THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951)
Tagline: A robot and a man . . . hold the world spellbound with new and startling powers from another planet!
(Sci-Fi, Drama, Heavy Metal) [G]
I’m impatient with stupidity; my people have learned to live without it.
This film starts out with a flying saucer landing on earth from outer space. Naturally, the first thing the military does is shoot the alien man that comes out of the saucer prompting a giant robot to also come out and vaporize all the nearby weaponry the humans have. It turns out the alien man’s name is Klaatu and he’s all about peace, but of course, he’s got an ultimatum, because aliens just don’t land here for the fun of it.
I think at one time I did watch the Keanu Reeves version of this movie but quickly forgot about it. It didn’t feel like an epic. However the more I got into doing reviews for 1950’s films, my resistance towards watching this grew and grew because no one in the sci-fi community would shut up about it. So here you go. This is the review you have been waiting to feast your eyes on. Okay…maybe that’s overdoing it.
The first thing I noticed was that the flying saucer and robot design were both simplistic but awesome. The second thing I noticed was that Aunt Bee from “The Andy Griffith Show” (Frances Bavier) is in this thing. She also doesn’t waste any time speaking her mind as Mrs. Barley does. Outside of the opening sequence, the movie slows way down to a crawl to dazzle us with some solid dialog and give the characters some background. Unfortunately, about 30 minutes of that was needed, but we end up getting over an hour. While I do like the lines some of these characters get, the lack of things happening was actually kind of frustrating. The earth definitely stood still alright.
Acting wise I have zero complaints. Michael Rennie crushes his role as Klaatu, kind of the “messenger” alien in the movie. Rennie would continue acting until 1970 after this film and is probably most famous for THE LOST WORLD. When this movie came out though, he was relatively unknown in the United States. Patricia Neal also does fantastic as Helen Benson. What’s even more interesting about that is that she had a hard time delivering her lines without laughing because she thought this was going to be a throwaway sci-fi b-movie. Finally, even though I really like Hugh Marlowe (EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS) as an actor, this role as Tom Stevens for him was probably the single least likable character in the movie. At least you can understand everyone else that acted irrationally was scared out of their mind. Tom was just a full-blown jerk.
What I love about this thing actually outweighs that mega-sized lull in the middle of the movie and once Gort (the giant robot) gets into the action things at least get a bit more interesting than just what the well-meaning but lethargic plot has to offer. You give me a cool robot and a flying saucer and I’m in 90% of the time.
For me, this is a 5 out of 7. Definitely better than middle-of-the-road acting and effects-wise, but it didn’t blow me away like many other films from the era did.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX BRITISH STUDIOS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
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