Posted on 07/20/2025 6:59:25 AM PDT by Twotone
There was a small renaissance in science fiction movies in the early '50s, aside from the space operas and creature features there were politically resonant, to include big budget titles like Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still. How and why science fiction films took themselves seriously isn't hard to understand if you just look at the headlines from the moment the film began production to after it hit theatres.
Screenwriter Edmund North was working on the script for the film in the first two months of 1951, at the beginning of the first full year of the Korean War. The year began with Chinese and North Korean forces capturing Seoul, and on January 11th a report was delivered to U.S. president Truman by the National Security Resources Board recommending the expansion of the war to the bombing of China and even a potential nuclear strike on the USSR.
Just two weeks after North delivered his final draft, the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg began; the Soviets had detonated their first atomic bomb just a year and a half earlier, and they would test two more weapons in September and October of that year. Two days after filming began on April 9, Truman relieved Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his command of the Korean War. As filming was wrapping in May, the U.S. was testing its first thermonuclear warheads at Eniwetok Atoll. Just a few days after production wrapped Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean defected to the Soviet Union.
That year, the U.S. Census department took delivery of the UNIVAC 1 computer from Remington Rand and the USSR sent two dogs, Dezik and Tsygan, on a sub-orbital spaceflight.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
One of my favorite movies.
The remake not as good.
Re-makes never are as good as the original.
Higher tech doesnt mean morally superiority.
Thats why that story’s premise has to be accepted tocmake the message, work.
Amazing isnt it , that folk will believe in aliens defying physics and distance but not fallen angels and their hybrid offspring.
Who will tell the world “ they weren't raptured, they were removed so you could evolve”
When they come down, Christians go up.
When we go up,the aliens will come out into the open for everyone to see and rub shoulders with.
Even the UN is programing our kids right now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSlrYDqFvfQ&pp=ygUhVW5pY2VmICIgdGhlIG5ldyBib3kiIGNvbW1lcmNpYWwg
I come to you in peace. Gort can level a planet so please behave. Don’t act like self-righteous liberals!
Many of them carried a theme of needing scientists to save the world.
By the way I met Billy Gray by accident, the kid who played “Bobby” in the movie. I went to a motorcycle flat track event in CA he was racing in some years back. A friend had passes to the pit area and we went back there to see the bikes and my friend pointed him out to me. He also played Bud Anderson from the Father Knows Best TV series.
Klaatu barada...uh...necktie!
Agreed.
I also liked the scene at the McDonald's where Klaatu (played by Keanu Reeves) meets with another alien, Mr. Wu, who has lived on Earth for years.
My personal favorite was the original “The Thing From Outer Space.” Especially the sole female cast member’s response to the guy’s question, “How do you kill a vegetable?” Classic!
A simple thread about a classic SciFi movie brings out all kinds here at FreeRepublic.
Old Freepers who can find a Commie under any rock, and now even the "Collins Elite" rearing its head.
Yes, it’s in the water and cleverly embedded in old Ed Wood movies.
To save the earth you must go back to living in caves and eating grubs because technology BAD. From the people with spaceships. Because I am sure they grow on trees.
I’ve never gotten the impression from the first one (didn’t see the remake) that it was against technology. Only the human response to be aggressive. We were supposed to learn how to be rational rather than war-like. Unfortunately, human beings are not particularly rational at all times & tend toward violence when they want to get their way.
I guess murdering people who did not follow your arbitrary orders is just swell.
How about “First Men on the Moon,” with Lionel Jeffries?
who can find a Commie
/.
Ayup
/-)
Found you .
;-)
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