It Came from Outer Space

Based on a story by Ray Bradbury, “It Came from Outer Space” constitutes a major step in the development of American science fiction films. First, it launched a successful film trend where the desert plays a starring role, becoming the stage for extraordinary stories populated by alien visitors, mutant arthropods, and killer meteorites.

For Jack Arnold – this was his first foray into the genre that would make him famous – the desert is a metaphor for the unknown and reflects a dichotomous sense of attraction and repulsion: despite being a source of ancestral fear and potential peril, the desert fascinates us, stimulating our inherit desire for knowledge. Its boundless essence embodies the sacred characteristics of the unfathomable, and by virtue of the fact that such characteristics transcend our comprehension, we must treat the desert with respect or risk death (“Oh, no, it’s alive and waiting for you, ready to kill you if you go too far. The sun will get you, the cold at night. A thousand ways the desert can kill“).

Another frequently reprised theme of the decade’s sci-fi output relates to so-called “body snatchers”, that is, the prevalent ability of extraterrestrial visitors to assume a human appearance and/or take over human minds.

On a content level, the film voices a biting social critique, with journalists and law enforcement officers being the categories most targeted, although the invective extends to mankind in general. In fact, the director emphatically highlights the inability of the human race to accept diversity, and more generally, anything which lies beyond their own limited mental horizons (“Because what we don’t understand, we want to destroy“). In that regard, the alien visitors demonstrate that they’re decidedly more evolved and understanding than humans, and so inter-species communication gets postponed in the hopes that humanity will be less obtuse at some point in the future (“It wasn’t the right time for us to meet. But there’ll be other nights. Other stars for us to watch. They’ll be back“).

Based on what is expressed in the film, it’s not surprising that Arnold doesn’t find room for the cold war paranoia and alarmism that were typical of American sci-fi of the period.