It Came from Outer Space (1953) & Warning from Space (1956): Don't Be Afraid

It Came from Outer Space (1953) and Warning from Space (1956). Two sets of aliens who mean us no

harm, and both decide the safest thing to do is put on a human face.

Journey Through Sci-Fi continues We Come in Peace, our series tracing the history of friendly

aliens on screen. This time, two films where the visitors are not hostile, and nobody believes it

until they see it with their own eyes.

First, Ray Bradbury's desert. A meteor that isn't a meteor, an amateur astronomer nobody listens

to, and townspeople going missing one by one. Bradbury handed Universal the monster movie they

asked for and the one he actually wanted to make, and got away with it. We get into Jack Arnold's frontier eye, the 3D gimmicks, and the spider speech that says everything the film has to say and changes nobody's mind.

Then Japan, three years later. Starfish aliens in fabric suits, a rogue planet on its way, and a script by one of Kurosawa's regular writers. Japan's first science fiction film in colour swerves from horror to magical girl comedy to a bleak disaster movie, sometimes inside one scene. It has the friendliest aliens we have met so far, which does not stop them acting mostly in their own interest.

In this episode:

- Universal's first 3D film, and the cork boulders fired at the premiere audience

- An intermission 55 minutes into an 80 minute film, and why the projector is to blame