The Man from Planet X (1951)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good concept, poorly executed.

Absolutely the worst movie.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

In my mind, this film has two major distinctions. The first is veteran character actor William Schallert playing, possibly for the only time in his career, a weaseling villain. After all, to us Boomers he was Patty Duke's father in "The Patty Duke Show," or the humble, self-effacing-yet-professional Air Corps pilot that planned and led the interception of Japansese Admiral Yamamto in "The Gallant Hours." The second distinction is that this is the first movie that scared the crap out of me. I was 7 years old and after seeing this movie couldn't sleep with the lights off for a week. Even into adulthood, driving past the salt marshes of Eastern Long Island on a foggy night caused my imagination to go a bit bonkers.While it certainly scared a bunch of kids, the cult appeal that other horror or B-movie flicks enjoyed doesn't carry over into adulthood. The dialogue appears to have been written by adolescent comic book authors. Enid, the heroine, upon getting a flat tire, actually says "Confound the luck!" And the egghead Professor Elliot seems to like the word "singularity," as he inserts it all over his speech at random and without any meaning. Plot devices used to connect to the next scene seem to have been made up on the set at the last minute. All the clothing, especially hero John's Air Force bomber jacket and his trenchcoat, appear to have been rented cheap provided they don't get wrinkled or dirty.But, in the end, it needs to be enjoyed for what it is: A Cheesy Rainy Saturday Afternoon B-Flick. Get some of the frat brothers together, tap a mini-keg, and laugh at the dialogue, the cheap sets, the just-off-the-rack look of all the clothes, the plot devices, and the special effects.

(Some Spoilers) It's when famed Scottish Astrology Professor Elliot,Raymond Bond,spotted this heavenly body heading straight towards earth that he got in touch with his good friend back in WWII days American reporter John Lawrence, Robert Clarke, to get the first rights on breaking to the world this earth shaking story.Showing up at the dinky and fog covered town of Burry in Northern Scotland Lawrence is shocked to find that Prof. Elliot's assistant is the sleazy unscrupulous as well as brilliant Dr. Mears, William Schallert, who was just released from prison. To balance things out there's also the professor's daughter Enid played by Margaret Fields, actress Sally Fields mom, who's had a crush on the handsome American when she was a little girl back in war torn WWII England.As the brilliant professor Eillot calculated the heavenly body-that he named Planet X-that he's been tracking for the last two or three days is due to hit the earth on the evening of September 17,1950 just three days hence! And the the place it's to collied with on earth is no less then Burry Scotland! The very place where he and Enid make their home!Checking out the moors outside of Burry Lawrence and Enid spot this landing craft stuck in the soft fog covered earth. Later this alien the Man from Planet X, known as the X-Man in sci-fi lingo, played by midget actor Pat Goldin unexpectedly pop up out of the craft. Looking like the famous Tin-Man in "The Wizard of Oz" the X-Man suddenly suddenly go into convulsions in that his air,or whatever he's breathing, supply gets jammed in his space suite. With Lawrence and Professor Elliot helping the X-Man back to his feet he seems to become friendly to the earthlings whom he owes his life to. It's only when he's brought to Professor Eillot's home and greedy and rotten Dr.Mears begins to work the defenseless X-Man over to find the secret of his or fellow X-Mens ability to travel through space and build spaceships to do it with that he turns violent! Escaping from the Elliot house the X-Man uses his ray gun to turn the people of Burry into mind-controlled zombies and do the bidding of him and fellow X-Men who are planning to take over the earth and, in their planet about to become instinct of life, make it their home away home.***SPOILERS*** In order top prevent the X-Men from taking over the earth the local British National Guard is called in by Lawrence and Burry's Constable Tommy(Ron Engel), two of few men in town who weren't zombafied, in order to put an end to their plans. With Lawrence de-zombafying those already zombafied by the X-Man in getting the mind controlled population of Burry, that includes both Professor Elliot and Dr. Mears, back to normal it's now up to the British Army to put an end of this planned alien invasion of the earth by blasting the X-Man and his spacecraft to kingdom come! That's before he can set the stage for his fellow X-Men to launch their full scale invasion, D-Day style, of the planet earth. And the one person, or earthling, who's against that happening is non-other then Dr.Mears! As it turns out that besides him being a lowlife and rat faced bottom feeder, in getting information that would make him rich & famous from the X-Man, he's also a traitor to not only his country but his fellow earthlings! And like the traitor that Dr. Mears is he ends up getting exactly what he deserves! By him getting blasted by a squad of British Army bazooka men as he makes a run for it back to the X-Man's soon to be pulverized,together with the X-Man, spacecraft!

The Man from Planet X (1951)Edgar G. Ulmer is one of those B-movie directors who has a bit of a fan club based on a couple of key films--in this case "The Black Cat" and "Detour." Both are great--unqualified, compromised, odd, vaguely daring, and vaguely cheap.I wish I could say the same for this one. This just looks like a step, or half a step, above "Plan 9" and that ilk. The acting ebbs and flows, the props are embarrassingly cheesy, and the plot is plain old simplistic and dumb. Of course, that's giving it no credit for pushing some boundaries the way Jules Verne did in fiction, because "Planet X" is an early space film. It's set on earth, but it deals with that big one--what if an alien lands. In fact, it isn't that far off from Ed Wood's "Plan 9 from Outer Space," which came out 7 years later. So Ulmer is cutting edge! But wait, what about "The Day the Earth Stood Still," which for all its cheapness is totally fabulous, and came out in that same year, indeed six months earlier, in the summer of 1951? Yes, something was in the air.There's no sense dissecting this film, but just be warned it's not a high quality flick, and as a cult flick it lacks some of the idiosyncrasies and brazen edges of a film like "Detour," which is a paradigm of great and awful B-movie ingenuity.

I remember this movie from when I was a kid. Well, not the entire story, only the scene in which no one is able to communicate with the alien from Planet X until William Schallet begins to show him geometry and mathematics, "the universal language of science," and the boxy looking alien begins to whir with electronic interest.Seeing it again, the scene wasn't so impressive. We've been through it so many times since, if we know anything about what Carl Sagan was up to.The rest of the movie is embarrassingly cheaply done and formulaic. I understand that Edgar G. Ulmer is practically a cult figure when it comes to inexpensive movies and, to be sure, "Detour" has its diverting moments.But "Detour" was about one dumb guy and one real bitch -- two characters with unforgettable primary traits. "The Man From Planet X" isn't a story about character or Weltanschauung. It purports to be a thrilling and spooky story about unknown forces, mind-capturing rays, and the colonization of the earth. You can do a lot on a modest budget if you only have two characters making snotty wisecracks, but telling a story is a different order of animal.It just doesn't work for me. The story isn't particularly exciting and the characters are mostly uninteresting stereotypes. The rocks are made of papier mache and the strange alien is wearing an obviously false head whose features are frozen in one position.I said the characters are stereotypes, and they are, in a way that the two losers of "Detour" never were. Examples: The hero is handsome. The elderly scientist has a beautiful daughter who is his assistant. Do I have to mention "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms" and "Them"? Well, I won't. I refuse to mention them.The stereotype that is most irritating is Schallert's evil assistant scientist. The movies can do without them simply by turning the alien into a monster sufficient unto its own evil intent. But, okay, "The Creature From the Black Lagoon" had Richard Denning who wanted to kill the creature and become famous. "The Revenge of the Creature" had John Bromfield as a zoo keeper jealous of Lori Nelson, which is at least understandable. "The Thing From Another World" had a misguided egghead who thought the man-eating monster only needed a few sessions of Gestalt therapy to be cured.In "The Man From Planet X," William Schallert is given no motivation for his desire to commandeer the mind-control rays and other super duper weapons of the alien. Out of nowhere he turns greedy and villainous, the poor man's Fu Manchu. Not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with wanting to lay your hands on all the wealth in the world, nor is it an uncommon impulse. The 19th-century was full of robber barons who cared about nothing else. Take a look at the giant meteor crater in northern Arizona sometime. At the very bottom of this unimaginably vast bowl of earth, there are a couple of tiny shacks and old pipes. When the crater was discovered, the first thing Homo sapiens thought of was the possibility that a meteor made of gold or diamonds or solid iron might be buried in it, and an attempt was made to dig it up. Nope. Schallert may be a stereotype but stereotypes exist for a reason.