Tonight we’re hitting the 50’s. The era that popularized science fiction horror. It paved the way for films like Alien, Terminator, Pitch Black, Event Horizon and even Terrorvision. In most cases these early sci-fi horrors were more firmly science fiction with horror elements where as now it’s more the other way around. This is “The Man From Planet X” and independent movie from 1951. Directed by Edgar G Ulmer and written by Aubrey Isberg and Jack Pollexton. John L Russell provides cinematography and Charles Koff the music. The movie stars Robert Clarke, Marget Fielding and William Schallert.
A rogue planet enters our solar system on a trajectory that will take it close to Earth. “Professor Elliot” (Raymond Bond) sets about observing it, but the encounter becomes far closer than expected. When his daughter Enid (Fielding) stumbles upon an alien craft in the Scottish highland, the professor and American journalist “John Lawrence” (Clarke) go to investigate. Finding the alien apparently non hostile they return to their lab with the being and try to communicate. Unfortunately the professors colleague Dr. Mears (Schallert) has his own plans for the alien. With his betrayal, the alien becomes hostile and with the threat of invasion it is down to Lawrence to stop the being.
Close Encounter
This is a very simple movie, but where it stands out among a flood of sci-fi horrors of the period is the ambiguity. The audience never gets to find out the truth of their visitors attention. The heroes speculate that the alien was peaceful but that the assault from the ambitious Dr. Mears forced him to change plans. The implication is that these beings wanted to co-exist with humanity on Earth but were willing to take the world by force if necessary. Since we don’t hear this from the alien it is entirely human speculation. However, usually you’d expect either evil aliens trying to conquer Earth or benevolent ones aghast at the behavior of humanity. The ambiguity is probably more realistic.
The alien itself is pretty interesting, especially for the period. It looks humanoid, but not at all human like. The blank expression of course was partially down to what they could do with FX at the time, but it works. That the alien tries to communicate with music tones is a great concept and I suspect one that heavily influenced Stephen Speilberg many years later for “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. They don’t actually make much of it here because the person that figures it out is a villain and so wants to keep it secret. The characters here are all somewhat one dimensional and merely service the plot, but the acting is good enough throughout.
Conclusion
Overall this is a mildly entertaining movie that doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. The concept is interesting and the acting is solid. But there’s not a lot more to it than that. There’s no particularly memorable scenes, none of the characters are particularly interesting and none of the performances stand out. It’s all just very average, at least though a modern lens. I can only give this a 5.5/10. Only recommended for those that like 50’s sci-fi.