It Came from Outer Space
Science fiction and horror were inextricably linked the 1950s. Typically, they involved invaders from off the Earth, and the results varied based on screenplay, and special effects. 1953’s “It Came From Outer Space,” made as a 3D film (likely during when we see the monster), is a mixed bag in the genre, but it is a solid one, because it keeps things straightforward.
John Putnam (Richard Carlson) is an amateur astronomer who happens to be stargazing, when he sees something that looks like a meteor shower. He goes to see what landed, and it definitely doesn’t look like any regular meteor. He tries to convince his fiancée, Ellen (Barbara Rush), but even seeing a monster as they are driving doesn’t seem to make her believe it. As townsfolk begin to disappear, only to reappear somewhat off, more and more people start to feel uneasy. Maybe Putnam is on to something. What if he is one of the things that came from outer space?
As more movies began to be made in color, genre films mostly stayed in black-and-white. Part of that is due to the cost- it was cheaper than color, and cheaper to make meant the likelier a profit. Another way to keep costs down was to minimize the creature’s appearance in the film. Having the monster transform into humans is a good way of doing that, and it works very effectively in the story by Ray Bradbury and screenplay by Harry Essex. This is a film made right smack dab in the middle of the Cold War, and thus, the metaphor can be read as people being assimilated into Communism, with the paranoia of McCarthyism. Director Jack Arnold (“The Incredible Shrinking Man,” “Creature of the Black Lagoon”) isn’t looking to dig too deep into the sociopolitical nature of the story; he’s being asked, first and foremost, to create a successful creature feature, and I believe he does so.
One of the reasons the ’50s sci-fi horror genre has remained so fascinating is because it helped expand both genres, and what they did. The visual effects for both space vehicles and the monsters helped push sci-fi into another level of storytelling, and horror by expanding what monsters could be- taking known things in nature at times, and making us terrified of them. The creature effects also meant that anything could be scary- it didn’t just have to be a man behind prosthetics. That flourishing of genre is part of why “It Came from Outer Space” may be cheesy, but it’s still effective 73 years later.
