Show #24: Pre-show Discussion
Show #24 will be about the film “The Day The Earth Stood Still”.
This 1951 scifi classic often gets lumped in with “all those formulaic B-movies”, but this is the movie that inspired the tropes that were beaten to death later in all those B-movies. From special effects techniques to otherworldly sounding music, this is considered to be the movie that started the trend.
Definitely watch the 90min long documentary on the flip side of the special edition DVD. It’s not labeled clearly, but it features director Robert Wise, producer Julian Blaustein, and the biographer for composer Bernard Herrmann. I think it’s worth watching, moreso than listening to the audio commentary of the film.
I remember this film greatly. It’s one of the few I bought on video and bought right away on DVD. If it’s on TV, I’ll always stop and watch it. This it the movie that got me into sci-fi followed closely by the old Flash Gordon serials that used to be re-run on TV in the 70s (I’m not old enough to have seen the originals.
This movie definitely started a trend of UFO movies and ‘what if’ movies based on space men landing. I recently went through a long session of old sci-fi with movies like Forbidden Planet(1956), Invasion of the Body Snatchers(1956), The Thing from Anther World (aka The Thing (1951)). Including The Day the Earth Stood Still, all of these movies had more than one thing in common. Mainly they relied on the actors to get the story across, not the special effects. All of them dealt with ‘what if’ we met an alien race and each of them did so in a different way. I think what made The Day the Earth Stood Still stand out among the rest is the fact that 1) the Alien looked like us, and 2) He wasn’t bent on destroying the Earth. Nearly every other UFO movie of the 50s was about aliens trying to kill off every one of us for their own needs. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the means, just that he wasn’t here for that purpose.
I think it’s all the disappointment I’ve felt lately with the overly produced sci-fi depending more on the special effects and less on plot and acting that’s driven me back to the days gone by when a movie depended more on story and less on effects.
Great pick for this week. I can’t wait to hear this one!
Pod on!
I had not seen this film since I was around 10 years old. I recently got to re-watch most of it (still never seen the whole thing start to finish).
In my recent viewing I was amazed at the films quality of production aas well as the performance and storyline.
Very little of what I’ve seen had anything “scifi” in it. It was character interaction and development and it was quite well done.
The movie is quite dated (no surprise) but very intelligent and enjoyable.
I’m looking forward to your discussion.
Matt
This film is a classic. The executives at the Sci-Fi Channel should be forced to watch this, with the admonition “look what you can do WITHOUT cgi effects.”