Destinazione Terra

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.

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.

It Came From Outer Space is possibly Universal's best 1950's sci-fi and one of the best of the decade.

It stars sci-fi regular Richard Carlson (Creature From the Black Lagoon) and Barbara Rush (When Worlds Collide) as his lover. They both play good parts.

This is also one of the creepiest sci-fi movies of the 1950's. The desert setting is very eerie, as is the score. Director Jack Arnold often used desert settings for his movies. The alien monster looks quite impressive and the special effects are good too.

I enjoyed this movie very much and is a must for 1950's sci-fi lovers. Enjoy!

Rating: 5 stars out of 5.

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.

Aliens in a small town.

Between about 1975 and 1986, three 1950s sci-fi films were held in very high regard by me - It Came From Outer Space, Forbidden Planet and The Incredible Shrinking Man. All three were liked so much I constantly listened to them on audio tape. They were regarded as solid sci-fi movies to be taken very seriously. Then in the late 1980s I made the mistake of seeing these films in Sydney theatres with people who were not really in tune with 1950s movies. These films became comedy to them.

ICFOS begins with the male and female lead getting all romantic with each other. This cinema crowd almost laughed this scene off the screen. Too corny for them. Later, one character describes Richard Carlson as "a man who thinks for himself", the laughing was louder this time. And again, Carlson looks into space and starts talking to himself, out loud, about aliens. The laughing was getting stronger. And so it went on. What was once great mystery and suspense, such as Russell Johnson looking into the sun, was now comedy. They had good reason to laugh as it was funny. But this crowd destroyed a childhood favourite of mine. I did'nt like this film being laughed at. I did'nt want to know the funny side. Other cinema screenings of Forbidden Planet and The Incredible Shrinking Man were given the same reaction. For a while I wondered if all of my 1950s/1960s sci-fi favourites were just ... bad in the eyes of the public. Or was it just the Australian sense of humour?

I will rate this film by my 1970s reactions. It is a classic. The music score is dated but everything else is fine. The desert creates such mystery. Great sci-fi.