RE: The Last Movie You Watched
June 24, 2024 at 8:39 am
(This post was last modified: June 24, 2024 at 8:49 am by Nanny.)
It Came from Outer Space (1953) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Came_from_Outer_Space
With the story by Ray Bradbury, if you think of campy sci-fi tropes you can piece this one together in your mind. Overhead opening pan cresting a rocky hill to reveal a small Arizona town. Theremin wooing and weeing away as we meet the scene and our players. A "Buck Rogers-esque" special effect of a blazing meteor that crashes. A curious star gazer rushes to the scene. He sees the alien, then we see him from the alien's perspective. The alien retreats into a circular spacecraft. A massive rock slide covers up the ship. Nobody believes our hero and laugh him off as a crackpot. Then shit gets real. Finally the sheriff realizes the aliens have held townspeople hostage. He forms a posse and goes after the aliens. The crackpot tries to intervene but can he buy the time the aliens need to blast off before the posse gets them?
The camera work is excellent, from the overheads to the shots from the alien's perspective it set the standard for many of the tropes we see in lighthearted sci fi )think Mars Attacks! and the Men in Black series). The music is pure gold - over the top like in the Twilight Zone or Star Trek. The "one eyed man in the land of the blind" theme is one familiar to readers of sci fi stories like those of Philip K. Dick.
A fun and important pulpy sci fi for any film buff.
With the story by Ray Bradbury, if you think of campy sci-fi tropes you can piece this one together in your mind. Overhead opening pan cresting a rocky hill to reveal a small Arizona town. Theremin wooing and weeing away as we meet the scene and our players. A "Buck Rogers-esque" special effect of a blazing meteor that crashes. A curious star gazer rushes to the scene. He sees the alien, then we see him from the alien's perspective. The alien retreats into a circular spacecraft. A massive rock slide covers up the ship. Nobody believes our hero and laugh him off as a crackpot. Then shit gets real. Finally the sheriff realizes the aliens have held townspeople hostage. He forms a posse and goes after the aliens. The crackpot tries to intervene but can he buy the time the aliens need to blast off before the posse gets them?
The camera work is excellent, from the overheads to the shots from the alien's perspective it set the standard for many of the tropes we see in lighthearted sci fi )think Mars Attacks! and the Men in Black series). The music is pure gold - over the top like in the Twilight Zone or Star Trek. The "one eyed man in the land of the blind" theme is one familiar to readers of sci fi stories like those of Philip K. Dick.
A fun and important pulpy sci fi for any film buff.
