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The Universal logo gets a cosmic shimmer, a honeycombed meteor smashes into the lenses, and that's just the opening titles. "Let's see what the stars have to say." The amateur astronomer (Richard Carlson) and the teacher (Barbara Rush) before the telescope share an interrupted kiss, their Arizona hamlet is lit up at dusk as a fireball zips across the sky. The camera finds the grounded vessel in a crater and dollies through its octagonal hatch, inside a floating eye glows in the darkness. The visitors are levitating squids with "souls and minds" (quivering irises ring the screen during POV shots), Earth is a pit stop in their journey. The sheriff (Charles Drake) and his trigger-happy posse confirm their fears of humanity. "Oh the dreams we had of knowing other worlds..." Between The Day the Earth Stood Still and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, an astringent chronicle of Cold War diplomacy. Carlson's stargazer is the artist, also Jack Arnold and Ray Bradbury, contemplating the endless desert within the studio set ("It's alive, and it's waiting for you") and forging an uneasy bond with tentacled fellow seekers. Multi-plane compositions are keyed not only to 3-D effects but to the deep-focus alertness of the explorer's vision, a curiosity for a world where even wires on telephone poles hum with uncanny life. The hero on the edge of the abyss faces a replica of his fiancée in black gown and flowing scarf, then his own reflection in the depths of a mine, such is the Arnold surrealism. Kubrick's interstellar Cyclops, "not witchcraft but imagination" for the man of science, the temperature of paranoia. A grain of hope looks forward to a more cordial future encounter, Spielberg will be there to film it. With Joe Sawyer, Russell Johnson, and Kathleen Hughes. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |