Classic ’50s Sci Fi Movies Revisited
Your enjoyment in watching a movie can be enhanced if you know the story behind the making of it, or if you are aware of the different ways that others have interpreted the meanings and significance behind what you’re seeing.
Take the 1953 science fiction classic It Came From Outer Space.
I had seen this movie in the 1980s, in a late night television showing. Though I liked it at the time, I’d never seen it again. After reading The Bradbury Chronicles (a biography of Ray Bradbury) I decided to treat myself to a nostalgic trip back in time to the 1980s – when I was young and these classic 1950s sci fi movies were all new to me and a treat on Friday nights or Saturday mornings. It Came From Outer Space was mentioned in the book, so I decided to use it as my launching point.
Fortunately, Universal had released a DVD of this film in 2003, with lots of ‘bonus features.’ I checked it out from my local library. I popped some popcorn, took an ice cold can of Pepsi out of the fridge, and prepared to enjoy.
And it is an enjoyable movie. Amateur astronomer John Putnam (Richard Carlson) and his fiancÃ?© Ellen Fields (Barbara Rush) are out star-gazing one night when they see a meteor streak across the sky and crash near an abandoned mine. They go to investigate. Putnam goes into the depths of the crater and sees something that looks like a spaceship, and an alien, before a landslide forces him to run for his life. Once he gets back to the surface, no one will believe what he saw, not the local sheriff, not the academic he summons from a nearby university, nobody. Then, people start disappearing…and when they reappear they act strangely…
It turns out that it was a spaceship Putnam saw, and the aliens are trying to repair their ship and leave Earth. In order to do so they kidnap people to do the manual labor, and replace them with duplicates who go into the town to get the tools and equipment they need. Although the people of Sand Rock (the local town) finally figure out what’s going on, Putnam is able to persuade the sheriff to not attack them, until he is goaded into doing so by a deputy. Putnam is able to prevent catastrophe, however. The kidnaped victims are released and the aliens blast off. “It wasn’t the right time for us to meet,” says John Putnam, gazing in awe up at the stars. “But there’ll be other nights. Other stars for us to watch. They’ll be back.”
As the movie unfolded I thought to myself…this is an adaptation of John Campbell’s “Who Goes There?”
As coincidence would have it, I had just finished reading a book called Science Fiction Writers: Critical Studies of the Major Authors form the Early Nineteenth Century to the Present Day (which I would review except it was published in1982) and had read the entry on John W. Campbell. I was familiar with him mainly because of the stories told about him by one of my favorite authors, Isaac Asimov. The entry on Campbell describes the plot of “Who Goes There?” in detail.
The entry also stated: “It ultimately served as the source for the well-known motion picture The Thing From Another World (1951), although this film shared little with the story except the concept of a hostile, dangerous, resilient monster from space.”
In “Who Goes There?” scientists in Antarctica come across the body of an alien in a spaceship that had crashed on earth. They bring the body into their research facility…and then strange things start to happen. It becomes clear that the alien *isn’t dead, and can change shape, killing the scientists one by one and metamorphosing into their likenesses. The survivors become more and more paranoid as they don’t know whom to trust.
In the 1951 movie, starring Kenneth Tobey and Margaret Sheridan, James Arness played the monster – who didn’t shape-change at all but merely lurked in the darkness, killing people, until the survivors figured out how to destroy him.
The Science Fiction Writers entry didn’t mention that It Came From Outer Space was also an adaptation, and I thought to myself, Why not? It takes place in a desert instead of in Antarctica, and the aliens mean no harm, but they’re still shape changers who take over other people’s forms (not bodies, just forms). It was clearly an adaptation.
Indeed, there’s a scene with John Putnam and the Sheriff, out in the desert as they’re looking for a missing astronomer, that echoes the paranoia developed in the story:
The Sherriff says: “I don’t believe in all this talk about taking over other people’s forms. Nothing would add up. I couldn’t even be sure that you’re John Putnam standing beside me.”
And Putnam replies, “That’s right, you couldn’t. Wouldn’t it be a fine trick if I weren’t really John Putnam at all. Something from another world, come here to give you a lot of false leads.” (That’s one way to gain the Sheriff’s confidence, John. Well done!)
One of the many bonus features on the DVD is an audio commentary by film historian Tom Weaver, who speaks over every minute of the movie. His voice isn’t quite as mellifluous as one would wish – but then, he’s an historian, not an actor. Once I got used to his voice it was quite fun to watch the movie and listen to the commentary at the same time.
I learned how several of the effects were created (for this film was originally shot in 3D), background on the actors, and background on how Ray Bradbury came to write the treatment and Harold Essex claimed all the credit for it, and so on and so on, and there was no mention of “Who Goes There?”
In all my desultory reading over the years I’d always read that The Thing From Another World was based on “Who Goes There?” and It Came From Outer Space was written by Ray Bradbury.
And, I confess it, I started to get excited. Could it be? Was it possible that I had discovered a link that all the film critics had somehow missed? Was I about to announce a discovery that would make me famous in the annals of film criticism?
I started researching, fingers crossed. I checked the Internet Movie Database. (The IMDb). It Came From Outer Space was listed as “Story by Ray Bradbury,” and nothing more. Well, I knew that.
I looked it up in Science Fiction: The Complete Film Sourcebook (1984), and the entry made no mention of “Who Goes There?” Indeed, this entry claims the film was based on a short story by Bradbury called “The Meteor. “
I knew this wasn’t true right away, of course – having read about the genesis of the plot in The Bradbury Chronicles (which also didn’t mention the Campbell story), as well as hearing about this genesis in Tom Weaver’s commentary on the DVD. Bradbury wrote a hundred page film treatment which he called “The Meteor,” on the instructions from a film producer.
I then did a Google search on the Internet, and found quite a few sites that talked about the movie (for it is a classic). None of them mentioned its connection with “Who Goes There?” Virtually all of them repeated the incorrect info that it had been based on a Bradbury short story.
I then Googled John W. Campbell. I wanted to find out in what anthologies the story appeared – I wanted to read the story for myself. In addition to finding the story actually published on the web, I found out this fascinating bit of information about Campbell:
“According to the science fiction historian Sam Moskowitz (1920-1997) [the story] had an autobiographical impetus: Campbell’s mother and aunt were identical twins and enjoyed the “game” of substituting for one another in his care as an infant and young child, confusing him again and again with false identity.
It was this uncertainty, this susceptibility to masquerade and his terror at the game which, Moskowitz said, Campbell funneled into this last and greatest of his magazine pieces.”
My ground breaking article was taking shape in my head. Then I remembered that there was another bonus feature on the DVD that I hadn’t watched, “The Universe According To Universal.”
So, I watched it. And my dream bubble burst. About a quarter of the way through it, Vincent Di Fate, Science Fiction Illustrator/Historian, pointed out that It Came From Outer Space “used one of the themes” from John W. Campbell’s “Who Goes There?” – the alien’s ability to change shape and the paranoia that ensues because of it.
Well, I should have known. That’s not quite as sweeping a statement as my belief that the whole movie was based on “Who Goes There?”, with the main difference being that the aliens in It Came From Outer Space were friendly while the alien in “Who Goes There?” was a killer intent on destroying humanity, but still, someone had finally mentioned the concept. I no longer had a Great Discovery.
Nevertheless, in my search to satisfy my curiosity I came across a lot of information about Campbell and his story, and the making of the movie, that I hadn’t known before and wouldn’t have known otherwise, and all that information just enhanced my enjoyment when I watched the movie for a final time.
So this is what I advise you to do. Go get the DVD. Watch “The Universe According To Universal” documentary first. It’s written, produced and directed by David J. Skal. The various interviewees (collector Bob Burns, David Schechter, Paul M. Jensen and that pesky Vicnent Di Fate) point out some of the things to watch for from the three dimensional version of the film.
Look for them when you view it and imagine what you’d be seeing if you could watch it in 3-D now, such as the sheriff reaching out towards you for his gun which hangs in a gunbelt on a coatrack, or the alien – the Xenomorph’s – arms spreading towards you in the scene where it’s coming out of the mine shaft, or the rocks falling on your head during the landslide sequence.
Then watch the movie, and then, watch it again, this time with the audio commentary provided by Tom Weaver. It’s loads of fun!
On a final note, as a paean to curiosity and the discovery of truth – in my web search I came across a review of the 2003 DVD release, which criticized Weaver’s commentary. Among other comments I disagreed with, the reviewer pointed out: “Very little is presented as unquestionable truth; instead, we’re told time and again that the film “probably” was made this way, the scene “might” have been filmed that way.”
And I thought to myself, “What’s wrong with that?” If a researcher is unable to verify a fact, is only, perhaps, 90% sure rather than 100% sure about something, then that researcher has no business stating that something as a fact. People are too apt to believe everything they read without qualification, and must really cultivate a sense of curiosity – the desire to see the proof for any assertion.
As an example of why this is necessary, I mentioned earlier that several websites stated that this movie was based on a short story by Bradbury called “The Meteor” when that is not the case. One writer got it wrong – the one who wrote the entry for Science Fiction: The Film Sourcebook, and these other writers clearly did not bother to verify this statement, and thus perpetuated the error.
So as I continue to research this film (and others) for my own amusement, I will remember those “probably’s” and those “might’s”, and the speculations (Weaver says he’d been unable to find out exactly what materials had been used to construct the Xenomorphs, and how they were manipulated) and have the fun of discovering this information for myself.
“We have souls and minds and we are good.”
—Xenomorph to John Putnam
