It Came from Outer Space

And in today's episode, we've got two films where the aliens arrive with no intention of hurting anybody, and they both decide the safest thing to do is to put on a human face.

We'll be discussing It Came From Outer Space from 1953 and Warning From Space from 1956.

I mean, it's only polite to put on a human face from the sounds of it when you come down and visit.

But how polite are these aliens? We'll find out as we go along.

Very well, then.

You asked to see this, so you shall.

So it came from Outer Space, 1953.

Absolutely a horror movie, but we're talking about it in the context of a friendly alien movie directed by Jack Arnold.

Monsters meant atomic annihilation.

But then we get the 1953 film, It Came from Outer Space.

Directed by Jack Arnold, who later became famous for Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Right.

And on paper, the plot of It Came from Outer Space sounds like the most generic paint by numbers B movie you could possibly construct.

Oh, totally.

You have a rugged amateur astronomer, played by Richard Carlson, and a school teacher, played by Barbara Rush.

How so?

Uh, and apparently for that particular sequence, they actually used close-up footage of a real praying mantis crawling [chuckles] on a miniature Washington Monument, which may be, like, my favorite fun fact about the whole movie.

Now, this was directed by Nathan Juran and produced by William Alland, who was involved with some more famous Universal science fiction films of the period, including It Came From Outer Space, Creature From the Black Lagoon, which we've covered on this show, and This Island Earth, which we're covering this season.

So this is coming from exactly the right family tree of 1950s Universal monster movies that I love, and they really did build themselves a mantis.

This was a lar- the largest papier-mâché model supposedly, uh, ever made by Universal.

RKO released King Kong.

And finally, something I'm not going to touch because at a deadly pace, it came from outer space.

And this is how the message ran.

And here's the xenomorph that came from outer space.

What are we covering next time on the podcast, Matt?

Uh, we're gonna be talking about It Came From Outer Space from 1953, and Warning From Space from 1956.

Yeah, so It Came From Outer Space, where a stargazer witnesses a spaceship landing in the Arizona desert, but none of the townsfolk believe him.

And Warning From Space, where starfish aliens arrive in Tokyo with an urgent message for humanity.

So that's gonna be a fun one to look at next time.

You have Nurse Faith Garland, who was named after actress Beverly Garland from Swamp Women and It Conquered the World.

Professor Jeff was named after actor Richard Carlson, who was from It Came from Outer Space.

So there's all of that.

But what I found really fascinating that I really, really thought was like, in the behind the scenes, there was just a lot of things discussing this, was how so much of this episode, there was a debate around smoking in it.

Yeah.

There's another film, It Came from Outer Space, where the aliens basically crash land, and they just wanna get back to their home.

But in the meantime, the Earth people are scared and react accordingly.

And, um, that's an unusual angle for a film made in the 1950s.