IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE [1953 / 2016] [3D Blu-ray + 2D Blu-ray] [UK Release] Amazing THRILLS that almost TOUCH YOU through the magic of 3-Dimensions Classic Fifties Sci-Fi! Amazing Sights The Human Eye Has Never Seen Before!
Amateur astronomer John Putnam [Richard Carlson] and his fiancée Ellen Fields [Barbara Rush] are stargazing in the desert when a spaceship bursts from the sky and crashes to the ground. Just before a landslide buries the ship, a mysterious creature emerges and disappears into the darkness. Of course, when he tells his story to the sheriff [Charles Drake], John Putnam is branded a crackpot; but before long, strange things begin to happen, and the tide of disbelief turns…
Based on a story by acclaimed writer Ray Bradbury, “It Came From Outer Space” is a science fiction classic that is as thought-provoking and tantalizing today as it was when it first “landed” on the silver screen.
FILM FACT: The film's script is based on Ray Bradbury's original story treatment but not, as sometimes claimed, a published short story in The Meteor publication. ‘IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE’ was first film in the 3D process from Universal-International. Filming took place on location in and around the California towns of Palmdale and Victorville, and the Mojave Desert. The uncredited music score for the film was composed by Irving Gertz, Henry Mancini, and Herman Stein. The special effects created for the in-flight alien spacecraft consisted of a wire-mounted iron ball, with hollowed out 'windows,' with burning magnesium inside. The Arizona setting and the alien abduction of telephone lineman and two other characters are fictionalized story elements taken from Ray Bradbury's younger life, when his father moved the family to Tucson, Arizona. This 3D Blu-ray has the image mastered and the original stereophonic three-track magnetic audio meticulously restored by Greg Kintz and the 3-D Film Archive! For the first time since 1953, you will see ‘IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE’ with the original intermission break.
Cast: Richard Carlson, Barbara Rush, Charles Drake, Joe Sawyer, Russell Johnson, Kathleen Hughes, Ralph Brooks (uncredited), Robert Carson (uncredited), Ned Davenport (uncredited), Edgar Dearing (uncredited), Alan Dexter (uncredited), George Eldredge (uncredited), Whitey Haupt (uncredited), Robert “Buzz” Henry (uncredited), Bradford Jackson (uncredited), Warren MacGregor (uncredited), Kermit Maynard (uncredited), Virginia Mullen (uncredited), Dick Pinner (uncredited), William Pullen (uncredited), George Selk (uncredited) and Dave Willock (uncredited)
Director: Jack Arnold
Producer: William Alland
Screenplay: Harry Essex (screenplay) and Ray Bradbury (story)
Composers: Henry Mancini (uncredited), Herman Stein (uncredited) and Irving Gertz (uncredited)
Cinematography: Clifford Stine, A.S.C. (Director of Photography)
Special Photography: David S. Horsley, A.S.C.
Image Resolution: 1080p (Black-and-White)
Aspect Ratio: 1.37:1
Audio: English: 3.0 DTS-HD Master Audio LCR Discrete
English: 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo Audio
Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish [Latin American] and French [Canadian]
Running Time: 80 minutes
Region: Region B/2
Number of discs: 1
Studio: Universal Pictures / Universal-International
Andrew’s Blu-ray Review: Despite the out-of-this-world title and the involvement of several Sci-Fi film genre, ‘IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE’ [1953] is hardly a typical Fifties type Sci-Fi film because it was based on material by the bona fide science fiction writer, namely Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Meteor.” Add to this the all-encompassing fears engendered in us by the burgeoning Cold War, with the whole nation at the time, caught up in a panic of potential Red infiltration, and you have a perfect storm of sorts, which would result in a golden age of science-fiction horror. Technology could not be trusted; the strange, the unknown, the outsider, could not be trusted. It was a time of rapid paranoia, and filmmakers were more than happy to step up and take advantage.
Jack Arnold's screenwriter was Harry Essex, the same man who would deliver the script to ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’ to him the following year. Jack Arnold also had as his star the earnest and intense Richard Carlson, who also starred in ‘The Creature From The Black Lagoon,’ as well. And although that latter film gets all the press when it comes to Universal-International in the 1950s, it's entirely possible that this is the better film.
During the 1950s Hollywood produced some of its greatest science fiction genre classics. It was during this decade that science fiction films became focused with the possibility of visitors from another planet arriving on the Earth. In some cases, the aliens were beneficent as was the visitor in ‘THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL,’ who came to warn the people of Earth against their destructive warlike ways. However, in many cases the aliens were hostile and bent on taking over the planet, as they were in ‘EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS’ or ‘WAR OF THE WORLDS.’ Somewhere between these two extremes we find the film ‘IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE’ in which the alien visitors are depicted in a neutral fashion, as travellers making an unexpected stopover on Earth when their spaceship breaks down.
‘IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE’ is based upon a Ray Bradbury screen story and the final film benefits from the poetic quality of the author’s writings. Portions of the dialogue came directly from Ray Bradbury’s screen treatment had given the film and its characters greater depth than one would typically find in a 1950s science fiction genre film outing. Of course, Director Jack Arnold infuses the story with the right level of chills, thrills and unexpected jolts. There are some weaknesses in the structure of the story, but I would imagine they were introduced after Ray Bradbury’s work on the project was completed.
The plot of ‘IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE’ centres on a meteor strike in the Arizona desert. Local amateur astronomer John Putnam [Richard Carlson] and his girlfriend Ellen Fields [Barbara Rush] witness the meteor strike and head out to the desert to investigate. John, Ellen and a local helicopter pilot are the first people on the scene, and John decides to go down alone into the massive impact crater to get a good look at the meteor. What John Putnam finds resembles a spaceship, and when he approaches too close to the unknown object, the rim of the crater collapses, completely burying whatever landed in the desert. Of course, no one believes John’s fantastic tale, that is, until some of the locals are abducted and replaced by alien duplicates. Things don’t become any better when John uncovers the aliens’ true intentions and finds himself protecting the aliens from discovery, as a means of insuring the lives of their very human hostages. The cast of ‘IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE’ also includes Charles Drake, Joe Sawyer, Russell Johnson and Kathleen Hughes.
It's a classic formula, and one that delivers profusely. Part of the 3-D craze of the early 1950s that also gave us the likes of ‘House of Wax’ which was vying for audiences in the summer of 1953, and in ‘The Creature From The Black Lagoon’ the following summer, ‘It Came from Outer Space’ is engagingly shot by Clifford Stine, who would go on to shoot such epics as ‘Spartacus’ and ‘Patton.’ Yes, the 3-D effects were often forced and contrived, as is so much of the 3-D of that era, but it's a testament to the forethought of both Jack Arnold and Clifford Stine that the Sci-Fi film works just as well in 2-D, but overall the 3-D in this fil works beautiful and creates a wonderful depth of field.
The plot, conceptualised by Ray Bradbury, is innovative for its time, portraying the aliens as misunderstood by a mistrusting and primitive human populace and it's the kind of progressive sci-fi thinking that would later give rise to the likes of ‘Star Trek’ and other such thoughtful, hopeful, utopian sci-fi entertainment. The movie also has so much of what we've come to expect from genre pictures of the 1950s and an exasperated, dire protagonist; a constantly screaming leading lady; and of course, lots of lots of Theremin, played by the legendary master of the instrument, Samuel Hoffman. Universal-International of the 1950s may have been a shadow of what it was in the 1930s, but this Sci-Fi picture is still a whole lot of fun, and proves that the studio could still be counted on to deliver a rollicking good monster movie, which is amongst the massive sci-fi horror movement and one that is still one of the best.
3D Blu-ray Image Quality – Universal Pictures brings this remastered 3D Blu-ray in a stunning crisp black-and-white 1080p transfer itself looks really good, offering a very sharp and well-defined image. Film grain is not very noticeable throughout the course of the film so giving a smooth image and especially that ‘IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE’ is well over a half a century old. Blacks are very solid and deep, while the whites remain stable. Contrast is fairly smooth, plus the look of the day for night photography holds up pretty well in this image transfer. This is a near flawless viewing experience as the image much of the time looks like and feels like it was shot for the modern audiences and not well over 60 years ago. For both the 2D and 3D experiences, fine film grain has been retained and provides an incredible amount of detail. Facial features, clothing, the desert landscape, the aliens and all come through with terrific clarity and without any horrendous DNR [Digital Noise Reduction] or smoothing that I can see. The greyscale provides some deep and inky black levels and plenty of shadow separation. Please Note: Playback Region B/2: This will not play on most Blu-ray players sold in North America, Central America, South America, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. Learn more about Blu-ray region specifications.
3D Blu-ray Audio Quality – Universal Pictures brings you this remastered 3D Blu-ray in a brilliant 3.0 DTS-HD Master Audio LCR Discrete soundtrack that is a really nice surprise, giving the movie a bit more atmosphere than a flat monaural presentation. I did notice that a number of the stereo sound effects were inversed, coming from the opposite side of the screen where they are depicted visually. Fidelity is limited by the recording technology available back in 1953, but the film’s Theremin intensive score still manages to sound quite good and quite creepy. Dialogue reproduction is pretty clean and the actor’s voices are always completely understandable. Neither background hiss nor any other forms of audible distortion were noticeable at fairly natural listening levels. From the first big impact explosion to the rock slide to the thrilling conclusion, this audio track punches up the audio tones giving it a very unsettling sense of immersion, and you might want to turn the sound down, well don’t as it is all part of atmospheric effects of this Sci-Fi film – so keep it loud! Dialogue is still audible without any interference and the rich background audio only complements the impressive 3D experience.
Blu-ray Special Features and Extras:
Audio Commentary with Film Historian Tom Weaver: This is a truly excellent audio commentary and is densely packed with in-depth information about the film ‘IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE,’ its stars, writers and director. Tom Weaver also brings an enthusiastic and entertaining quality to the audio commentary, which convinces the listener that they are in the room with a true dedicated fan who is talking about his favourite all time Sci-Fi film. Though film scholar Tom Weaver's audio commentary track may sound scripted and hurried, it could be one of the more engaging audio commentaries you are ever likely to come across. When the film starts, we are introduced to this fascinating audio commentary with Tom Weaver, who informs us that the composed film music by Herman Stein was hauntingly played on a Theremin, and now speaks the words from author Ray Bradbury saying, “across the night sky a vast roaring furnace, a bright blazing stream of fire, like a gush of molten metal from the stars, races across the horizon to horizon,” and Tom Weaver also says that these are the opening sounds and 3-Demensional sights that it came from outer space, written by Ray Bradbury, produced by William Alland, directed by Jack Arnold. We are informed that the film was partially shot on location in Victorville in the Mojave Desert. For eighty non-stop minutes, Tom Weaver exposes incredible secrets and lies: Universal Pictures only seeing the obvious and they asked that Jack Arnold construct the audience-friendly Xenomorph alien after production was completed; and screenwriter Harry Essex claiming that the film had little to do with Ray Bradbury's exhaustive treatment to purported to be some 100-plus pages long; and how the film left an indelible impression on directors like Joe Dante and Steven Spielberg. Tom Weaver's casual acknowledgement of goofs and trivia that is particularly very funny, especially when he says, “Why is Richard Carlson's pipe upside down?” or “Is that Francis the Talking Mule?” and Tom Weaver also talks about the scene where the meteor spaceship crash lands in the desert and explains that in fact the meteor ship was about 8” to 9” in diameter and was about the same size as a bowling ball, and it was made out of iron and formed into a hollow ball, then they cut out 6 little side pieces out of the iron until all that was left was a hollow cage, and then they put on tail fin on the back of it and also put a little door on the back of it and through that door they inserted a can of magnesium powder, which burns very brightly, and we see it at the start of the film, it was fitted to a wire so it could slide down towards the camera and lands in a sandbox, and was film in the Universal Studio, but when we see the object coming towards the camera, the camera was pointed at a mirror and on the impact of the mirror you can see on the left hand side of the screen the edge of the mirror, and if you freeze frame the impact, and you can see the shards of glass shattering into tiny pieces. When you see the three character actors at the top of the crater looking down, this was actually filmed at Red Top Mountain and the director spent six days of location shooting, but when you see Richard Carlson goes to the bottom of the crater, which by the way was a stand in walking to the bottom of the crater, and this was actually filmed in the Sierra Canyon. Another fascinating fact we hear is that Universal did a test in 3-D shooting in widescreen, so slightly annoyed why they didn’t shoot the whole film this way, as it would have been so much more dramatic. One thing you might not know about this film is that the original intention was to keep the Xenomorph alien off camera throughout the film, to make the audience use their imagination and Ray Bradbury warned Universal not to reveal the alien to the audience, but as usual Universal ignored this advice, because Ray Bradbury felt revealing the alien spoiled the mystery of the alien, especially for the audience going to see the film. So to sum up this amazing audio commentary, well I think Tom Weaver is a totally brilliant speaker and keeps you totally fascinated throughout the audio commentary for the film ‘IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, and he gives you so much fascinating in-depth information which I have not heard in any audio commentary before and you will never get bored, as he tells you lots of other fascinating facts about the film that I have not mentioned already, also at the end he thanks all the people involved with the film, that helped him with his research notes to reveal to us the audience and I can whole heartedly recommend everyone should listen to this brilliant audio commentary, it get a five star rating from me.
Special Feature: The Universe According to Universal [2000] [480i] [1.37:1] [31:36] This is an original special feature documentary about Universal Studios Sci-Fi films of the 1950's. Though the piece may initially play out like a shameless self-promotional montage of Universal sci-fi productions, especially from the ‘Flash Gordon’ pictures of the 1930s to ‘This Island Earth’ [1955] and ‘E.T. The Extra Terrestrial’ [1982], this may be the most accessible learning tool for those unfamiliar with Jack Arnold and his brand of 1950s post-atomic creature features. Discussed here is the paranoia of the atomic age, the fear of new technology as prompted by the 1945 invention of the atomic weapon, the poetry of Ray Bradbury's language, the use of alien perspective, especially in later films like ‘Tarantula’ [1955] and the archetypical use of the Theremin. The featurette serves as an evocative tour through Jack Arnold's work, from ‘It Came From Outer Space’ [1953] and ‘Creature From the Black Lagoon’ [1954] to his masterpiece ‘The Incredible Shrinking Man’ [1957]. It offers a very nice narration from film historian Rudy Behlmer; like Tom Weaver, Rudy Behlmer is a veteran of many Universal Classic Monsters that were released on inferior DVDs. We also see lots of film clips from both Space and many other genre of that period, along with interview comments from different people. All in all this is a very nice little feature that is packed with so much insightful fascinating information.Contributors include: Vincent Di Fate (Science-Fiction Illustrator/Historian), Bob Burns (Collector/Archivist), David Schecter (Producer of Monstrous Movie Music), Paul Jensen (Film Historian), Bob Furmanek (Curator of the 3-D Film Archives) and Irving Gertz (Composer).
Theatrical Trailer [1953] [1080p] [1.37:1] [2:41] This is the Original Theatrical Trailer for the film ‘IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE’ and you get the choice to view each trailer in either 3D or 2D images, so getting double the enjoyment. It informs us “Please Keep Your Glasses On For A Preview Of Our Next Attraction In 3-Dimension.”
Finally, ‘IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE’ is a fifties science fiction classic that has been given a pretty good solid release by the folks at Universal Pictures. Back in 1953, ‘IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE’ was set out to shock and dazzle the audiences, but todays audience will find it a slightly quirky and probably slightly old fashioned type Sci-Fi film, but I beg to differ, as to me it is still a totally brilliant and quirky Sci-Fi film with its science fiction concept, but you must remember that when it was released in the cinema it was very competent for its era. The film could have worked equally as well in the 1.78:1 aspect ratio enhanced widescreen presentation. This is a really excellent package that is certain to please all fans of this Sci-Fi genre. If you are a Sci-Fi film fan buff, then this is a must to add ‘IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE’ to your 3D Blu-ray collection. Established fans will really relish and enjoy this Sci-Fi film, and especially for me after viewing it again for the first since I viewed in the cinema. Highly Recommended!
Andrew C. Miller – Your Ultimate No.1 Film Aficionado
Le Cinema Paradiso
United Kingdom
