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Man From Planet X

My mother wouldn't let me see "Man From Planet X" when I was eight, so
I waited. For fifty seven years I waited.

The plot is very unique for science fiction in film or print. It
involves aliens who have chewed all the sweet out of  their planet by
burning fossil fuels or something and are out prospecting for another
one. They are somehow able to mobile Planet X (named by the astronomer
watching it due to a lack of imagination) into synchronous orbit above
a barren outpost in the Scottish highland moors. (Apparently the spot
was chosen because both Planet X and the producers required a frugal
set; everything is dim, dark, and close up. Remember Richard Widmark
said the reason they filmed without lights had less to do with some
French Noirist notion than the fact they could not afford them.)

There is one reporter who appears on the scene where the elderly
astronomer is watching matters generally with his evil assistant who
is venal and stealthy and his daughter who is nubile and friendly. In
the rest of the world, there is no regard for this planet in their air
space. After all, it's 1950, with Korea and Marilyn coming on and
Truman leaving off and all.

The Generation Xers (or at least, this Xerpt) are not like most
immigrants, ready to pile in and perform grunt work at the bottom of
the pay scale. No, they cast a light ray about and all the citizens of
the village are converted immediately to slave zombies. This is a very
close approximation of the history of TV, and my mother may have been
afraid most of the parts where the zombies, when they walk away from
the light, recover like from binge drinking. But in the meanwhile,
they're definitely values voters.

Another scary part is when the lovely daughter has a blow-out on the
road back from dropping the reporter off at his single room of the
village hotel (I told you this is Science Fiction) and must hike to
the castle she and her father and his evil assistant occupy to study
the planet. A strange saucer is stationed on the beach along the way,
and when she approaches a porthole, she is astonished to be met by a
wizened long mug like a papier-mâché horse in a funny suit who moves
like a string puppet. (Remember this is over fifty years before John
McCain.)

Let me see ... the evil one attempts to communicate with the Xerpt by
means of the universal language of Pythagorean geometry in which the
vast stretch of stars is in any shape you can think of, and the
planets are set in mathematical sequence like the frets on a lute, and
you can hear the music of the spheres on any clear night. Movies were
smart back then.

Anyway, the moral is, as always, if something is different, shoot it.
There is some devastation created by the invasion of the planet within
our sphere (a ridge of dirt at the beach collapses at one end - some
stage plays have more elaborate special effects). Altogether a rousing
theme with eerie dark sequence at a right good pace, and I can't wait
for the sequel.

Otherwise, I'm
- Undecided

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