“They're after all of us! Our wives, our children, everyone! They’re here already! You’re next!”
So warns Kevin McCarthy in Don Siegel’s classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, one of many memorable science-fiction chillers of the 1950s Cold War decade—a time when moviegoers were threatened by everything ranging from flying saucers to fearsome extraterrestrial beasts. And Kevin wasn’t exaggerating; they were after all of us.
There were phantoms from space, invaders from Mars, strangers from Venus, invasions of saucer men, monsters challenging the world, zombies of the stratosphere, invisible invaders—even children, husbands, and teenagers from outer space. There were catwomen on the moon, monolith monsters, mole people, atomic men, radioactive mutants, angry red planets, and predatory robots. The sky and the world exploded and pods replaced humans.
Intergalactic visitors could be not only antisocial but outright destructive. Who can easily forget Martian invaders blowing up Los Angeles in The War of the Worlds or unfriendly flying objects attacking Washington, D.C., Paris, London, and Moscow in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers?
Danger always lurked beneath deceptively pleasant excursions to the moon (Destination Moon), Venus (Queen of Outer Space), and planet Altair IV (Forbidden Planet ). But things were just as threatening back here at home as mutated creatures burst forth from caves, seabeds, and far beneath the Earth’s surface. Technology and science ran amuck on screen as moviemakers from Hollywood and England to Japan addressed the tensions and uncertainties associated with scientific, political, and technological developments during the Truman-Eisenhower years.
Join film historian Max Alvarez on a multimedia mission from Earth to outer space featuring out-of-this-world selections of spine-tingling 1950s horror/sci-fi films from studios large and small.
General Information
