zero in on a local scientist who is researching telekinesis and other mental phenomena. After some hemming and hawing, the scientist breaks down and confesses that he siphoned power from the atomic reactor to aid him in experiments that he hoped would create physical manifestations from thought alone. It seems that one of these invisible manifestations is responsible for the spate of deaths, sucking out its victims’ brains and spinal cords in an attempt to reproduce itself. As the monsters grow more and more numerous, they take control of the power plant and jolt themselves with enough juice that they take a fully physical form and finally become visible. Meanwhile, a handful of desperate humans barricade themselves in a farmhouse surrounded by the brain monsters -- and then things get crazy.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

Let me put it this way: I cannot imagine anybody watching the last fifteen minutes of this movie and being disappointed. The first hour is a decent sci-fi procedural that alternates between invisible monster attacks, the official military investigation, and vigilante action by the angry Canadians. It’s pretty standard stuff, with its fair share of both neat moments and silly ones. But nothing in that part of the movie can prepare a person for the exuberant insanity of the last fifteen minutes. It starts with frightened people looking out the windows as disembodied brains and spinal cords menacingly climb the trees outside, and only gets crazier from there.

Why the monsters look like brains and spinal cords is never really satisfactorily explained. That’s what the scientist who was doing the thought-materialization experiment envisioned, and that’s what appeared. But as to why he decided to envision that -- well, who cares? The important thing is that everything about them is totally creepy. They are, after all, essentially motile internal organs with little eyestalks waving around on top. The way they inch along the ground is creepy. The way they sound as they approach is creepy. The way they fly through windows -- well, that’s hilarious actually.




I’m not even really sure what else to say about the movie because after you see the ending the rest of it just doesn’t matter anymore. The fiends are rendered in a combination of stop-motion and rubber prop effects, both of which are done fairly well. Although they are very squicky and creepy, they are not particularly scary and there were definitely moments during the climactic fight at the end where I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. So this is neither the tense claustrophobic horror of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), nor is it the cruddy campiness of an Ed Wood movie. But it has its own brand of unabashed audaciousness that makes it both utterly indelible and completely unique. And even though this is far from the best movie of the decade, it is still absolutely something that every fan of 1950s sci-fi or horror should see for themselves.




What else happened this year?

-- Vincent Price gave his budding career as a horror icon a big boost by starring in THE FLY, one of my favorite movies of all time.
-- Meanwhile, Steve McQueen was fostering his own career by starring opposite a blob of purple silicon jelly in, well, THE BLOB.
-- ATTACK OF THE 50 FT WOMAN is one of the cheapest and worst sci-fi movies I have ever seen, but somehow it is still considered a camp classic.
-- I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE puts its own spin (and social commentary) on the bodysnatcher premise by swapping a bridegroom for an alien invader on the eve of his wedding.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1958...

It ought to be either THE BLOB or THE FLY.

BONUS BLOG -- 1957: THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN

What’s it about?

Botanist Peter Cushing disregards the objections of his wife and mysterious warnings from a local wise man to join an expedition scaling the Himalayas in search of the fabled Yeti. Tempers soon flare on the five-man expedition when it becomes clear that not everyone is there for the same reason. Nerves fray even further when one man is injured by the carelessness of another, and vital equipment is destroyed in an angry scuffle. By the time a Yeti appears (only to be promptly shot at by a trigger-happy trapper), the men in the party are already practically at each other’s throats.

Meanwhile, Peter Cushing’s wife becomes concerned when the expedition’s native guide returns to the base camp in a panic. Though the locals try to hide the truth, she insists on mounting her own rescue party to seek out her husband. But things go from bad to worse on the mountain as foul weather moves in and the Yeti begin literally playing mind games with the survivors of the first party.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

Peter Cushing would eventually go on to play Victor Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, the vampire hunter Van Helsing, and many other roles in Hammer movies, but this is one of his first for the studio. I haven’t seen many of Peter Cushing’s other movies, but he is certainly one of the very best things about THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN. And in a movie where the focus is heavily on interpersonal interactions rather than scary monsters, appealing actors are pretty darn important.

It took me a while to identify the pattern, but there’s a coyness about Hammer’s sci-fi flicks that sits in stark contrast to most American movies of the period. Whereas American movies usually start developing right away whatever fantastic mystery or conflict they have for their centerpiece, Hammer flicks instead reserve the sci-fi elements until almost the last possible moment and spend most of their early running time on character interactions. (This is not necessarily true of every single Hammer movie -- but it’s true of many of them, and none more so than THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN.) Consequently, the Hammer movies often seem more naturalistic since we see many of the characters dealing with perfectly ordinary conflicts at home or in their jobs. “More naturalistic” doesn’t necessarily mean “better”, of course, since it’s perfectly possible to make a very boring movie about domestic discord and work stress. But it certainly gives the pictures a different mood than most of those from other studios, and often they come off feeling as though the scripts were written for a more adult audience. The fact that it’s a different approach makes it feel a bit like a breath of fresh air for that reason alone. But anybody who approaches this movie with the quite reasonable expectation that they will see a lot of exaciting abominable snowman action is going to be sorely disappointed.




In fact, I will admit that I find Hammer’s skewed focus frustrating at times -- breath of fresh air or not. The abominable snowmen do eventually show up, but they are kept entirely off-screen (except for a single hairy arm) until the final minutes of the movie. I’m not sure if that was done for budgetary reasons or if it’s the manifestation of some perverse British desire to deny the audience, but the refusal to show a clear shot of the title creature pretty quickly became both annoying and absurd. Fortunately, much of the picture would work just as well if there weren’t any Yeti at all, and the story is really quite good. Peter Cushing is a scientific man who comes to realize that the expedition he’s joined has commercial objectives that he strongly disagrees with. But by the time he learns the truth, the party is already high up among the peaks of the Himalayas, and there’s nothing he can do about it without endangering himself and the others. There are also some interesting theories put forth about who the Yeti are -- rather than evolutionary throwbacks, it’s suggested that they could be the inheritors of the Earth who are simply waiting for man to annihilate himself. So despite the disappointing dearth of actual live Yeti action, there are still quite a few things to recommend THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN -- but primarily to those already disposed to like Peter Cushing or Hammer movies.

1957: THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN

What’s it about?

While cruising the ocean in his brother’s yacht, a man is exposed to a strange shimmering mist. The event doesn’t seem to have any ill effects at first, but six months later the man suspects he is getting smaller when his clothes no longer seem to fit. After several trips to the doctor, a set of X-ray photographs prove that he’s not just losing weight but is in fact gradually shrinking. Eventually the man reaches a height of about three feet -- at which point his doctors discover a method of arresting the shrinking, but still no way to reverse it.

Treated like a freak and hounded by the media, the man and his wife stay confined in their home where their nerves soon fray. The man finds brief solace in the friendship of another little person, but soon discovers that he is shrinking again despite his treatments. Ultimately reduced to a height of just a couple inches, disaster strikes one day when the family cat chases and traps him in the basement. His wife believes he’s been killed, and the man soon finds himself faced with several seemingly insurmountable challenges -- supply himself with the necessities of life, evade a monstrous spider, and contact the others in the house to let them know he still lives. And all the while, he continues to grow smaller and smaller.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

I knew that this would be my kind of movie as soon as the jazzy, hip opening credits started to roll. (Pro tip: Jazzy, hip opening credits are always a good sign.) And when I realized just minutes later that the main character isn’t any kind of scientist -- well, that was just the icing on the cake. Until I started watching a lot of 1950s sci-fi flicks all in a row, it had never registered just how many of them have scientists for main characters. Movies with scientist protagonists tend to be largely about the heroic leads trying desperately to solve whatever fantastic problem they’re facing with the vigorous application of (more or less ridiculous) science. But since the hero here, played by Grant Williams, isn’t a scientific person at all, it shifts the focus of the movie from problem-solving to simply coping with a strange condition and then eventually to surviving in an weird and hostile world. It’s a much easier kind of story for me to relate to, and the fact that it was different from most of the other movies I’ve been watching is a bonus as well.




The first half of the movie follows the shrinking man as he incredibly diminishes in size. This is taken in a few stages, and there’s a long interlude where he’s about three feet tall (the height at which his shrinking is temporarily arrested) that’s full of terrific over-sized props. Everything looks very realistic, and the movie never tries to play the difference in scale for laughs. Don’t get me wrong -- it’s always funny when a tiny man talks into a giant telephone, but the movie does its best to show the horror and humiliation of the situation rather than just the absurdity. This is also the section where Grant Williams is the least likeable -- he’s self-pitying, jealous, paranoid, angry, petulant, and frightened. Afraid to leave his house, he pouts and seethes and is pretty believably unpleasant.

It’s not until he’s left entirely to his own resources to survive in the basement that the shrinking man really starts to show his heroic side. Reduced to only a couple inches in height, ordinary tasks (like climbing the stairs back up to the first floor) become impossible. But he quickly finds a hitherto untapped resourcefulness that lets him claw his way -- ever so briefly -- to the top of the basement food chain. The only real weakness of this part of the movie is the melodramatic first-person narration that crops up from time to time. The screenplay was written by Richard Matheson (based on an earlier novel of his own), and the blame for the purple prose no doubt falls on his shoulders. I’d almost say that the narration ought to have been cut entirely, but it does help to reinforce the ultimate desolation of Grant Williams’s situation -- even as he surmounts the challenges of the basement, he continues to shrink all the time and even problems he’s already solved grow continually more difficult. And, of course, even being reunited with his wife won’t be more than a temporary happy ending since he’s quickly approaching a size at which he’ll be too small even to communicate with other humans. Consequently, the ultimate ending is surprisingly uncertain -- not the only ambiguous ending in the annals of 1950s sci-fi, but one of the few.




What else happened this year?

-- 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH is probably the best movie of the decade to feature Ray Harryhausen’s stop motion effects. This one follows an alien from Venus that starts out tiny and cute, but quickly grows to a frightening size, goes on a rampage and then climbs a famous urban landmark.
-- THE MONOLITH MONSTERS is another Grant Williams picture that casts him in the more typical role of a geologist trying to solve an extraordinary problem. But, uncommon for the 1950s, the challenges he faces are not actually monsters at all but simply forces of nature that are running out of control.
-- Hammer Studios officially took over Universal’s monster franchises with THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Starring Peter Cushing as the Baron Frankenstein, it helped set the course Hammer would follow for the next several decades.
-- Peter Cushing also stars in Hammer’s THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN, about a Himalayan expedition dangerously beset both by personality conflicts and by psychic Yeti.
-- Willis O’Brien, the other great stop-motion animator of the time, lends his talents to THE BLACK SCORPION, a decidedly low budget entry in the giant monster sub-genre.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1957...

Make it THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN.

BONUS BLOG -- 1956: EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS

What’s it about?

A husband and wife working on a rocket project encounter a flying saucer while driving on a desert highway. Though they first assume it was merely an isolated fluke incident, they soon begin to realize that something is shooting down each of the satellites as quickly as they are put in orbit. Then, during their latest rocket launch, another flying saucer appears. Deciding to shoot first and ask questions later, security personnel at the launch site precipitate a conflict that leaves the facility in ruins with the husband and wife apparently the only survivors of the catastrophe.

In the aftermath of the destruction, an unlikely coincidence allows the survivors to decode a message from the outer space visitors demanding a meeting to discuss terms of peace. Although the government seems inclined to take the idea of flying saucers seriously, the bureaucracy moves too slowly to suit the two survivors. They contact the invaders on their own and are taken up in one of the flying saucers where they witness a display of destructive power. The visitors then issue an ultimatum -- the Earth must surrender within 56 days or else. (The “else” is not clearly explicated, but it seems to involve beams of energy that make things explode.) When the flying saucers return at the end of the period, they expect the Earth to give up without a fight. But the scientists have used the 56 day reprieve to build a new weapon which will level the playing field between man and invader.




Is it any good?

This is the second sci-fi collaboration between producer Charles Schneer and stop-motion special effects master Ray Harryhausen. The first was 1955's IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA, which is a pretty ho-hum giant monster movie about a radioactive octopus that gets a craving for the citizens of San Francisco. EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS is a big step up in terms of originality and excitement -- though it still doesn’t compare with the good times of the best Schneer/Harryhausen collaborations from the sixties.

One of the most admirable things about this movie is that it doesn’t avoid showing the spectacle of an all-out alien invasion -- something that’s more rare in sci-fi flicks than I would have suspected at the start of this project. With the obvious exception of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, most 1950s alien invasions involve aliens that either look almost exactly like humans or who assume human form to infiltrate and conquer from the inside. But here we get plenty of flying saucers, disintegrator rays, inhuman aliens, and a climactic full-scale attack on Washington, D.C. The best parts of the movie take place on the flying saucers, where the aliens and their human guests have a long conversation about the reasons for the invasion and the fate of the Earth. At times, the aliens are almost sympathetic -- but then they demonstrate a casual brutality that proves it’s really us or them.




The flying saucers are also some of the best looking ones I’ve ever seen. Ray Harryhausen’s living monsters have so much personality that I wasn’t really sure what he’d be able to do with a mechanical object that doesn’t have facial expressions or body language. But the effects of the saucers in flight are pretty great, even if the crumbling buildings look like they’re falling apart in slow motion. It’s disappointing that the aliens are people in suits (rather than Harryhausen effects), but they at least look fairly respectable. But as with so many sci-fi flicks from the time, the script is once again the weak point. It’s certainly not terrible and it stays pretty exciting almost entirely throughout, but there are some parts of it (such as the inexplicable 56-day window the invaders give Earth to prepare their defenses) that make no sense at all. The climactic battle is also a bit of a let-down, save for a few nice shots of flying saucers destroying famous Washington landmarks. To be honest, there is plenty you could laugh at here if that’s your kind of thing, but this one definitely delivers enough of the good stuff (like nifty special effects, weirdo alien technology, and overall excitement) to be better than your average 1950s B-movie.

1956: THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US

What’s it about?

In the third and final installment of Universal’s Gill-man franchise, a party of scientists again go looking for the creature after he escaped from a Florida marine park at the end of REVENGE OF THE CREATURE (1955). During a test dive to calibrate their sophisticated sonar equipment, the scientists spot the creature but are unable to get near enough to capture him. The creature then leads them upriver into the dark waters of the Everglades, until the scientists are forced to follow in a small open boat. Having evened the odds a bit, the creature forces a confrontation which ends with his capture -- and with him being badly burned in the process.

The scientists take the creature back to the waiting vessel where they’d hoped to study him, and find that the creature’s gills have been almost entirely burned away. However, they discover that he also possesses an unused set of lungs, so they perform emergency surgery to make them operational. Once the creature begins breathing through his lungs, he undergoes strange physical changes -- shedding many of his fish-like qualities and becoming increasingly human in appearance. Unsure as to whether the “humanizing” of the creature will extend to his behavior as well, the scientists bring him ashore for observation. But rivalries and jealousies among the scientists soon lead to a catastrophe.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

Universal’s famed horror unit produced a handful of movies after this one, but THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US is the last installment of their last major franchise. It also happens to be one of the best monster movies Universal ever produced, and is well worth watching both on its own merits and also as the conclusion of a film making epoch. In the first two Gill-man movies, the creature is presented as a missing link between man and his distant marine ancestors. (Don’t think too hard about that one.) Though he has some human characteristics, he never does much more than kill intruders in his lagoon, kidnap pretty women, and flee from superior force. But in THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US, the creature becomes more cunning, more human, and possessed of a great deal more personality.

The first part of the movie -- the hunt and capture of the creature -- is much longer and considerably more exciting than a similar sequence in REVENGE OF THE CREATURE. The Everglades locations (or their studio equivalents) are plenty creepy, and the underwater photography is crystal clear. The creature seems to know he’s being hunted, and leads the scientists on a long chase that draws them into less safe territory. And although the scientists are aware that the creature is leveling the playing field, they have no choice but to follow and attempt the capture anyway. It’s all very tense and suspenseful, and really my only complaint about it is that the three male leads are all so square-jawed and hunky that it takes a little while to learn to tell them apart. But as the movie progresses, it becomes clearer that they each have different personalities and agendas -- something that you can’t always take for granted in these kinds of flicks.




But the real payoff is what happens after the creature is captured. The pseudo-scientific explanation of the physical changes doesn’t make any sense -- supposedly the mere act of breathing through lungs instead of gills causes spontaneous mutations that tip the balance of evolution away from fish and towards human. But the changes make the creature far more sympathetic, as does his sudden lack of interest in kidnapping and killing. (There’s a pretty funny bit where he comes across a woman and looks at her for a moment -- apparently ready to snatch her up -- but then moves along without a second glance.) Rather than a killer, the creature here is a pathetic figure who is hunted, persecuted, and stranded by physical mutations in a world he doesn’t understand.

Although I am an unabashed fan of the original CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954), I think I’d nevertheless have to say that this is an even better picture than that one. It’s a shame that Universal didn’t make many more monster movies after THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US, since they finally seemed to figure out how to fuse their usual sensational sensibility with a more psychological and ambiguous style of horror. But starting in 1957, Universal turned over the rights of its horror franchises to England’s Hammer Studios -- which would go on to produce many, many monster movies (almost all of them featuring either Baron Frankenstein or Dracula) in the fifties, sixties, and seventies.




What else happened this year?

-- Don Siegel directed the first (and, as far as I’m concerned, still the best) iteration of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, and managed to turn a pretty silly story into a creepy and tense thriller.
-- The other big sci-fi spectacular from 1956 is FORBIDDEN PLANET, an outer space updating of Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST that introduced the world to Robbie the Robot (among many other things).
-- Stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen and producer Charles Schneer turned their collective attention to the problem of mechanical marauders in EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS.
-- The 1954 Japanese monster flick GOJIRA was re-edited and released in America with 100% more Raymond Burr as GODZILLA, KING OF ALL MONSTERS.
-- Hammer released X THE UNKNOWN, a sci-fi/horror flick about a blobby menace haunting the Scottish marshes that was originally intended to be a Quatermass sequel.
-- Universal’s THE MOLE PEOPLE is a surprisingly interesting story about archaeologists stumbling upon a superstitious underground society descended from ancient Sumerians. Actual mole people are also both promised and delivered.

If you watch only one sci-fi movie from 1956...

As terrific as THE CREATURES WALKS AMONG US is, I’d say go for INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS if you can only do one.

BONUS BLOG -- 1955: THIS ISLAND EARTH

What’s it about?

While flying his personal fighter jet cross country, a scientist encounters a mysterious phenomenon that takes control of his plane temporarily. Later, strange and seemingly impossibly advanced electronic parts arrive at his laboratory in response to a routine supply order. These are followed by the equally mysterious arrival of instructions on how to build a puzzling device called an “interociter”. Once completed, the interociter turns out to be a television the size of a Volkswagen with a triangular screen that can't have been adequately product-tested. (It later turns out to have convenient built-in laser beams as well.)

Upon plugging in the interociter, a man with a lumpy forehead appears on the screen and invites the scientist to a secret meeting of intellectuals at an undisclosed location. After delivering the message, the interociter destroys both itself and all the blueprints for its construction. Undeterred by this, the scientist travels to the secret meeting anyway but soon deduces that maybe something is a little amiss at the compound. But before the scientist can escape, he and a woman scientist are whisked away in a flying saucer to the dying world of Metaluna. The planet is on the verge of being annihilated as a result of being constantly pummelled by meteorites guided by its enemies. The two Earth scientists are needed to help finish research on an energy source powerful enough to charge the failing deflector shields that can keep the planet from exploding in a shower of sparks.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

I’m not really sure how to answer that question since THIS ISLAND EARTH is a baffling mixture of good and bad. The script, despite a lot of interesting ideas, feels thoroughly half-baked. The beginning of the movie takes its time and unfolds its mysteries slowly, but after landing on the planet Metaluna the movie suddenly can’t seem to be finished quickly enough. The plight of the planet is illustrated pretty well, but then a deux ex machina raises its implausible head, and the Earthlings are rescued from the dying planet without having done anything interesting at all except commute on the planet’s light rail system.

The dialogue is often awful -- the better lines in the movie are pure exposition, and the worst are nothing but nonsense. (The only exception to this is a single immortal line that is brilliant both in and out of context: “I feel like a new toothbrush.”) The film makers also clearly have neither any regard for nor any knowledge of science. I don’t mind when a sci-fi movie elides over the nuts and bolts of an impossible invention, but THIS ISLAND EARTH just seems intent on flaunting its ignorance in the most unnecessary ways. At one point, for instance, a cat is introduced and a character explains that they call him Neutron “because he’s so positive”.

Yet, coupled to all these shortcomings is a movie that looks absolutely fantastic. Looking at the sets and special effects, it’s clear that THIS ISLAND EARTH is not a B-movie. The end of the movie especially is one elaborate special effects sequence after another. Some elements -- such as the insectoid mutants that act as servants on Metaluna -- are pretty disappointing. But others -- like shots of the flying saucer skimming over the alien world’s surface as it’s bombarded by falling meteorites -- are amazing. It’s not that the special effects are especially realistic or convincing, but they’re captivating and exhilarating nonetheless. And everything is shot in crisp, vivid Technicolor. Unfortunately, the shiny special effects do nothing to hide the absurdities in the script, and the ending of the movie is truly an unforgivable let-down.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that THIS ISLAND EARTH’s biggest claim to fame these days may be that it was screened on the Satellite of Love in MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000: THE MOVIE (1996). Also, the Professor from Gilligan’s Island has a supporting role.

1955: TARANTULA

What’s it about?

A doctor is called to examine the body of a horribly deformed man found in the desert of the southwestern U.S. The man appears to have suffered from a rare disorder that causes deformities over several years, but he is identified as a scientist who had last been seen apparently healthy and unblemished just a month before. Trying to find out how this could be, the doctor investigates at the remote laboratory where the scientist had been working. It appears to have been recently damaged in a fire, and the surviving scientist only reveals that he and his late partner had been working on a new synthetic nutrient to help ease world hunger.

Meanwhile, a new assistant at the laboratory strikes up a friendship with the investigating doctor. Through her, the doctor learns that the nutrient is unstable and unpredictable -- and that it has caused astounding gigantism among the laboratory animals it’s used on. Eventually, it becomes clear that a tarantula that had received injections escaped during the fire, and is now preying on cattle (and the occasional human) in the area. The tarantula continues to grow at an alarming rate, and ultimately terrorizes the town.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

It’s good enough to have made a believer out of me where the special effects are concerned. I have never much liked the use of close-up photography of real animals as “monsters” in these kinds of movies. I’ve always felt that the creatures inevitably look too ordinary and that the inability to have monsters interacting with actors is a fatal shortcoming. But TARANTULA makes that tactic work probably as well as it ever could -- and no doubt my dislike of such things is a result of having only ever seen cheap, unimaginative knock-offs of this very movie. For one thing, close-up pictures of a real tarantula are pretty darn creepy and alien looking. (This, however, is not necessarily true of lizards, to name another oft-enlarged movie monster.) And shots of the tarantula and the environment aren’t just flatly superimposed -- great care was obviously taken to make it look like the spider is actually interacting with the rest of the things in the frame. It crawls down hills, clambers atop buildings, and so on. There are obviously limits to this, but for the most part it’s done very well.

The story has a lot of the same silliness that other 1950s sci-fi movies do. The science is laughable, and the dialogue is often stilted and unnatural. TARANTULA, however, is far from the worst offender of the decade (or even of the year) in either of those areas, and the main characters at least have some personality. The catalyst for the creation of the giant spider -- the search for a synthetic nutrient -- is also a nice break from the usual stories about atomic fallout spawning mutations, man’s encroachment dislodging previously hidden monsters, or (worst of all) the mad scientist breeding an unstoppable weapon.

But obviously the main attraction is the tarantula itself. Because of how the effects are generated, it can’t usually do much more than stalk into view and look menacing. It’s a limited bag of tricks, but the movie makes the most of them. Especially effective are some shots of the spider peering through the second storey windows of the house where the laboratory is housed. And since the nutrient has a different effect on humans -- causing horrific deformities instead of gigantic growth -- there are other creepy things to fill in some of the gaps where the spider can’t go. I wouldn’t exactly say that TARANTULA is required viewing for anybody, but it’s also not likely to disappoint if you like giant monsters. It can stand with THEM! (1954), GOJIRA (1954), 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH (1957), and THE BLOB (1958) as one of the best examples of the 1950s.

What else happened this year?

-- THIS ISLAND EARTH mixes an utterly absurd script with top-of-the-line special effects to produce a ridiculous movie with serious third-act problems that looks fantastic. It was later mocked (with some justification) in MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000: THE MOVIE (1996).
-- Hammer released the first of its Professor Quatermass sci-fi adventures, THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT. I’ve unfortunately never been able to find this one, but all the Quatermass movies have an excellent reputation.

If you watch only one sci-fi movie from 1955...

Make it TARANTULA, unless you can find THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT. If you can, let me know if it’s as great as I imagine it to be.

BONUS BLOG -- 1954: GOJIRA

What’s it about?

In case there’s anybody who doesn’t know the story of Godzilla, here it is. Underwater tests of atomic bombs disturb a prehistoric monster known in Japanese legends as Gojira and cause him to come to the surface in a seriously bad mood. After trashing the island of Odo, the monster moves towards the mainland and destroys much of Tokyo in a couple of midnight raids.

Meanwhile, a scientist has developed an oxygen destroying substance that could be used to make a weapon even more powerful than the atomic bomb. The substance is seemingly the only thing that might stop Gojira, but the scientist is unwilling to share his discovery until he has converted it into a form that cannot be used as a military weapon. As the destruction and death toll mounts, the scientist finds himself faced with a moral dilemma -- let Gojira continue on his rampage, or stop him and give the world a new deadly weapon in the process.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

The ending is really terrific, though there are parts in the middle that are fairly dull. The first third of the movie mostly follows the arrival of Gojira -- from the mysterious sinking of ships to the destruction of Odo to the first appearances of the monster himself. The second third is mostly concerned with Gojira’s attacks on Tokyo and the attempts to stop him with conventional weapons. Finally, the end of the movie -- where things really come alive -- deal with the devastating aftermath of the monster attacks and the scientist’s moral dilemma.

It seems strange to say, but the weakest part of the movie are really the attacks on Tokyo. Gojira was reportedly the first movie to use a suited actor so extensively in monster attack sequences -- previous movies like THE LOST WORLD (1925), KING KONG (1933), MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949), and THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953) had all used stop-motion animation. Any novelty that may have attached to the man-in-a-suit approach in 1954 has been erased by fifty years of sequels and knock-offs with the same kind of miniatures being destroyed in much the same way. Some of the miniatures are pretty neat (the boats especially look very good), and several shots of Gojira are quite striking -- when he rises suddenly from underwater or from behind a hill, or is framed by fire as he stalks through Tokyo. But overall, both Gojira himself and the attack sequences feel too familiar to be truly exciting anymore.

But it’s worth sitting through those Tokyo attacks to get the final third of the movie. There’s an appropriately dramatic demonstration of the oxygen destroyer in the laboratory. (Though the true effects of the discovery are unnecessarily withheld from the audience until late in the movie.) The invention itself makes absolutely no sense as explained -- but the important thing is the chilling effect it has on living matter. The scenes after Gojira’s final attack on Tokyo are also very effective. It’s no secret that the movie is a parable about atomic weapons -- and in fact the movie lays this on a bit thick -- but knowing that Japan had suffered two nuclear attacks less than ten years before GOJIRA was released really does give the aftermath of the radioactive rampage an extra layer of emotional depth.

As a final note, I ought to say that it’s been at least fifteen years since I’ve seen the American re-cutting of GODZILLA from 1956 (with Raymond Burr inserted to appease American audiences), so I can’t really say how it compares to the Japanese original.

For the rest of my thoughts on 1954 in sci-fi movies, see the entry on THEM!

1954: THEM!

What’s it about?

A string of strange disappearances, killings, and sugar thefts in the New Mexico desert leaves the local authorities and FBI stymied, so a father-daughter tag team of scientists is called in to give their opinion. The two scientists have a theory, but refuse to share it until it’s been conclusively proven. The sudden arrival of a nine-foot carnivorous ant renders their silence moot, and the hunt is on to find and exterminate the nest of giant ants.

Once the nest is found and neutralized, the scientists realize that at least two young queens and their male consorts have already left to start their own colonies. Yet another hunt is on for the location of this new threat, tracking the fugitive queens as far as Texas and the California coast. The survival of mankind ultimately hinges on a final showdown of man vs. giant killer ant in the storm drains of Los Angeles.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

It’s a heckuva lot of fun. The movie is structured like a police procedural, so it moves along swiftly from clue to clue as the true nature of what’s happening becomes apparent. None of the characters (except possibly the father-daughter scientist team) are the least bit memorable -- but neither does the movie really ask you to care about any of them. There’s no paper-thin love story or family melodramas or even any fresh-faced army privates hoping to get home to their best girls. There’s literally nothing else besides a desperate search to find the giant killer ant nests before it’s too late.

The 1950s saw an awful lot of sci-fi movies of widely varying quality about giant animals -- mutated, prehistoric, or both. Like most of the best ones, THEM! doesn’t try to pass off cheapo rear-projected footage of real animals for monsters. All the giant ants here are life-size puppets with moving parts that often get shot full of holes or burned up by flamethrowers. I actually started to wonder how many ant puppets they had to build to make all the destruction possible. But even though the ants are not realistic (or mobile) enough to be really scary, the fact that they are big and real and able to interact with actors does make them creepy in a way that close-up shots of live ants never could be. The movie also makes the most of spooky ways of framing the ants or their shadows or evidence of their murderous rampage. Even though the puppets look pretty silly, it’s still chilling to see one dropping a picked-clean human rib cage among a pile of other bones and skulls.

If there’s any downside to the movie, it’s that the best part comes almost exactly halfway through when a small team of humans is exploring the ant nest in New Mexico to confirm that all the ants have been gassed to death. (Spoiler: They haven’t been!) The dead ants and gestating eggs that fill the nest are very eerie, and the whole sequence ends far too quickly. The scenes that follow of flags being pinned into maps and reports rolling off teletype machines somehow just don’t hold the same tension as a handful of humans penetrating a nest of giant ants to torch the egg chamber. There is another climactic hunt through the storm drains of Los Angeles at the end of the movie, but it’s not nearly as gripping as the first bit in the nest. Still, this is a thoroughly enjoyable and fast-paced giant monster movie.

What else happened this year?

-- Another giant animal that owes its existence to the atom bomb menaces a different major city in GOJIRA. For better or for worse, this was the first monster movie to forgo stop-motion or puppet effects in favor of the man-in-a-suit approach.
-- Universal introduced its last big monster movie franchise (and one of the best) in THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, originally shot and shown in 3-D.
-- Walt Disney’s 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA was also released this year. I’m not really a fan of any of his big budget, all-star sci-fi spectaculars, but this one is probably the best of the bunch thanks to a very likeable (and often shirtless) Kirk Douglas and a suitably misanthropic Captain Nemo played by James Mason.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1954...

You might as well make it GOJIRA, though you can’t steer too far wrong with THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON either.

1953: FOUR SIDED TRIANGLE

What’s it about?

Two young friends work together on a scientific project under the encouragement of a benevolent and fatherly doctor. The arrival of an old childhood friend -- a girl they were both once in love with -- gives them fresh inspiration to overcome the technical obstacles in their way. At last, they complete a working prototype of a machine capable of replicating any object. As they begin the much less interesting work of marketing their invention, one of the scientists announces he and the girl are now engaged.

The other scientist is heartbroken by this turn of events, but keeps his pain to himself. He works night and day to find a way to modify the replicator to work on living creatures. Ultimately successful, he begs the woman to let him duplicate her so that both of the men can have their own copy and be happy.

Is it any good?

Not surprisingly for a movie about lone scientists pushing the boundaries of knowledge, FOUR SIDED TRIANGLE has a lot in common with FRANKENSTEIN or THE FLY -- but is better in many ways than either of those. I don’t recognize any of the actors, but the two male leads make a fantastic irrepressible scientist tag team. The laboratory is appropriately full of wonderful scientific machinery -- a lot of dynamos and big electronic things with switches and oscilloscopes. It’s never really clear what all the machinery is for, but it does make the replication trick fun to watch even the third or fourth time they do it.

A lot of the movie -- probably too much, in fact -- follows the development of the various iterations of the replicator. As a result, it does feel like they shortchange the existential and emotional ramifications of duplicating a human being in favor of showing more of the experiments. Things obviously don’t go exactly as planned, and though the ending is not as riveting as it might be, it’s not a total let-down either. What is disappointing, however, is that the woman who gets duplicated never really gets to say anything about how she feels about it, even though the choice is ostensibly hers. She seemingly goes through with the process out of pity for the unmarried scientist, but it’s frustrating that she’s sidelined so much both before and after the duplication.

But in general this is a really juicy sci-fi flick about a pretty unusual situation. The high-tech 1950s lab is very neat, the actors are fun, and it mostly moves along at an exciting rate. I would actually have liked it to be a bit more melodramatic about the implications of everything -- most of the characters seem to take the idea of duplicating a human far too much in stride. And I would definitely have liked to have seen the female lead have more of a say in things. But all in all it’s an enjoyable and fairly unique 1950s sci-fi movie. It’s also worth noting that this is one of the earliest Hammer science fiction movies, which means that everybody in it is as British as is humanly possible.

What else happened this year?

-- THE WAR OF THE WORLDS is one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made in any year, and is absolutely something you should go check out right away if you have any interest in this kind of thing.
-- I’m also very fond of IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, which I would say deserves to be a minor classic of 1950s sci-fi.
-- INVADERS FROM MARS is not nearly as good as either of those movies, but has a lot of imagination and a pretty wild ending that makes for a fun midnight movie experience.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1953...

There’s no question that it should be THE WAR OF THE WORLDS.

1952: RED PLANET MARS

What’s it about?

A radio astronomer played by Peter Graves sends messages into space and receives responses that appear to be coming from Mars. Though they are at first unintelligible, he continues to work on a way of deciphering the messages from space despite periodic apocalyptic pronouncements from his wife (sample: "This will lead to our deaths!"). Meanwhile, a former Nazi scientist named Calder listens in on the American broadcasts and the Martian responses from a remote observatory in the Andes, and passes reports on the communications back to the Soviets.

When the messages are at last decoded and published, they cause pandemonium throughout the capitalist west. They indicate that the Martians are in possession of technology that would render the greater part of western industry obsolete. Afraid of causing further panic, the president is about to order the communications stopped when suddenly the messages change and begin to take on a decidedly religious tone instead. These messages in turn spark a popular uprising behind the Iron Curtain, and soon the Communist nations are in as much turmoil as the west. The whole situation is brought to a final crisis when Calder personally (and implausibly) confronts the American scientists in their own laboratory. Several twists later, the movie ends with a bang.

Is it any good?

It has a few things going for it. For one thing, it’s one of the few movies I can think of that deals primarily with radio messages from an alien civilization. (The only other that springs to mind is CONTACT from 1997 -- and even that one ultimately drops radio contact in favor of the personal kind.) As such, the first half hour is fairly interesting as the scientists try to find a way of making themselves understood. The movie doesn’t really do as much with this as it might and the solution they arrive at is simplistic enough that a middle schooler could (and, in the movie, in fact does) figure it out. But it’s at least sufficiently different to be interesting.

Things take a sharp turn for the worse in the middle section, where the world suddenly starts going crazy based on a handful of messages from Mars. The revelation that the Martians use cosmic rays for energy instead of fossil fuels, for example, somehow inexplicably leads to every coal mine on Earth spontaneously closing down -- despite there being no information yet on how Earth could harness the power of cosmic rays. Other equally inexplicable developments bring the entire western economy to its knees. It’s easy to believe that messages from an advanced alien race could incite panic and upheaval, but RED PLANET MARS is not the least bit convincing about it. When the messages switch from scientific to religious -- and create a panic in the Soviet sphere -- the same problem arises again. This part, in fact, is the very dullest stretch of the movie as it has nothing new over the western panic except a lot more preachy pontificating from a very Christian president.

By far, the best character in the movie is the Nazi scientist Calder. So even though his appearance at the American lab late in the movie is utterly preposterous, it’s nonetheless very welcome. The plot twists that arise out of this confrontation vary in their plausibility and effectiveness. I won’t reveal exactly what happens, but the messages are not exactly what they appear to be, and the revelations lead to a bit of a scuffle between the scientists. In any event, RED PLANET MARS is not what I would call a particularly good movie and it occasionally flirts with deadly dullness -- but it’s unusual and unconventional enough that I don’t want to give everything away in case anyone is actually interested.

What else happened this year?

-- The only other movie I’ve seen from 1952 that is remotely sci-fi is one called INVASION, U.S.A. It’s a WWIII flick about a Soviet invasion of the United States, and is a pretty heavy-handed propaganda piece about the need for ordinary citizens to contribute to anti-Soviet programs even in peacetime. It’s the earliest movie I know of that depicts an atomic war (through copious use of stock footage, natch), though it treats H-bombs simply as big bunches of dynamite and doesn’t address the effects of radiation or the possibility of nuclear winter.
-- Legendary B-movie RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON was also released this year, but I haven’t inflicted it on my attention span yet.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1952...

Go with RED PLANET MARS. But unless you have a high tolerance for both B-movie badness and high handed Christian preaching, you might as well steer clear. There’s a fairly unique story under all the distracting parts, but it’s more of a curiosity than essential viewing.

1951: FLIGHT TO MARS

What’s it about?

The U.S. military launches the first rocket expedition to Mars after veiling its preparations in strict secrecy until the last minute. The five-person crew consists of the workaholic ace engineer who designed the rocket, his “girl scientist” fiancee, a pessimistic professor who believes the mission is doomed, a reporter sent to cover “the human angle”, and a fifth guy who is not even one-dimensional enough to have a single memorable characteristic. A meteor storm encountered during the flight destroys the landing gear and the crew is forced to crash land on the red planet, damaging the rocket in the process.

Once on Mars, the crew are greeted by several Martians wearing brightly colored spacesuits (and looking consequently like a delegation of Teletubbies). They are taken to an underground city of generic sci-fi wonders, which the “girl scientist” declares a “woman’s paradise” after finding out that all dishes and silverware are washed automatically. The thrilling action then moves to the meeting room of Mars’s ruling council, where the seemingly straightforward task of repairing the rocket somehow results in a tangle of double- and triple-crosses as political factions vie for control of the Earth technology.

Is it any good?

Not really. Practically nothing of any interest whatsoever happens during the pre-launch preparations (which drag on for an interminable 12 minutes) or most of the flight to Mars (despite attempts to make the adjustment of a “gravitation dial” seem exciting). The interior of the rocket itself is kind of neat, if only to see what people in 1951 imagined that kind of thing would look like. But there’s nothing especially unusual about it except a tube that launches torpedoes full of written observations back towards Earth once the rocket is beyond radio range. Otherwise there don’t seem to have been many advances in rocket technology or interior design since Fritz Lang’s 1929 movie WOMAN IN THE MOON.

Even worse, there’s no attempt to show what life on a rocket might be like. I don’t expect scientific accuracy from a movie like this, but the crew lounge around in khakis and skirts, drink out of Styrofoam cups, smoke pipes, and behave more or less like they are flying first class from New York to Los Angeles. Even laughably ridiculous space gadgets would be better than none at all. Things improve a bit when they land on Mars. The crew changes into shimmery Martian outfits with insignia on the tunics -- that’s some solid sci-fi stuff there. The little bit we can see of the city looks like any generic city of tomorrow. It’s certainly nothing groundbreaking, but at least they tried to make it look futuristic.

But the main problem with the movie is that it’s just not ever exciting. The dialogue is dull and repetitive, and it’s hard to really care about the plot. Supposedly a faction of Martians want to steal the rocket technology and invade Earth (because their planet is dying, natch) but all that threat amounts to is one guy arguing in favor of invasion in the council chamber. We never see the Martian armies -- or even so much as a single weapon, since the little fighting in the movie is all done with fists -- so the invasion remains utterly abstract. There are also two insultingly boneheaded love stories going on in the background, but the less said about those the better.

What else happened this year?

-- The big sci-fi movie event of 1951 is definitely THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, which I would recommend to anybody in a heartbeat.
-- Howard Hawks’s THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD is quite good as well, and was eventually remade into an even better movie by John Carpenter in 1982.
-- THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT is a decent Ealing comedy starring Alec Guinness as a scientist who invents an indestructible fabric and finds himself pursued by interests in the textile industry who will stop at nothing to suppress his discovery.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1951...

Stick with THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL like everybody tells you. In fact, you can skip FLIGHT TO MARS altogether since there’s nothing here you can’t get from better movies.

1950: DESTINATION MOON

What’s it about?

When a military rocket launch designed to put a satellite in orbit around the Earth ends in failure and budget cuts, the general in charge turns to good old fashioned American industry (with its fabled know-how and stick-to-it-iveness) to get the job done. But rather than simply complete the original mission, they instead decide to send a manned rocket to the moon -- for the purpose of either allowing the U.S. to install missiles on the lunar surface or to stop unnamed hostile foreign powers from doing so (details are murky on this point).

A propaganda film starring Woody Woodpecker convinces the plutocrats of America to fund the moon shot, but a series of snags threaten to doom the mission. Meddling government bureaucrats and pesky public opinion force the rushed launch of a completely untested rocket with a last-minute astronaut replacement who hasn’t even been briefed on elementary facts like weightlessness. Later, inattention to basic safety precautions causes a spacewalk to end in a predictably bad way. A botched landing on the moon also uses up so much fuel that the crew is faced with (almost literally) the oldest dilemma in movie space travel -- one of them must stay behind to allow the others to leave.

Is it any good?

The main selling point of DESTINATION MOON is that it’s supposed to be a scientifically accurate picture of what it would actually take to get to the moon. To that end, they show off things like plausible spacesuits, airlocks, and no-spill drink containers. They also manfully admit to several science facts that even modern sci-fi movies often ignore -- like how there is no sound in a vacuum or how a rocket speeding through space looks practically stationary. They also don’t dodge the weightlessness -- there’s eventually some cheating with magnetic boots, but no pseudo-scientific gravity generators or other such nonsense.

The biggest downfall of the movie is that it’s pretty dry throughout, and especially so at the beginning. More running time is given to getting the funding for the mission than to the construction of the rocket or the solving of any engineering challenges, which is pretty disappointing. There are also no scenes of the crew training, and the way the rocket finally takes off with only 17 hours notice is patently ridiculous. (Even in 1950 they ought to have known that.) In fact, the whole political crisis that forces the early launch feels contrived and unnecessary. But I suppose if I wanted to see engineers solving the problems of space travel, I should watch a historical account of how the real Apollo missions went.

As far as the characters go, they barely have any existence outside of their roles as astronauts. For the most part, that’s fine since the movie is really primarily concerned with the spectacle of the moon mission. But it does make the final dilemma feel hollow and academic since there’s not really any reason why the audience should care which one of the astronauts stays behind. The moon parts of the movie are easily the best, however, and it’s pretty obvious that most of the set construction budget went into making the lunar surface look cool. I also thought the spacewalk sequence was pretty gripping -- but I feel that way about almost any spacewalk sequence. (This is no doubt the result of a deep-seated fear of floating away in space that I’ve harbored ever since my very young self watched General Zod toss a cosmonaut off the moon in SUPERMAN II.) But even the best and most exciting parts of DESTINATION MOON have been done and re-done dozens of times since 1950. That’s not really the fault of this movie, but it still makes it is seem predictable and creaky to modern eyes.

What else happened this year?

-- The only other sci-fi flick from 1950 that I could find information about is a picture called ROCKETSHIP X-M starring a young Lloyd Bridges. I didn’t bother watching that one, so I’m not sure if it’s any good.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1950...

Since DESTINATION MOON is the only movie I’ve seen from this year, I guess it’s also the only one I can recommend. But you might as well skip the year unless you're really interested in 1950s sci-fi.