SCIENCE FICTION CINEMA: THE 1950s: TEN PRETTY GOOD ONES

Spaceways (1953)

Like Red Planet Mars, Spaceways uses science fiction as a device to introduce other genres. In this case, espionage, police procedural, and a love quadrangle get blended into this efficient rocket-into-space story.

Michael Carreras, Jimmy Sangster, and especially Terence Fisher are the Hammer Film Studios' stalwarts who contribute to this early, black and white science-fiction effort by the studio better known for its horror films. Director Fisher keeps the story moving briskly—a Hammer trademark—while eliciting dimension from his actors, enough to unify the seemingly disparate strands drawn by writers Richard Landau and Paul Tabori, adapting Charles Eric Maine's radio play.

Stephen Mitchell (Howard Duff) and Lisa Frank (Eva Bartok) are part of the team developing manned rocket flight at a high-security base in England amidst interpersonal strife: Mitchell's marriage to Vanessa (Cecile Chevreau) is failing as Vanessa dallies with another team member, Philip Crenshaw (Andrew Osborn), whose suspicious behavior suggests that he might have a more sinister agenda. When Vanessa and Crenshaw disappear, suspicion falls on Mitchell, and when intelligence investigator Smith (Alan Wheatley) arrives, he speculates that Mitchell killed the couple, stashed the bodies in the rocket's fuel tanks, and when the unmanned rocket is launched into orbit—there's your perfect crime, right? Chagrined, Mitchell decides to disprove Smith's hypothesis by flying into orbit in another rocket to retrieve the first rocket while Frank, revealing her feelings to Mitchell, plots to accompany him.

Credible performances, particularly by seriocomic Wheatley, keep the quietly far-fetched ideas in check as Fisher paces their interactions, the better to minimize scrutiny of the unlikely melodrama and the budgetary limitations that mismatch stock footage with the model work. As the central focus, Duff and Bartok try to strike sparks with intermittent effectiveness. With its noirish approach, Spaceways is more space opera than it is sci-fi, a recipe that could fall very flat were it not for Hammer's earnest determination to succeed.

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956)

Yes, you saw the influence of this sci-fi stalwart in Tim Burton's wonderful send-up of 1950s science-fiction (among other things), Mars Attacks! The straightforward, prosaic description delivered by the title Earth vs. the Flying Saucers sums up in a nutshell all you need to know about this standard science-fiction yarn: We are being invaded by alien spacecraft—so how do we stop them?

That is the problem faced by Russell Marvin (Hugh Marlowe), head of Project Skyhook, a satellite program discovered by General Hanley (Morris Ankrum) to have been losing those satellites. On their way to the launching site, Russell and his new bride Carol (Joan Taylor) are buzzed by a flying saucer. At the base, a saucer disrupts the latest launch; it lands, is attacked, then destroys the base and abducts Hanley while Russell and Carol are trapped in a basement. As their tape recorder loses power, the recording of the saucer that buzzed them slows down, revealing that it was actually a message from the occupants requesting a meeting at the base, which is why they landed there. Oops—missed communication, and guess who's responsible for the missing satellites?

Inspired by pioneering ufologist Donald Keyhoe, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers features the iconic flying-saucer design described by Keyhoe and realized by celebrated stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, becoming the most distinctive aspect to the film as the narrative trundles down a pedestrian path: After reinitiating contact with the aliens, Russell and Carol find themselves aboard a saucer for the requisite why-are-you-here exposition: Their civilization is dying and they want to negotiate a joint occupation of Earth in eight weeks' time—just long enough to develop a weapon to help neutralize the threat, right?

B-movie stalwart Marlowe carries the story, filmed in black and white, on squared shoulders to its conclusion, with Taylor dutifully filling the female-appendage role. Workmanlike director Fred Sears paces efficiently but without finesse, rendering Earth vs. the Flying Saucers a smartly-packaged if derivative sci-fi distraction. Still, with Harryhausen's animation becoming influential—check the Washington Monument footage against what Burton did with it in Mars Attacks!—if you haven't seen Earth vs. the Flying Saucers yet, you just ain't with it.

The Gamma People (1956)

How do you classify this one? Genre blending gets a sly reading in The Gamma People, part spoof, part political thriller, part science fiction, but making full use of its limited budget (no surprise—it's filmed in black and white). With a potential to do too much with its broad palette, the lively script by director John Gilling and producer John Gossage, based on a story by Robert Aldrich and Louis Pollock, keeps the narrative and the action focused on the pair of intrepids who find themselves suddenly plunged into a bizarre, ominous environment.

En route by train to Austria, reporter Mike Wilson (Paul Douglas) and photographer Howard Meade (Leslie Phillips) find the carriage they are traveling in becomes uncoupled, and they are literally sidetracked into Gudavia, a tiny, mountainous regime tucked behind the Iron Curtain. As if the Marx Brothers had stumbled into The Prisoner of Zenda, Meade and Wilson suffer the comic indignities of obsequious if officious bureaucracy—a telegraph office with no telegraph, and promise by solicitous Kommandant Koerner (Philip Leaver) of a car that might not exist.

Stuck in Gudavia, the pair witnesses the brusque treatment of youthful piano prodigy Hedda (Pauline Drewett) while hotel maid Anna (Jocelyn Lane) slips them a note begging for help against the regime. All is not good in Gudavia, and driven scientist Boronski (Walter Rilla) is the culprit: His gamma-ray experiments can alter humans into geniuses, such as uber-brat Hugo (Michael Caridia), or zombielike drones—and opposition from those such as teacher Paula Wendt (Eva Bartok) is mounting.

Director Gilling marks the transition from subtle farce to quiet thriller with unobtrusive strokes—although George Melachrino's score tends to overemphasize in the second half—while Douglas and Phillips strike an effective balance between jaded observers and engaged participants. Despite some missing pieces—how exactly did they get sidetracked, and by whom?—The Gamma People radiates witty intrigue. And some of its imagery surely found itself woven into the 1960s television cult classic The Prisoner.

X the Unknown (1956)

Atomic anxieties surface as X the Unknown in this black and white science-fiction/horror blend produced with typically quiet efficiency by Hammer Film Productions. Hammer ace Jimmy Sangster penned the able script with suggestions of the studio's previously successful The Quatermass Xperiment in mind, notably the resourceful scientist, Adam Royston (Dean Jagger), who spearheads the effort to repel the spreading menace. Sangster's story emphasizes the sincere, competent efforts of the characters to stave off disaster rather than the melodramatic outbursts typical of the genre, rendering X the Unknown a more thoughtful rather than exciting thriller.

British soldiers in Scotland practicing radiation-detection exercises encounter an unexpected radiation source that kills a soldier before it moves through the countryside, claiming a young boy and a doctor at the hospital. Atomic energy inspector McGill (Leo McKern) begins investigating and soon joins forces with Royston at the local nuclear research facility. Royston speculates that the entity was trapped beneath the Earth's crust eons ago and periodically it tries to surface, seeking radiation sources—and killing living creatures in its path.

Director Leslie Norman (replacing original choice Joseph Losey, a blacklisted American and fired at Jagger's demand—more Cold War maneuvering) uses point-of-view shots to capture the victims' terror, a wise approach given the modest special effects that portray the unknown threat as an angry, glowing lava flow, although it's difficult to tell whether the entity projects deliberate malevolence or is simply a force of nature. American Jagger is clearly the star, and the veteran character actor commands the center with unassuming confidence while McKern and Edward Chapman, as the research facility's head, flank him competently. Filling background roles are Kenneth Cope, Anthony Newley, and Michael Ripper along with wee Frazer Hines (later a Doctor Who companion). Tense and earnest, X the Unknown doesn't embarrass itself—but it doesn't distinguish itself, either. A solid if unspectacular sci-fi thriller.

I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958)

Ignore the lurid title—I Married a Monster from Outer Space is really a bargain-basement Invasion of the Body Snatchers (itself hardly an "A" picture), albeit one that isn't as fully realized as that science-fiction classic. Still, this unassuming black and white flick is much better than you might think.

Louis Vittes's orderly script keeps the focus on the tension between Marge Farrell (Gloria Talbott) and her husband Bill (Tom Tryon), whose body becomes absorbed by an alien the night before his wedding. Talk about cold feet. That and the running cracks about marriage provide an intriguing sexual and psychological subtext to this monster story, particularly when Marge goes to her doctor complaining about "trying to have children for a year," followed by Bill's obvious reluctance to go for tests once Marge has been pronounced in fine form.

Director Gene Fowler, Jr., doesn't dwell on that too much, though, as he does have a monster story to tell. Secretly following Bill on a late-night walk into the woods, Marge discovers his spaceship and his terrifying secret. However, her attempts to warn others prove fruitless as other men have also become absorbed before their purpose is revealed: The aliens, all male, fled their planet when their sun's physical changes killed off their women; meanwhile, their scientists are developing methods to enable them to impregnate Earth women.

The missing alternative in Marge's options underscore the era's sexist presumptions—as always, it's only men to the rescue—but Talbott becomes a credible B-movie heroine while Tryon meets the challenge of his cold, unemotional character. Additionally, Fowler and Vittes manage some sly wit: a neighborhood bar is located next to a church-supplies store, and in a nod to The Day the Earth Stood Still, Marge's woman friend (Jean Carson) becomes, through marriage, Helen Benson—the name of Patricia Neal's character in that classic film. This modest but effective effort is a sci-fi match made in low-budget heaven.

The Giant Behemoth (1959)

Just how many times can you make The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms? And are there any behemoths other than giant ones?

The budget size is obvious from the black and white photography and the dodgy special effects—although the crew included Willis O'Brien, famous for his stop-motion work on 1933's King Kong—but despite some dubious sequences during the climax, The Giant Behemoth actually hangs together quite effectively.

This is thanks partly to the co-director (with Douglas Hickox) being Eugène Lourié, who had already directed Beast, and partly to a tight script by Daniel James and Lourié, from a story by Robert Abel and Alan Adler, that emphasizes the detective aspect of two scientific investigators, James Bickford (André Morell) and Steve Karnes (Gene Evans), pursuing reports of radiation and carnage. Other favorable factors are a largely British cast, which includes Jack McGowran, Leonard Sachs, and John Turner, that is used to working with little resources, and a sprightly Edwin Astley score that only occasionally approaches cliché. (Astley had done the hip scoring for the Patrick McGoohan spy series Danger Man, which in its one-hour format was known as Secret Agent in the United States.)

After warnings about atomic testing, dead fish wash up on Cornwall shores and a fisherman dies from radiation poisoning while muttering "behemoth!" Bickford and Karnes eventually uncover the existence of a plesiosaurus with electrical properties, as explained by paleontologist Sampson (McGowran), and the big beast soon advances on London.

The Giant Behemoth shows its shaky legs during the dinosaur's attack on London as crowd scenes, stock footage, and model work stumble into glaring contrasts and continuity lapses. (One type of helicopter takes off—but a helicopter of a different model blows up!) Only slightly more plausible is Karnes's plan to destroy the beast using a mini-submarine, but again the cast seems to believe in it, so why not? Evans and Morell are invested in their characters, which lends the story more credibility than the special effects and gives The Giant Behemoth a more procedural feel atypical of monster movies of the time—even recycled ones.

Epilogue

All right, no one is going to mistake The Giant Behemoth for a classic sci-fi film—it's a remake, not one superior to its source, and on technical grounds it does look suspect. Quite honestly, I had been prepared to file it in the not-so-good pile until I watched it again, and I was impressed with how well the story and performances came off—overshadowing the technical deficiencies.

Furthermore, Red Planet Mars, Spaceways, and The Gamma People fold various other genres into their science fiction, while X the Unknown splits the difference between sci-fi and monster movies. But once you get past the classics The Day the Earth Stood Still, War of the Worlds, and Forbidden Planet, there are still a passel of second-division sci-fi flicks left to entertain and even stimulate you: Destination Moon, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, and even I Married a Monster from Outer Space are solid sci-fi fare from the 1950s. Meanwhile, The Man from Planet X remains a prime example of how to make the most of limited resources.

Again, though, we are on the downward slide, and it only gets worse—or, depending on your point of view, better—from here on in. Next up in our particular Twilight Zone of 1950s science-fiction films: Ten not-so-good ones. You've been warned.