The "it" in It Came From Outer Space is a meteor-shaped spaceship that crashes in the desert outside a small community in Arizona. Actually, the spaceship crashes twice on-screen, once within the first few seconds of the film to give it its explosive title card, and then again within the narrative proper. Having been shot originally in polarized 3-D, it's no small surprise that the filmmakers tried to get the most out of the largest special effect in the movie, and who could blame them? For the most part, It Came From Outer Space is not a special-effects-laden monster show, but rather a psychological sci-fi drama that, along with Invaders From Mars (1953), predates the paranoia trope made so popular in 1956's Invasion of the Body Snatchers about what is human and what is alien.

Richard Carlson, who starred in dozens of similar films throughout the '50s, stars as John Putnam, an amateur astronomer and writer who, along with his schoolteacher girlfriend, Ellen (Barbara Rush), witnesses the spaceship crash. Despite his seemingly bland appearance, John is something of an outsider and a rebel, a man of thought who lives on the outskirts of town and always has his head in the stars. As one character says about him, "He's more than odd. He's individual and lonely. He's a man who thinks for himself."BEcause John is the only person to see the spaceship itself before it is buried beneath a landslide in the crater it formed, his claims are easily dismissed by others, particularly by Sheriff Matt Warren (Charles Drake), who distrusts John in general and, on top of that, is envious of him because Ellen is his ex-girlfriend.

The crux of the film becomes the question of whether the crash-landed aliens are dangerous or benign. The film gives us numerous point-of-view shots through the aliens' eyes, which suggest a threatening presence. And, once they begin to kidnap local residents and take their form, it seems that they are certainly posing a threat. Are they here to take over?

The film was directed with a competent hand by Jack Arnold, a contract director for Universal-International who made scores of such films throughout the 1950s and '60s, including such B-movie classics as The Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954), This Island Earth (1954), and The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). He's not a particularly inventive director (not surprisingly, he moved largely into television work later in his career), but he gives the film a solid, steady feel, resisting the temptations to be overly flashy on a minimal budget. In fact, the aliens were never intended to be seen, although they do make several appearances after studio executives decided there was no way they could make a movie with a hyperbolic title like It Came From Outer Space—in 3-D, no less—and not show the aliens. Thankfully, Arnold utilizes the brief glimpses of the horrid one-eyed creatures to good effect, never lingering on them.

Although Harry Essex was given sole screenplay credit, all evidence points to the fact that the original treatment written by science-fiction novelist Ray Bradbury was the film's primary source. There are certainly moments that bear out Bradbury's unique voice, particularly when It Came From Outer Space begins to voice its social concerns, namely the tendency of Americans to feel threatened by anything that is different. At a time in which homegrown racism was coming to a head and political paranoia about the influence of Soviet communists and other malicious "others" was growing with frightening speed, such concerns were not only understandable, but crucial.

Like many sci-fi films of the 1950s, It Came From Outer Space has a clear metaphorical imperative, turning the popular and comforting "us vs. them" dichotomy on its head by questioning the us. As the story goes, the true monster turns out to be within, as too many characters are much more willing to take up shotguns and blast the hell out of something different than they are to trust it, something that is, unfortunately, still true today.

Copyright © 2002 James Kendrick