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This modest science fiction film from Ray Bradbury's short story "The Meteor" is perhaps the most-imitated film in the history of cinema.. The screenplay for this feature was written by Harry Essex, with direction by veteran action-film expert Jack Arnold. It is set on the edge of the desert, and involves in its storyline the crash of a mysterious meteor. Investigating it, a scientist living nearby discovers it is an alien spacecraft; he glimpses an ugly amoeboid creature like an octopus with a giant eye. Its next efforts cause a landslide which hides the spacecraft under a landslide, so no one else can see what he saw. The next development, when no one believes him, is that local people, law-enforcement and others, start acting like zombies; his wife believes him, but when the folk start coming into town he knows he needs to do something. Heading to the site again, he contacts the alien minds who tell him they only wish to escape Earth, where they do not belong. He gives them the help they require and the ship takes off the next day, heading home and leaving hi,m, and us, with a genuine mystery and an important question about parochial attitudes and out fitness to extend man's reach into the Galaxy when this urge has not been conquered. The production in B/W is a very good one for a "B" film, I assert., Joan St. Eigger did the hairstyles, Rosemary Odell the costumes, Russell A. Gausman and Ruby R. Levitt the sets, with Bud Westmore handling the unusual makeup challenges. The very fine art direction was done by Bernard Herzbrun and Robert A. Boyle, with luminous cinematography by Clifford Stine. In the solid cast are Richard Carlson, Barbara Rush, Charles Drake as the Sheriff, Joe Sawyer, Russell Johnson and Kathleen Hughes. it is arguable that Richard Carlson talks too much about the mysteries of the desert in this film, as n allegory for the dangers of the unknown, the wild, the as-yet-untamed--for space itself; but the dialogue is good-enough, the situations genuinely eerie and the style of the film, its crisis and its and pacing far-above-the-expected. In lesser hands, this production could have been less effective; this has become a classic example of how to handle several sci-fi situations. It earns the stature of being fundamentally scary; yet it is also thoughtful and interesting at the same time, by my standards. This is sci-fi noir of a very high sort.

Universal Studios could always be counted upon to devise some interesting stories in the sci- fi genre at a time when the genre simply exploded. Also among their undeniable classics during this period are gems like Creature from the Black Lagoon, Tarantula, and The Incredible Shrinking Man. This particular tale (although the final screenplay is credited to Harry Essex, the original treatment by Ray Bradbury was left largely intact) explores that theme of mankind seemingly always fearing and distrusting anything it doesn't understand, and reacting to it with aggression.

Likable, earnest Richard Carlson stars as John Putnam, an amateur astronomer in the small town of Sand Rock, Arizona. One night he (and others) witness a "meteor" violently crashing to Earth (in one of the most startling introductions to a film of this kind). The aliens on board stealthily go about abducting local citizens and altering their appearance to look like these people. All they really want is to be able to work on their ship in peace, and leave before too long, but naturally there are humans who don't want to get with the program, like hot tempered sheriff Matt Warren (Charles Drake).

Lovely Barbara Rush is Carlsons' appealing leading lady in this extremely well directed, succinct film with as much moody black & white atmosphere as one could ask from this kind of entertainment. One will notice that all we get at the beginning is the title; the cast and crew credits are all saved for the final few minutes - an interesting (but not THAT uncommon) innovation for an older film. There's fine use of stock music from such composers as Henry Mancini, and the cinematography by Clifford Stine is excellent. The aliens are effectively hideous looking in their natural guise, but they begin to be revealed perhaps a bit too soon into the story. The alien P.o.V. shots are pretty cool.

As was said, Rush is very appealing, but it's unfortunate that her role keeps requiring her to scream at things: a Joshua tree, a kid in a costume, an undisguised alien (well, at least that one is understandable). The supporting cast is impressive, right down the line: Drake, Russell Johnson, Joe Sawyer, George Eldredge, Bradford Jackson, Dave Willock.

Although originally filmed in 3-D, "It Came from Outer Space" works just as fine without it.

Seven out of 10.

Jack Arnold directed this screen version of Ray Bradbury's short story, `The Meteor', about a crashed spaceship in the mid-western desert. The alien crew kidnaps several inhabitants of the local town and assumes their form. A writer of science articles (Richard Carlson) who lives on the outskirts of the town witnesses the crash, although he thinks it's just a meteorite. When he goes down into the smoking crater, he sees the open hatchway of the spaceship and an alien creature within it, but when the alien closes the big hatch it starts a landslide in the crater which covers the ship. Afterwards none of the local authorities will believe Carlson's story about a buried spaceship filled with alien invaders.

A moody and beautiful movie, with fine music by Henry Mancini. Many fans of Jack Arnold's sci-fi films consider this one his best (although personally I prefer `The Space Children' -- and so did Jack Arnold, according to his own statement).

Charles Drake (`Tobor the Great') is the skeptical sheriff. Russell Johnson plays both a human and an alien (a treat for genre' fans). The supporting cast includes Joe Sawyer and Kathleen Hughes. Special effects by David S. Horsely and the great Clifford Stine. Makeup by Bud Westmore, of the famous Westmore family who contributed much to all the `Star Trek' spin-offs.

Originally released in 3-D. A 3-D tape was available a few years ago, but the quality was not good . . . sad to say.

It Came from Outer Space at least delivers on the title, because there is something mysterious/hard to describe that comes from outer space. That might sound like a low bar to clear, but I've seen sci-fi movies from 60+ years ago do a whole lot less.

It feels a little like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which came out some years later and was a good deal better. But if this one paved the way for that one, then that's something (or it could just be by chance that the premises feel similar).

Otherwise, It Came from Outer Space delivers some B-movie goodness without too many missteps, but also without being quite striking or entertaining enough to really stand out. It feels very serviceable, so it can hit the spot for those who want something like this, but it's unlikely to truly excite or come anywhere close to feeling surprising for fans of the genre. So, not a classic, but far from bad.

Also, like any movie referenced in the opening song of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, it's hard to think about this one without getting that tune stuck in my head.

Fifties sci-fi classic deals with John Putnam (Richard Carlson) as an aficionado astronomer who along with his beautiful girlfriend (Barbara Rush) during an evening in Sand Rock ( Arizona ) watch a fiery ball fall from the clouds into the desert . They investigate and John observes a ship and is convinced something is inside. Some stones fall burying the saucer before any one else can see it and now no one will believe him . After that , he becomes the aim of jokes and giggles from local townspeople when the newspapers publicize the story and Sheriff Matt Warren (Charles Drake) thinks he is nutty . When two locals, Frank Daylon (Joe Sawyer) and George (Russell Johnson), start to act rarely ; John is convinced that they have been taken over by an alien being that assume their identities. He can't convince anyone of the UFO crash he sighted and the aliens who have taken human form while repairing their ship aren't making it any easier.

Excellent adaptation of Ray Bradbury's story with smart , thoughtful screenplay by Harry Essex who distinguish with snappy pacing, a genuine heartfelt enthusiasm for the genre, and plenty of scary atmosphere and eerie events. The picture contains supremely suspense , thrills , tension , spooky scenes and acceptable special effects by that time . It deals with outer space creatures taking over the bodies of earthlings and was the first time to utilize this issue , subsequently ordinary theme on the science fiction genre . Moody black and white cinematography by the cameraman Clifford Stine . Solid acting by Richard Carlson usual actor in sci-Fi genre and a gorgeous Barbara Rush . This exciting Sci-Fi results to be a classic picture of the golden age of the 50s along with ¨Them¨ , ¨Forbidden planet¨, ¨Invaders from Mars¨ , ¨War of the worlds ¨ ,¨Destination moon¨ , ¨Earth vs flying saucers¨ and ¨When worlds collide¨, among others . The motion picture is well directed by Jack Arnold in his first foray into the Sci-Fi genre. He reigns supreme as one of the greatest filmmakers of 50s science , achieving an important cult popularity with classics as "The Creature from the Black Lagoon," and its follow-up titled "Revenge of the Creature" that was a nice sequel . "Tarantula" was likewise a lot of amusement . "The Incredible Shrinking Man" attained his greatest enduring cult popularity , it's a thought-provoking and impressive classic that's lost none of its power throughout the years . Arnold's final two genre entries were the interesting "Monster on the Campus" and the outlandish "The Space Children¨ . And of course ¨It came from outer space ¨ that still hold up today . It's followed by an inferior remake (1996) for TV .

A spaceship from another world crashes in the Arizona desert, and only an amateur stargazer and a schoolteacher suspect alien influence when the local townsfolk begin to act strange.

The screenplay by Harry Essex, with input by Jack Arnold, was derived from an original screen treatment by Ray Bradbury; screen legend says Bradbury wrote the original screenplay and Harry Essex merely changed the dialogue and took the credit. Unusual among science fiction films of the era, the alien "invaders" were portrayed by Bradbury as creatures without malicious intent toward humanity.

No doubt helped by Bradbury's script, this is a strong outing in the career of Jack Arnold, who made many memorable (but cheesy) science fiction films. This one seems more serious, more intelligent, and even the alien (when finally shown) looks excellent by 1950s standards.

I just saw "It Came from Outer Space" on DVD today. The last time I saw it was in 1954 in a small town theaters on the Saskatchewan prairies. I was ten years old at the time and my world did not extend a hundred mile radius. I still remember that film until today. Beautiful Barbara Rush, calm, cool,intelligent Richard Carlson. Joe Sawyer could have been one of my neighbors. Full of suspense, intrigue, and mild fear, this movie was indeed a classic. Not knowing what the "It" looked like added to the mystery and wonder. Surprisingly no one was ever seriously hurt. Wearing those 3_D glasses and watching those rocks coming at you was pretty cool in those days. I was glad to see it again and relive those 50 years that have gone by.

If you can file away your hypercritical eye to sit back and view It Came From Otter Space, you'll enjoy it. This era the 50's through the early 60's gave birth to the best Sci-Fi storytelling since "talkies" came to be. Film Noir came of age in that same decade and a half as well as the greatest of the Musicals. If you haven't seen "This Island Earth", "When World's Collide", "THEM", "Earth vs The Flying Saucers", key a eye out for them on local late TV, or the movie channels. Without Computer Aided Graphics the backgrounds look a little cheesy by comparison but the stories and acting are superb. My one complaint, "Would it have been all that difficult to have actually filmed ICFOS in Arizona?"

The actors all played the roles well. The thing I liked most about this film was the design of the actual alien.but in terms of the film and the content of it, it was not as good as I had imagined by I appreciate the directing and how the story unfolds was a little weak in my opinion. Overall not a bad old film and everything being black and white adds the eerie tone to it, just not one of the best.

This is director Jack Arnold's first science-fiction effort and one of the earliest to use a desert setting. Richard Carlson is very believable as an astronomer who, along with his fiancée (Barbara Rush), witnesses a meteor crash-landing that turns out to be a spacecraft. No one in the small town believes him until disappearances occur. At one point, Carlson discovers his closet has been ransacked and wardrobe stolen!

Arnold uses Theremin music to great effect, the photography is eerie, dialog (by Ray Bradbury) poetic, and the alien is a large crawling mass with one bulging eye that leaves a snail-like trail in its path. Incognito as humans so as not to terrify earthlings with their unique physicality, the aliens are NOT bent on destruction - an interesting precursor to Steven Spielberg's expensive "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977) - even its main titles are also at the end.

In an unconscious insight into social behavior, a scene has Carlson speaking to the sheriff (Charles Drake) while watching a spider on the desert ground ("...Why are you afraid of it? Because it has 8 legs, its mouth moves from side to side, instead of up and down? What would you do if it came towards you?"). The sheriff squashes it. This holds true for animals, as well as people (who have different coloring, etc.), avoiding, ridiculing, harming or destroying, sadly. The classic Twilight Zone episode "Eye of the Beholder" (1960) is a fine example: most of the "monsters" in these science-fiction/horror films just look different than humans, we might be "monsters" to them. This is low-key, intelligent, satisfying drama. Russell Johnson, Joe Sawyer, and Kathleen Hughes co-star.

I always find it hard to judge films like this when I wasn't even relatively close to being born when this film first came out and how different films are of today compared to then. You can't really give it an objective review because we've been spoiled with superb, more-contemporary science fictions films. But nonetheless, I try to be as objective as possible and while I watch a film like this I try very hard to keep in mind when this film was made.

With all that said, I'll get on with the film review. I thought the story in this film was pretty interesting and well done. The story really does have some cool things in it, although it is a very simple plot.

The special effects are very light in this film, which shouldn't be that surprising, being made in the early 1950's. But, when they do use them, they're pretty good and somewhat impressive.

The acting in this film is nothing terribly great, but it certainly isn't bad either. The acting is pretty much what you'd expect from a 1950's sci-fi movie, lots of screaming, scared looks and what not. But all in all, there's nothing really to complain about.

I wouldn't recommend this film to everyone, but I would recommend it to anyone that truly loves the sci-fi genre (like myself) or just wants to compare this film to sci-fi films made today. I think it's good to see a film like this so that you can appreciate how far we've come with film making and special effects and all that great stuff. Anyhow, if you do see the film I hope you enjoy it for what it is. Thanks for reading,

-Chris

I am a fan of '50s sci-fi, and It Came From Outer Space" is one of the better examples of the genre. It's no blockbuster, but it touches on all the tropes you expect and love in an "invaders from out there" flick from the golden age of monster movies. It's been a few years since I saw the film, so I was looking forward to rewatching it on Amazon Prime in color, in a newly "restored and enhanced" version by a company called "The Last Picture Show."

I figured with modern artificial intelligence driving the restoration, this would look good, and certainly would have to be better than Ted Turner's regrettable and deservedly much-maligned "colorization" efforts of the 1990s.

Wow, what a let-down. The "RINNUVA" process used by The Last Picture Show (I'll just called them TLPS) is just god-awful. This is even worse than "colorization." I don't know if they did anything to the audio (it sounded just fine) but the picture was ridiculously bad. The colors are way too saturated, and shift and flash constantly, especially when there's a lot of motion. Color from one object bleeds over into the surrounding area (a face with and area of sky adjacent to it) or fail to pick up the correct color at all. For example, in an early scene, the faces of several characters are all bright orange with occasional shifts to blue or red when they move, while their hands, motioning in front of their dark jackets, remain gray.

Motion is a problem for them too. Helicopter rotors are moving too fast for the AI to figure out, and instead of resolving as a dark blur in front of the sky background as they should be, are broken up into jumbled blocks that randomly flash through that area of the picture, which is otherwise sky-blue and not darkened at all.

Rather than "enhancing" the viewing experience, TLPS makes a dsitracting mess that only distracts from the charm of the original movie. If this is the state of artificial intelligence, we don't have to worry about the machines taking over just yet.

Go find another way to see "It Came From Outer Space," which is widely available on DVD or Bluray, in glorious black-and-white (those old-school cinematographers knew how to balance light and dark even without color, so it looks pretty good. And TLPS, keep your hands off these B/W sci-fi classics until you figure out what the hell you're doing. You're not there yet.

I caught this movie in 2D and b/w, on the AMC channel this Halloween weekend. Prior to now, I'd never seen nor heard of it.

Set in and around a small town in the Arizona desert, it tells the story of an amateur astronomer who was trying to get to the truth behind a large, fiery object that fell to earth in the desert. Was it a meteroid, as the Army had proclaimed after its investigation, or a crashed space ship? Though he caught a glimpse of the latter, the evidence was buried in a landslide in the crater before anyone else got there.

Ray Bradbury's believable story is the now-common question of how we deal with things we don't understand, or are "ugly".

I thought it played well, had decent special effects, etc., for a film made for 1950s audiences' sensibilities and movie-watching sophistication.

One scene included a shapely, flirty young woman who really had nothing to do with the story. It wasn't until I heard this was a 3D movie that her presence on screen made any sense.

Fortunately, I've seen this movie in its original black and white, many times before, so I get it when it comes to the original version, but for this review I watched the restored, enhanced, colorized version, that is available on streamers like Tubi. It was not a good colorization job. I almost turned the color off on my TV. Do yourself a favor and find the original black and white version instead. Watch It Came From Outer Space (1953), as it was originally intended. What is interesting about the timing of this movie, was the fact, that widescreen movies began slowly trickling out in 1952 and by 1956 they were all, pretty much, in 16:9 widescreen. It Came From Outer Space (1953), produced by Universal-International, truly could have benefitted from the new format, especially while competing with rival studio, Paramount's War of the Worlds (1953), coming out later that Summer. A film, that was also shot in 4:3. Both films must have missed the cut, related to eligibility for widescreen, possibly by mere months.

I am a fan of Richard Carlson, mostly because of his Universal Pictures classic, Creature From the Back Lagoon (1954). He's also in one of the best Abbott and Costello movies ever, Hold That Ghost (1941) and many other films. I'm also a Jack Arnold fan, since he also directed Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954). He also directed 26 episodes of Gilligan's Island (1964-1967), which is interesting, because Russell Johnson (the Professor), is in this film too. It Came From Outer Space (1953), wasn't a knock down, drag them out, alien invasion fight, like War of the Worlds (1953) or Earth vs the Flying Saucers (1956). It got more into the psychological side of the alien paranoia of the 1950s. The film utilized its lower budget by having the aliens take over the physical forms of their human captives, instead of spending money on expensive special effects. I'm telling you, this film was the model, later used on in television, with shows like, the Twilight Zone (1959-1964) and the Outer Limits (1963-1965). It Came From Outer Space (1953), has it all. The music cues, the digitized alien voice, the screams, are all textbook, 1950s, science-fiction cinema.

PMTM Grade: C (7.2) = 7 IMDB.

Beautiful long shots of barren desserts. And of cars going down empty American highways. Barbara Rush was easy on the eyes. Richard Carlson was sort of an all American leading man. He plays the only sane person in a small desert town which intensely fears the space ship that has landed in the desert.

The bubble like creatures from the space ship were good enough for the time this film was made, I guess.

Like other sci-fi movies of the time (eg. The Day the Earth Stood Still in 1951) the film portrays base human instincts as negative and violent. Even the background score is quite similar to The Day the Earth Stood Still. The movie is based on a story by Ray Bradbury.

(6/10)

Jack Arnold directed this Ray Bradbury story that stars Richard Carlson as astronomer John Putnam, who, along with his girlfriend Ellen Fields(played by Barbara Rush) witness a meteor crash in the desert of Arizona. They go to investigate, and John discovers that it is a spaceship, not a meteor that has crashed, along with a strange-looking alien. Unfortunately, he's the only one that does, and the suspicious local sheriff(played by Charles Drake) is highly skeptical. When two local telephone pole workers(played by Joe Sawyer & Russell Johnson) are replaced by alien lookalikes, John knows that something sinister is happening, and must be stopped... Early science fiction tale is rather good, though does show its age in some ways(a bit melodramatic at times!) Overall though, entertaining and thoughtful.

In the desert an alien presence is made known. It looks like a disembodied eye and could have been a cheesy film. What follows, however, is a really intelligent movie where the realities of such a report are made to be realistic. The press is a factor. There is a sense of disbelief by some of the principle characters. Also, there is serious effort to get a handle on what this thing is. As time goes along, we begin to embrace the characters and their needs anf wants. And the alien is enough of a mystery to force us to speculate. Most of the outer space personages of the fifties were killing machines rather than sophisticated beings. See this. It's pretty good.

IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE

Aspect ratio: 1.37:1 (Universal 3-D)

Sound format: 3-track magnetic stereo

(Sepia)

A small-town astronomer (Richard Carlson) witnesses an alien spacecraft fall to earth in the Mojave desert, but no one believes his claims that alien intruders have stolen the identities of several townsfolk.

Archetypal 1950's sci-fi thriller, rendered all the more luminous in 3-D, which turns the bleak, endless desert into a thing of otherworldly beauty. Carlson is a bland but likable hero (essentially the same character he would play in another 3-D classic, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON), and the plot is a typical mixture of eerie thrills and paranoid fantasy, with a neat structure and predictable outcome. But it's the imagery which lingers in the mind: The huge spacecraft lodged in the side of a mountain, towering over Carlson just before it's buried beneath an avalanche (watch out for those flying rocks!); the humanoid figure which rises out of the desert gloom to flag down a car driven by heroine Barbara Rush; the telephone wires framed against the sky, transmitting unearthly sounds which betray an alien presence. The aliens themselves may induce giggles in today's audiences (they look like a one-eyed blancmange!), but no one can deny the visual impact of Clifford E. Stine's black and white photography (try to see it on the big screen) and Herman Stein's theremin-charged music score (try to hear it in stereo sound). Directed by Jack Arnold.

NB. Projected at 1.85:1 aspect ratio in some venues, though the movie was clearly photographed with Academy 1.37:1 ratio in mind and screened that way in most theaters.

A meteor crashes out in the desert near a remote town. John Putnam (Richard Carlson) and girlfriend Ellen Fields (Barbara Rush) see it and investigate. What John finds is an alien spaceship...but an avalanche covers it up. Over the next few days townspeople start to act very strange...like an alien mind is controlling them...

This was originally shown in 3-D. I was lucky enough to see it that way in a theatre back in the 1980s. There was real restraint of it--it didn't come up much. My favorite was when Carlson swung a telescope to the audience--I actually thought it would hit me! And the aliens POV shots had them looking through a bubble--cause it looked good in 3-D.

3-D aside this was a well-made and deadly serious movies about aliens. The script was pretty intelligent--for its era. Also this is the rare sci-fi movie where the aliens were NOT evil. Still they looked pretty gruesome (gave me nightmares as a kid).

Carlson is surprisingly very good--he has some difficult lines but pulls them off. Rush isn't given much to do but look beautiful--which she does well!:) And there's a very funny sequence with Kathleen Hughes playing a blonde bombshell. Also it's fun to see Russell Johnson in an early role before he became The Professor from Gilligan's Island. Nice eerie music score too.

Considered, quite rightfully, as one of the top sci-fi films of the 1950s. Recommended.

A huge meteor like thing crash lands in the Arizona desert. An amateur astronomer discovers that it was in fact a spacecraft before it is buried by a land slide. As is the way, no one in his town believes him and soon after, various people are replaced by automaton duplicates.

This bit of 50's sci-fi was originally released in 3D during the brief craze for the format at the time. Unlike two other studio releases from 1953, War of the Worlds and Invaders from Mars, this one was shot in black and white and was therefore more likely to have been considered an actual b-movie back in the day. In some ways though it is a more thoughtful feature than either of those two and is not a Cold War analogy in the traditional sense, as while it looks at themes of paranoia and xenophobia it tackles them from an opposite angle than was usual. The ugly looking one-eyed alien is at first presented as a killer monster of the unknown but once we get to understand the its perspective more we begin to comprehend that these beings are in actual fact benign creatures that are far more at risk from hostile elements of human society than we are of them. So I am guessing that the underlying message was one of not judging the 'alien' communists too rashly and to instead try to understand rather than attack and to be wary of lynch mob mentalities in your own back yard. A pretty radical message in those years of the so called Red Menace I would have thought.

It was the first sci-fi film directed by Jack Arnold who would go on to direct others such as the seminal The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). It also has additional kudos for being based on a story from one of science fiction's greatest writers Ray Bradbury, namely 'The Meteor'. So, there is certainly some talent linked to this one. The Arizona desert setting is also really very good and the alien is a memorable bit of design work for its time, with its point-of-view also imaginatively given via what can best be described as 'giant eye view'. There is also some Theremin music, which seems quite par-for-the-course now but which I am sure was pretty original and super-weird back in 1953. Because the story ultimately doesn't have typical alien villains, the dynamic is less suspenseful than is usual but this is offset by the more original cerebral approach to sci-fi which ensures that the film remains more interesting than many similar efforts from its time in other ways. It maintains the unorthodox approach right to the end too, by ending on a credit sequence (replete with images of the main characters to go along with it) rather than starting with one as was traditional, which again shows that they were actively trying for something different here in several ways.