Alien Universe

by Don Lincoln

  However, during the war, mankind had heard about foo fighters. Given the hundreds of stories in the press about flying saucers in the late 1940s, it was entirely natural that imaginative Aliens would begin to appear in the public eye. Science fiction was about to become far closer to the mainstream.

  The late 1940s and 1950s were a time of economic strength but also of considerable uncertainty. In March of 1946, Winston Churchill gave his “Iron Curtain” speech, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an ‘iron curtain’ has descended across the continent … in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.” The era of Red Fear had begun. Let’s spend a little while thinking about the world in which people of the 1950s lived.

  The German and Japanese empires had been defeated. But mankind now lived in a nuclear age, in which a single bomb could incinerate a city. In 1952, the United States detonated the first fusion bomb, with a yield about five hundred times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. The Soviet Union detonated its first fission bomb in 1949, followed by a fusion bomb in 1953. The two major power blocks on the planet had unleashed the power stored in the nucleus of the atom and could kill a million people in an instant. Were these two great powers allies or enemies?

  Well, it’s not quite fair to call the Soviets and the Americans enemies, but they certainly were rivals and potential combatants. Diametrically opposed political and economic viewpoints (and more than a little self-interest) guided their thinking, and the propaganda of both sides painted the other as an evil enemy, just waiting to invade and destroy the people that had elected to follow the “right” way of life. The year 1948 saw the Berlin Blockade, while 1950 brought the proxy war in Korea. Also in 1950, an undistinguished Wisconsin senator named Joseph McCarthy made the blockbuster statement in a speech, “While I cannot take the time to name all the men in the State Department who have been named as members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring, I have here in my hand a list of 205.” For the next several years, American politics was dominated by a witch hunt. People were accused of being communist sympathizers, lives were ruined, and the Red Menace was seen to be everywhere.

  Classic Alien Films of the Fifties

  So, outside and hostile infiltrators could be anywhere and everywhere. An atomic war could vaporize millions and a flying saucer craze was a recent memory. These problems were in the back of the mind of the audience who experienced the world of 1950s science fiction.

  And what a world it was. The 1950s brought dozens and dozens of Alien movies. Many “B-quality” flying saucer and invasion movies appeared at the time and have long since been forgotten. A few were iconic and are still remembered today. We will talk about some of these in order of the year that they were released.

  The Day the Earth Stood Still

  One of the first of the Alien movies of the 1950s is The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), which was a cautionary tale about the dangers of nuclear war. The movie starts out quickly, with a radar blip circling the Earth at high altitudes at a speed of 4,000 mph. The opening sequence has word of the high altitude object being spread across the world essentially immediately, with scenes being shown of radio announcers in India, Great Britain, the United States, and others telling of the observation. The U.S. announcer says, “This is not another flying saucer scare. Scientists and military men are in agreement that, whatever it is, it’s real.” We should keep in mind that radar was less than a decade old, having been used in a military environment in World War II and, in addition, the flying saucer frenzy of 1947 had occurred just a few years before. This was a timely and high-tech touch to the movie.

  The radar blip closes on Washington, D.C., and is revealed to be a classic flying saucer, flat on the bottom, with a smooth upper curve, like a squashed bell. The saucer is the color of brushed aluminum, and it lands on a park field dotted with baseball diamonds near the Washington Mall.

  In an unrealistic display of governmental organization and efficiency, the saucer is surrounded unbelievably quickly with tanks, antiaircraft guns, and troops, setting up the first drama. Two hours after landing, the saucer opens and a humanoid figure walks out, dressed in a jumpsuit. An antsy soldier pulls a trigger and a shot rings out, hitting the Alien in a shoulder.

  As the Alien lies on the ground, another figure appears in the door of the saucer, an ominous eight foot tall silver robot named Gort. Gort has a visor, which can open and from which a laser-like weapon can shoot. Gort shoots at rifles, an antiaircraft gun, and a tank with his beam, disintegrating them all.

  By now, the Alien, who introduced himself as Klaatu, has been helped to his feet. He stops Gort from doing further damage, and the robot seems to turn off, going into some sort of sentry mode. As Klaatu is brought to a hospital, the door of the saucer closes, sealing the inside from prying human eyes.

  In the hospital, the Alien talks with a representative of the U.S. president, telling the representative that he needs to speak with all the leaders of the world, but he is told that it is highly unlikely that this can be arranged. When Klaatu insists that his message is too important to be given to just one group, the representative tells him that “our world is full of tension and suspicion.” The real-world Cold War is reflected in the film.

  Klaatu then escapes from the hospital, stealing a suit that allows him to blend into the population. He rents a room in a boarding house, befriending a young widow of World War II and her son. Over the next days, Klaatu determines that the smartest man alive is a physics professor and manages to arrange a meeting with him. During the meeting, Klaatu identifies himself and again asks for help in arranging a meeting with world leaders, but the professor isn’t confident of his ability to do so, noting that scientists are often ignored. Klaatu tells him that if he doesn’t speak with the leaders, “the Earth is in danger of being eliminated.” They agree that Klaatu will arrange some sort of nonlethal demonstration of his power. He does so by disabling electricity across the entire planet for a half hour, except for things like hospitals and planes in the air.

  The meeting with scientists is arranged but, on the way to the meeting, Klaatu is killed. Before he dies, he gives the woman he has befriended a phrase that she must tell the robot Gort. When she arrives at the saucer, Gort has awakened and has already killed two soldiers guarding him. As Gort advances on the woman, she utters one of the most famous phrases of movie science fiction, “Klaatu barada niktu.” This phrase is never translated in the movie but seems to be some sort of “safe phrase.” Gort reacts by taking the woman into the saucer. Gort then retrieves Klaatu’s body and temporarily revives him from the dead. Klaatu tells the woman that the revival is only temporary, as the power of life is reserved for a “higher spirit.”

  The movie comes to its dramatic conclusion, with Klaatu exiting the saucer with the woman and Gort as guard and addressing the assembled crowd (figure 3.2). He tells them that the Earth’s internal affairs are our business, but, if we take our wars into space, that the community of alien worlds will then take action. The alien community has built the robots as policemen of the cosmos and that power cannot be taken back. The band of civilized space-faring races has given up weapons and war, knowing that the reaction of the robots would be immediate and terrible. Klaatu closes the movie with, “I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet. But if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned out cinder. Your choice is simple. Join us, and live in peace or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you.”

  FIGURE 3.2. In the closing scene of the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, Klaatu and the robot Gort stand on their saucer and warn mankind of the dangers of bringing the Earth’s conflict into space. 20th Century Fox.

  The story here is simple and c
lear. Mankind of 1950 was on the precipice of imminent annihilation. The Soviet Union and the United States both had fission weapons and were vying for world domination. Incineration of civilization is a real and pressing concern. The world had just completed the most horrific war ever, in which many tens of millions of people had died. The gray specter of communism was a real danger and the memories of world war only too fresh. It is unsurprising that the movie reflected these worries. It is also interesting to see that the worry of communist infiltration was not a central theme, except for when one matron alluded to the idea that the flying saucer was a Soviet creation. The full impact of McCarthyism was still a future worry. This movie was remade in 2008.

  The Thing from Another World

  The 1951 movie The Thing from Another World took some of the iconic filmmaking character types from earlier monster films and brought them to science fiction. These now recognizable types include the hard-headed and suspicious military man, the naïve and arrogant scientist, the reporter concerned only with getting a story, and an isolated group, with no hope for reinforcements. The movie is much faster paced than most others of the era, with an intensity that would not be out of place in a modern movie. Part Frankenstein and part Alien, it was patterned on John W. Campbell’s 1938 novella Who Goes There? One major difference between the film and the original is that in the novella the Alien is a shape shifter.

  The story begins with an air force flight crew investigating a report of a plane crash near the North Pole. With a reporter accompanying them in case there is an interesting story, they fly to the remote Polar Expedition Six, the research site of a brilliant Nobel Prize–winning scientist. It is determined that the object that crashed was metallic, too large to be a plane and too nimble to be a meteor.

  When the air force crew and some of the scientists arrive at the impact site, they find a large spot where the polar ice had been melted and frozen over (figure 3.3). A single rudder made of some unknown alloy sticks out of the ice. The airmen and scientists spread out at the edge of the object and realize that they are standing in the shape of a circle. One of the airmen exclaims, “Holy cow! We found one! We found a flying saucer!” Recall that this movie was released just four years after the flying saucer frenzy.

  The captain decided to melt the ice using thermite. In a moment of Hollywood hyperbole, they claimed that a single thermite bomb would melt hundreds of tons of ice in 30 seconds. To their horror, the thermite ignites the skin of the flying saucer, and it is utterly destroyed. (This isn’t explained in the movie, but in the original novella, it was explained by having the flying saucer made of magnesium.)

  The destruction of the saucer seems like a disaster, but clicks on a Geiger counter lead them to an 8 foot tall body frozen in the ice. With a storm on the way, the airmen chop out a cube of ice with the body encased in it, load it on the plane, and fly back to the base. During the flight, the filmmakers pay homage to the recent UFO frenzy and the air force’s famous response, known as Bulletin 629-49. An airman reads “from the Office of Public Information, December 27, 1949, Bulletin 629-49, regarding item 6700, extract 74,131: The air force has discontinued investigating and evaluating reported flying saucers on the basis that there is no evidence for their existence. The air force said that all evidence indicates that reports of unidentified flying objects are the results of: one, misinterpretation of various conventional objects; second, a mild form of mass hysteria; third, that they’re jokes.” While the movie text is not a direct quote of the real bulletin, it is similar in message.

  FIGURE 3.3. The Thing’s spacecraft has melted the ice and been frozen underneath in this image from The Thing from Another World. In the left photo, we see the rudder of the craft, while in the right picture, we see the airmen standing around the perimeter of the craft, showing its circular shape. Winchester Pictures Corporation.

  When they make it back to the polar base, tension sets in between the lead scientist and the captain. The scientist insists on melting the ice to get at the creature, while the captain, wary after the destruction of the saucer, instead insists on keeping the Alien frozen until he receives orders. Given that the captain has troops and guns, the military mindset wins. The block of ice is brought into a storeroom, and the windows are broken to ensure a frigid environment. Sentries guarding the creature are, of course, very cold and are given an electric blanket to make their time more comfortable. They are unnerved by the creature’s eyes, and one of the guards covers them with the blanket without thinking through the combination of a heated blanket and ice. The dramatic tension mounts as the audience sees the water drip off the melting block.

  Apparently freezing doesn’t affect some Aliens, as, once the block melted enough, the creature revives and comes toward the guard. The guard panics and shoots it several times with a pistol and runs away. The bullets seem to do no damage and, when the guard returns with more men, the creature is gone. However, they hear noise outside and see something fighting with the sled dogs. In a flurry of blows, the Alien flings the broken bodies of the dogs in all directions and then escapes. When the men check the carnage, two dogs are dead and one is missing, but they find the creature’s arm and heavily clawed hand.

  The next scene opens with the scientific team poking at the hand. They determine that the creature is not an animal. It is a vegetable, and they even find seedpods in its arm. The reporter has difficulty believing that the creature was a vegetable and comments that “it sounds like you’re talking about a super carrot.” The station’s lead scientist retorts with “this carrot, as you call it, constructed an aircraft capable of flying some millions of miles, propelled by a force yet unknown to us.”

  Meanwhile, the chief scientist has surreptitiously taken the seedpods and “watered” them with human plasma. A plant begins to grow. There is a disagreement between the scientists on whether this course of action is wise, however the chief scientist tells them not to let the military know about it. He is adamant that they should contact the creature, not kill it. In a dramatic moment, an incoming radio transmission from an air force general forbids destroying the Alien.

  The captain believes the orders to be foolish, so he discusses with his men how to kill the creature. As the men discuss among themselves how to kill a vegetable, a female character suggests boiling, baking, stewing, or frying. (After all, this was the 1950s, and men weren’t expected to cook.) This advice leads them to decide that fire was the way to go. They rummage up some kerosene however, as they do it, the Geiger counter again starts to click. The creature is returning, coming (literally) for blood. It breaks through a door and is seen in silhouette, looking essentially like the classic Frankenstein’s monster. The airmen throw kerosene on it and set it afire. The creature escapes by jumping through a window and dousing the flames.

  Since fire seemed to be only a marginal deterrent, the airmen decide that electrocution might be more effective. While they start to put their plan into action, the creature shows that it is intelligent by cutting off the fuel to the heaters. Knowing that the next target would be the generators, they decide to make a last stand there and set up the electrical trap.

  When the Alien attacks again, it is destroyed by lightning and reduced to a smoking mass. The airmen then burn all the scientist’s notes and the seedlings that are still in the lab. Nothing is left to prove the creature even existed.

  The bad weather begins to lift, allowing radio communications to resume. After spending the whole movie moaning about not being able to submit his story, the reporter is finally given the microphone to tell his tale. The movie ends with his report, in which he says, “And, before giving you the details of the battle, I bring you a warning. Every one of you listening to my voice, tell the world, tell this to everybody, wherever they are. Watch the skies. Everywhere keep looking. Keep watching the skies.” After all, where there is one flying saucer, there could be many.

  The movie The Thing from Another World taps into many phenomena. The flying saucer frenzy of 194
7 was a recent memory, as were the atomic explosions ending World War II, with the subsequent development of a Soviet weapon. Atomic energy was thought to be the future, but the power and danger of atomic weaponry was well known. It isn’t surprising that filmmakers would invoke radioactivity as something that would identify the Alien. In addition, the Alien arrived in a flying saucer. Like the much later Alien movies, the creature from outer space was powerful, invincible, and totally alien. Mankind had little in the way of defenses in a one-on-one battle, making human beings the prey. It’s a classic monster story with an extraterrestrial twist. The movie was remade twice, first in 1982 and again in 2011.

  Red Planet Mars

  Red Planet Mars (1952) is the Alien film that perhaps most overtly involves communism. Even the title is a clearly intended double entendre between the planet and the Soviet Red Menace. A Nazi scientist invents a “hydrogen valve” that makes it possible to boost a radio’s performance sufficiently so as to contact Mars. He is sent to prison by the Soviets before he can make the device. An American scientist finds the plans in the Nuremburg files and makes such a radio, determined to communicate with Martians. He is certain that there is intelligent life on Mars because an astronomer observes canals on Mars, along with a huge ice cap. A second observation of Mars shortly thereafter reveals the ice cap has melted and the canals are full of water. We see Percival Lowell’s influence a half century later (figure 3.4).

  The American scientist has difficulty communicating with the Aliens until his son suggests using the value of pi. (His son comes up with this idea while eating the last piece of pie.) The scientist sends out 3.1415. When the Martians send back 3.1415926, the scientist is certain that communication is possible. Martians tells the scientist that they live to an age of 300 years, can feed a thousand people on a half acre of land, and get power from cosmic rays. This news upends the economies of Western civilization.