The Man from Planet X isn’t a terrible movie. It’s a heavily flawed film that would have benefited greatly from a larger budget and a better script.
Although it was one of the first in a wave of alien invasion movies to hit theaters, 1951’s The Man from Planet X isn’t as well-remembered as other similarly themed films released that year. Movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Thing from Another World are not only more recognizable they’re also quite a bit better in terms of quality. That said, Edgar G. Ulmer’s modest little science fiction flick isn’t without merit especially for what it does with such a limited budget.
The film opens as American journalist John Lawrence (Robert Clarke) documents the strange happenings he’s witnessed during a visit with Professor Elliot (Raymond Bond.) Lawrence is working on a story about Planet X, a recently discovered celestial body that is heading toward the Earth. According to the professor, a village in Scotland is the point that will be closest to Planet X as it approaches the Earth.
The professor is accompanied by his daughter, Enid (Margaret Field,) and the unscrupulous Doctor Mears (William Schallert.) They plan to study the planet as it passes through our solar system. (Apparently, they’re not going to immediately alert anyone of their discovery as they don’t expect it to actually collide with Earth. Who needs ethics?)
Soon, the team makes a discovery of a different sort out on the Scottish moors. A metallic object resembling a diving bell is half-buried in the ground. A single alien passenger has emerged and appears to be friendly. Unfortunately, Dr. Mears assaults the being in a self-serving act and causes the alien to launch a psychic assault on the village.
There are several unique features to this movie. There’s an eerie, almost Gothic quality to it. No doubt a lot of that atmosphere comes from the fog-shrouded sets. (It’s said that the sets originally belonged to the Ingrid Bergman film, Joan of Arc, and were purposely obscured to hide that fact.) The alien “invader” is initially friendly and only resorts to hostility after being attacked. And, although the movie has a somewhat uneven pace, there’s an interesting, if heavily flawed, pseudo-scientific angle to the story.
Even though it was an early alien invasion flick, it’s not without the usual 1950s science fiction genre trappings. There’s a very sexist attitude towards Enid, the only woman in the film. This consists mainly of Lawrence dropping thinly veiled comments about how he’d like to hook-up with Enid more than anything else. The sets that aren’t left over from Joan of Arc are extremely cheap-looking. The buildings in the village and trees on the moors are painted backdrops that wouldn’t look out of place at a high school play. The alien’s frozen, expressionless face is probably the result of budgetary issues but it adds an unintentional creepiness that works in the film’s favor.
The acting is surprisingly good for a movie that was filmed in six days. Admittedly, there’s nothing here that would tax most actors’ abilities but I was never pulled out of the action by anyone’s performance. Seeing William Schallert, whom I’m most familiar with as the dad on The Patty Duke Show, as a villain was kind of a hoot.
The Man from Planet X isn’t a terrible movie. It’s a heavily flawed film that would have benefited greatly from a larger budget and a better script. There’s a decent premise buried under the hokey sets and choppy editing. At the end, a character wonders what would have happened had Dr. Mears not interfered with the alien. I do too.
3.0 out of 5.0 stars
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