There’s something about cheeseball ’50s sci-fi. The earnestness and analog efx are fun, but it’s their speculative nature that makes them don’t-miss cinema. How will we travel in the future? What would a trip to Mars be like? How will society have changed by the year 2000? What if aliens visited Earth? It Came from Outer Space falls into the latter category, and here’s why aliens visit—by accident. The entire script can be summed up with: space ship crashes, space ship broken, space ship needs repair, aliens take over human bodies to do it. Talk about invading your personal space. Pretty soon two local menials are wandering around like zombies seeking spare parts to fix the grounded ship, while studly Richard Carlson tries to figure out what crashed in the desert.
It sounds silly, but this is a high budget flick, as such efforts go, with good direction, more than adequate acting, and lots of alien-cam shots. It’s funny too, though unintentionally, for example when Kathleen Hughes, for reasons that are never clear, plays her bit part like a mink in heat, even though she’s supposed to be worried to death about her kidnapped boyfriend. That boyfriend is Russell Johnson, the professor from Gilligan’s Island. Can you believe this guy? First Hughes, then he’s shipwrecked with Ginger and Mary Ann. Some guys have all the luck. But we’re lucky too—we found numerous excellent promo images and uploaded them below. The movie’s iconic poster was painted by Joseph Smith. It Came from Outer Space premiered in the U.S today in 1953.
