The Cosmic Man

An unidentified object is tracked going at extreme speeds around the globe. A mysterious object is found in Bronson Canyon (a real location used in the filming of "Robot Monster" 1953). Naturally, the military is antsy and requests a top scientist Dr. Karl Sorenson (Bruce Bennett) investigate.

All the elements are there with the three-way love interest between the widowed mother Kathy Grant (Angela Greene) of a crippled kid Ken (Scotty Morrow), scientist Dr. Sorenson and military Col. Matthews (Paul Langton.) They must speculate on the good bad and ugly of their mysterious invader (John Carradine).

An added plus is the fun of seeing the technology of the time this film was made. And a vintage look at the Griffith Park Observatory. Too bad they did not show the inside as there is a nifty pendulum that swings with the rotation of the earth.

We are in luck as we get two space speeches before the conclusion. Will we heed the warning or is this the end?

Others have said, "The Cosmic Man" draws heavily on the ideas, characters presented on "The day Earth Stood Still", and I agree with them.

But, it is still a decent low-budget movie. It is well-intentioned and one can feel that a honest effort was put into making it.

Special effects are at a minimum. The Cosmic Man's spaceship is nothing more than a white sphere with a somewhat irregular surface. There are no blinking lights, no rubber-suited monsters.

The Comic Man is one of these movies to be watched on a rainy Saturday night when there is nothing else to do. In this type of circumstance, "The Cosmic man" can be a good time-filler.

Watch and enjoy for what it is.

You can say a lot about John Carradine but dull he isn't except, of course, in THE COSMIC MAN. He has very little screen time and when he does appear it's behind the darkest pair of goggles this side of The Invisible Man. His affected, halting "alien speak" hampers him even further so he's not a exactly ball of fun and neither is the movie. I know it's a personal quirk but even as a kid I never liked genre films with child actors as major characters and when they play for sympathy (the boy has polio) it gets even more cloying.

On the plus side, there are atmospheric touches in a couple of scenes with Carradine printed "in negative." This, however, is more than balanced by scads of talking head scenes, some of which includes the leading lady wavering between her two oldish, low-charisma suitors Bruce Bennett and Paul Langton. It's a very slow go.

I recall back in the seventies when THE COSMIC MAN seemed to be a lost film, a friend of mine, a die-hard science fiction fan, was determined to track down a copy. He finally got his opportunity when the film suddenly became available on home video. Even he gave it a big Thumbs Down.

Not expecting much at all, I was a little surprised at how much I enjoyed this very small budget take on Day the Earth Stood Still. For all the plodding along and pretty miserable effects, the story is quite literate and even has some elements of HG Wells First Men In the Moon, that being the idea of space travel via an "gravity" repelling shutter device. The lead scientist does his part well, in a role that would have been Peter Graves' had he not been busy on Beginning of the End. He has a certain combination of ease and comfort in his role and it comes across as very realistic, the best of the cast, and livens up all the scenes which he is in. John Carradine puts in a typical decent performance but has to do double-duty since there is no Gort available here. Unfortunately, this weakens the film, and we wish there were more of a menace on his part, or more of some kind of ultimatum, but then that's why we return to view Day the Earth Stood Still again and again. Yet you can watch this "version" at least one time and not feel disappointed.

It reminded me of "The Day The Earth Stood Still" but it wasn't as good. Not so scary creature and a very unusual spaceship. It has to be considered in the context of the times, which was the late 1950s. During it's day it probably was a good, scary Sci-Fi movie that gave the viewers nightmares after watching it. Over the years it's lost a lot of it's effectiveness. Consider that you are going to watch a 1959 movie. Things were different then. This movie should be considered a semi classic Sci-Fi, old fashioned drive in movie. It wasn't the best that came out of the 50s but I thought it was very enjoyable and a must see for any classic Sci-Fi viewer.