Le météore de la nuit

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.

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.

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.

An astronomer-stranger realizes that what is believed to be a meteor is in reality a space ship. No one believes him. Richard Carlson plays this laughed at John Putnam with conviction and integrity. Carlson tries to discover the truth, with the aid of his girl friend, and slowly they learn that indeed an alien presence has landed in the desert. The story has many similar plot elements found in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and some new twists all its own. For the most part, the plot is pretty cohesive, and the acting acceptable. Charles Drake as a no brain lawman might be the one major exception. Russel Johnson, the professor of Gilligan's Island fame, has a small part as well. The alien presence seems to not want to harm humanity but only to leave, but is willing to harm to meet its end. All in all a pretty good atmospheric sci-fi chiller from the Golden Age.

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.