IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE. A Red Scare Era Sci-Fi Horror

Aliens in these films were depicted solely as aggressors, aiming to subjugate Earth and its inhabitants. This was an obvious reflection of the political Cold War mood of the time, further fueled by Senator Joseph McCarthy, who, at the head of his committee, paranoically searched for and judged Americans suspected of communist sympathies. The political climate in the USA also found its way into Hollywood, where even the adaptation of the 50-year-old novel by H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds took on a twisted relevance. Everywhere, people were looking for conspiracies, suspecting hostile infiltration and any potential sign of invasion. Science fiction cinema seemed to be the perfect illustrator of anti-communist paranoia. The audience was even meant to see in the aliens the barbaric Red Army landing in flying saucers, eager to take over the “American way of life.” It Came from Outer Space is different.

In this highly unhealthy climate, a man named Jack Arnold emerged. A former World War II soldier, later a Broadway actor, and finally, a short film director with an Oscar nomination, he decided at the beginning of the 1950s to become a “real director.” He chose to make his cinematic debut with an adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s science fiction short story The Meteor. The choice was surprising, as it dealt with visitors from space who somehow didn’t fit the image of the bloodthirsty beasts dominating the contemporary film repertoire.

The sky above a sleepy American town suddenly lights up with a large fiery ball, crashing in the Arizona desert. Amateur astronomer John Putnam and his fiancée Ellen, convinced they have seen the fall of a meteorite, fly to the crater by helicopter. To John’s astonishment, he sees a spherical spacecraft. The hatch opens, and for a brief moment, an Alien appears. Unfortunately, shortly after, an avalanche buries the spacecraft under tons of rocks, leaving the astronomer with an unsolved mystery. Official authorities, alerted by John, of course, do not believe the words of the eccentric man living on the outskirts. Soon, however, a series of mysterious phenomena convinces John that the Aliens have indeed emerged from the ship and are starting to threaten the town’s community.

Two telephone line repairmen disappear under mysterious circumstances, only to reappear as human copies, controlled by the space visitors. They inform John that their accidental stay on Earth is solely due to a malfunction of their ship. They make only one demand – do not interfere, we will repair the ship and leave. Unfortunately, as more people are abducted, the sheriff decides to destroy the threat. Seeing Putnam as the only hope, the Aliens also abduct his fiancée to force him to stop the armed rescue mission from the town…

Director Jack Arnold approached the film with an innovative, though not pioneering, idea of using the “3-D Nature Vision” technique. In this black-and-white film, some of the most spectacular sequences were filtered through red and blue, which, when shifted relative to each other and viewed through special glasses, gave an interesting three-dimensional effect. However, the film survived the test of time not thanks to this trick. The creator of the later Creature from the Black Lagoon was not called “the most beloved American director of B-movie cinema” for nothing. Instead of action at any cost and temporary use of the plot, Jack Arnold focused on mystery, mood, and metaphor, even in the use of the desert scenery, symbolizing both the cradle of mystery, hidden by greedy human desires, and the environment in which a human is as foreign as the visitors from space.

The cinematographic approach of showing the point of view of the Aliens was also original. Because the visitors from space themselves were shown very sparingly – we only see the round shape with a huge eye in the center a few times – the “subjective camera” of the Aliens creates a stronger impression. An interesting contrast is also created by the difference in behavior of the same characters before and after abduction. Normal, reacting with a full range of reflexes, humans suddenly change into quasi-zombies with dead faces, eyes capable of looking directly at the sun, stiff movements, and voices that do not tolerate any opposition.

Watching the film from the perspective of 50 years of genre evolution, one cannot help but smile indulgently at the sometimes over-expressive performances of the actors (especially when the lovely Barbara Rush lets out a scream of terror) or the naive special effects, fortunately not used too often. The music typical of contemporary science fiction films is also archaic, bizarre, atonal, and uses sounds that enhance the feeling of alienation and danger.

Today, such musical solutions are no longer used, with the only exception being the unpredictable Danny Elfman, who composed the music for the pastiche Mars Attacks!. Nevertheless, It Came from Outer SpaceIt Came from Outer Spaceis undoubtedly a classic of the genre, a film in which, perhaps for the first time, we see aliens landing on Earth who are uninterested in conquering our planet. It is a surprisingly intelligent film, not lacking in charm and the poetry of the screen, a quality that was the domain of very few science fiction films from the early days of building the identity of this genre.