It Came from Outer Space (1953) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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I won’t put in the typical spoiler alert because it just doesn’t matter.

In this movie an amateur astronomer, John Putnam, happens to be out in his backyard in what looks like Arizona, looking through his telescope when what appears to be a meteor hurtles to earth in his vicinity.  Being a man of action, John gets his friend Frank to helicopter him to the scene of the crash.  And of course, he brings along his girlfriend Ellen.

When they get to the crater John goes down to the “meteor” and finds that it is a spacecraft with something alive in it.  But somehow the ship causes a landslide that covers itself up.  From this point on John attempts to convince everyone that he isn’t crazy when he claims there is a ship from outer space in the crater.

Only Ellen believes him and they go around town trying to convince the sheriff and the scientists from the local college.  Eventually the aliens start kidnapping humans and replacing them with look-alikes.  But because these aliens are so boring people start suspecting something is wrong.   And here is where we meet the biggest “star” in the cast.  One of the kidnapped humans is George played by Russell Johnson, better known to the world as the “Professor” on Gilligan’s Island.  Johnson plays his part with all the acting skill that he would later demonstrate on that famous island.  Amazing.

Anyway, eventually the rest of the town figures out that John knows what he is talking about and under the leadership of Sheriff Matt Warren they organize a posse to go and put the smackdown on these aliens.  But by this point John has finally located one of the aliens and gotten their side of the story.

Apparently, the aliens crashed to Earth and have been attempting ever since to repair their ship.  They’ve impersonated humans to obtain supplies for the repairs.  Apparently copper wire is an important part of faster than light technology.  The humans they captured have not been harmed and will be released if the aliens are able to repair the ship before the humans have a chance to interfere with them.

When John asks the alien why they don’t just come out in the open and meet the humans, he comes out of the cave he’s hiding in and reveals his appearance to John (1), (2).

Apparently, their appearance is so terrifying that John goes into hysterics for a few moments.  Personally, I think it would be more likely that most people would break out into laughter if the aliens showed up in town.  They sort of resemble what a giant Mr. Potato Head toy would look like if only one eye was stuck on where the nose should go and then asbestos was glued on as hair.  After his hissy fit John agrees to help the aliens escape by preventing Sheriff Matt from rousting them out of their cushy lair in the convenient old gold mine outside of town.

It is while John is trying to prevent the sheriff from attacking the aliens that Matt makes a speech which was the only part of the movie I remember from when I saw it fifty some-odd years ago.  Matt looks at the thermometer and says, “It’s ninety-two degrees!  I remember reading that more murders are committed at ninety-two degrees than any other temperature.  Below that temperature people are in their right minds.  Above ninety-two it’s too hot to do anything.  But at just ninety-two people get irritable!”  I really enjoyed that scene.  In fact, I enjoyed it more than the whole rest of the movie put together.

Anyway, the posse is rounded up and on the way to the mine they manage to kill one of the aliens driving a pickup truck.  It was a pretty nice truck.  John heads down into the mine first and one of the aliens disguised as Ellen tries to kill him with a laser wand.  But John manages to shoot her and she falls into a puddle in the mine.  Then John finds the leader of the aliens who is disguised as John(!) and talks himself into waiting before attacking the humans with his death ray.

John gets all of the hostages out of the mine and uses some handily placed dynamite to close up the mine entrance to prevent the posse from lynching the potato heads.  As the posse and the freed hostages watch the space ship breaks free of the earth and heads back into space.  And John tells us that one day they’ll return and human and potato heads will live in peace together.

Wow!  This movie was based on a story by Ray Bradbury.  I’ll have to go back and read that story.  If it really resembles the plot of this movie, I’ll have to rethink my appreciation of Bradbury.  Anyway, this is all harmless stuff from the early days of B-movie sci-fi.  I’ll recommend this thing as campy nostalgia from simpler times.  It would have made a good movie for a drive-in date.  Something you wouldn’t have minded missing during the clinches.  Your milage may vary.

Unexpected Consequences of Irresponsible Actions

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Returning to the subject of yesterday’s post, I was considering what kind of effects might be caused by a country sabotaging the valuable infrastructure of a country with which it was not in a state of war.  What immediately came to mind was reciprocation.  Currently a new pipeline is going into operation from Norway to Poland.  Would it surprise anyone if that pipeline were sabotaged?  Now maybe this isn’t something the Russians would want to do.  Maybe they have other fish to fry with the Poles.  But it seems to me that the US has moved into entirely new territory with the bombing of the pipelines and they should expect the Russians to respond in kind.

Now, maybe this is all according to plan.  Maybe the people running our foreign policy (and domestic policy) are looking for a response.  As I said yesterday, this may be a tail wagging the dog operation they’re running and they need a Russian reaction to provide a distraction from the economy during the mid-term elections.  If that’s the case they may be hoping for something soon and drastic.  If nothing happens then probably the CIA will be disappointed.  I’m sure they want acknowledgement for their wanton destruction.  Maybe a commendation.

But here’s the thing.  This is a different level of provocation than even the military aid we’ve given the Ukraine.  Even with the targeting information and advanced artillery we’ve provided to the Ukrainians the actual attacks have been through proxies.  The sabotaging of the pipelines was done by United States directly.  It was a non-military target and it was completely unrelated to the Ukraine conflict.  It will be answered.

Really the only question is when.  Supposedly the Russians are pretty savvy about injecting their actions into the politics of their adversaries.  After all, hacked by Putin is a byword of Democrat party fear.  What they might do is wait for the mid-term elections to conclude and then once the Democrats have been trounced and can’t benefit from the distraction, I imagine some kind of revenge might occur.  What it might be is hard to know.  I have no knowledge of the relative vulnerabilities of different sections of US infrastructure.

The most likely thing would be an underwater pipeline.  That is what’s known as poetic justice.  But it could be anything.  It might not be sabotage.  It could be a data dump based on some kind of espionage that would be especially embarrassing to the Biden government.  It could be a terror attack coordinated with a Mexican drug cartel.  After all the southern border is essentially wide open.  It could be almost anything.

But the point is the Biden administration has gone out of its way to slap Russia in the face.  Chances are there will be a response and chances are it will be an escalation.  My only hope is that innocent Americans aren’t hurt or killed in the process.  But this is what happens when the foreign policy of a superpower is put in the hands of Yale and Harvard goofballs.  Maybe in 2024 we can rejoin the community of responsible nations again.  Until then just pray it all doesn’t go nuclear.

 

Update

Nostradumbass has suggested a couple of theme songs for the current situation

 

 

What the Hell is Really Going On?

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When I read about the Nord Stream sabotage, I was thinking that the CIA and the State Department were figuring a way to force the Europeans to back their play in the Ukraine.  After all, if there was no way to get gas to Europe except through the Ukraine pipelines then effectively, they would have to go along with beating Russia to get the gas back.  But suddenly it seems like there’s more going on here.

What it is, I’m not sure.  Will it be some kind of October Surprise to sway the Mid-Term election?  Will these maniacs go to the brink with Russia to try and win the mid-term elections.  Is Creepy Uncle Joe going to go on television before the election and tell us that war with Russia is imminent and the only way he can win that war is to have a united Congress to rubber stamp his every action in the war?  It’s hard to believe he would do something that crazy.  But then again what’s crazy nowadays?

But what else could be going on?  Could this really all be about not letting the Germans buy natural gas from Russia?  That seems absurdly trivial when questions of nuclear war are being considered.  Surely war and peace are at a much higher level of US foreign policy than commercial relationships between European nations even if one of them is Russia.  But that is the claim of some people.  That we are trying to prevent Europe from cozying up to Russia because we want to prevent anything interfering with our hegemony over the West.

All of these actions and motives are bizarre to say the least.  It no longer seems that our foreign policy is being run by people who are grounded in reality.  Brinksmanship in the Ukraine is the height of dangerous behavior.  Sabotaging critical infrastructure that our closest allies depend on for the energy supply for their homes and businesses seems insane.  Having Joe Biden repeatedly state that the United States would get into a shooting war with China over Taiwan when the Chinese weren’t making an issue of it is just plain stupid.  But maybe that’s the point.  Maybe very stupid people are running our foreign policy now.  Maybe this is the best they could come up with to stave off the collapse of their “new world order” which seems to be coming apart at the seams everywhere we look.

After all, the EU is seeing defections from their immigration policy in Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and now also in Sweden and Italy.  The BRICS and some other countries have rejected Washington’s embargo of Russian petroleum and mineral products.  And more and more Americans are tired of the madness that’s been going on for the last two years over COVID, crime and the destruction of the economy.

So if this is the Elites flailing around to distract us from the shambles they’ve made of everything, then my only fear is that we may not survive to see them rejected at the polls.  After all it’s still about forty days until election day and at this rate they’ll have triggered nuclear Armageddon and a Great Depression simultaneously before they can be fired.

Is this all just Joe playing “tail wagging the dog” or are these people so delusional that they think they can do any crazy damn thing and get away with it?  Maybe it’s too much to hope to know what’s really going on but I assure you I’m not the only one thinking that we’ve descended into a mad house.  The slogan that the Republicans should use for both 2022 and 2024 is, “Had enough yet or do you want the crazy to keep going?”