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It Came from Outer Space (1953)
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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 2:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The exact arrangement of any mirrors other than the primary "sacrificial" mirror eludes me for now. I'm inclined to agree with the idea that this mirror was partially silvered (or even plain glass) in order to see the background through it.

But I'm also noticing that the wisps of "haze" across the screen remain superimposed over the phantom mirror's frame as that frame becomes visible. I don't have a 3D version to look at, but does that haze appear to float in the foreground optically?

What we might be seeing could be the result some other mirror or glass to add the haze in the foreground. Such a glass or mirror could either have the haze painted directly on it or it could be reflecting from a painted "flat". Whatever arrangement they set up to achieve this effect may have been exposed by illumination from the meteor/ship.

Here's how such a setup might produce the image we're seeing.



Here the wisps of haze are painted on a black flat and reflected into the camera by a pane of glass (mounted in a frame). I've shown the setup with the central lines of sight perpendicular to each other and the reflecting glass and mirror at 45??, but they could be set at other angles for whatever practical reason.

In this arrangement the back side of the Haze Glass frame would be illuminated by the meteor when it passed the plane of the glass. The illuminated frame would then be visible in the Sacrificial Mirror.

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Last edited by orzel-w on Sat Oct 14, 2017 3:51 pm; edited 1 time in total
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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 3:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pursuing this subject still further, I adjusted the angles slightly such that the axes of the camera and its views of the meteor and haze reflections are no longer strictly 90??. (It wouldn't matter for filming purposes, as long as they had what they wanted to see in the viewfinder and had the subjects positioned for proper lighting.)



Now as the meteor approaches its collision with the Sacrificial Mirror and begins to illuminate the far side of the Haze Glass frame, the reflection of one end of that frame becomes visible to the camera.



Keep in mind that the angles I came up with for this diagram all depend on several factors, such as the distances of the camera from the mirror and glass, the widths of the mirror and glass, and the angular width of the camera's field of view. I just adjusted these relatively so they work for this illustration. In other words, the diagram is not to scale, and merely suggests a possible explanation for the mystery frame seen toward the end of the shot.

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 8:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I'm still struggling with just what the "haze glass" does and how it's revealed in the last instant of the shot, but since my initial theory could offer NO reason for the "phantom mirror" to be behind the "main mirror", I didn't have much faith in it to start with. Sad

But your theory offers a reason for it to be there, and it definitely works better with regard to the way the approaching "meteor" provides an increased amount of light which illuminates the "haze mirror" in the last instant.

Good job, Wayne. Your theory is the best one to date! Very Happy

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 9:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I missed It Came from Outer Space because I was only five years old, but my mother took me to see This Island Earth in 1955 at a downtown theater at the age of seven, and I was plum dazzled by it.

I'd love to know when these two Universal classics were released on a double bill, and the thought that I might have been able to see them both together at the Roosevelt Drive-in in 1955 is an intriguing idea! Shocked



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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 2:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
I'm still struggling with just what the "haze glass" does...

Maybe I should have called it the "cloud glass". It's my hypothetical reflector for giving the clouds (haze) some 3D depth in relation to the hills in the background. I colored them blue in this frame:



I got the idea from noticing that the clouds were still visible over the mystery frame after the frame appears. It led me to believe that the clouds had been superimposed for additional 3D effect. As I mentioned earlier, I don't have a 3D version of the movie to check the 3D effect. I'm going strictly by the visibility of the clouds over the frame.

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Bogmeister
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 26, 2019 1:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

____________
__________ "It Came From Outer Space" Trailer

__________


___________

________

An early alien-visitors-in-the-desert sf tale from which several later fifties sci-fi pics took their cue. It's based on a story (or rather, a treatment) by Ray Bradbury, screenplay by Harry Essex. The 1st sf film directed by Jack Arnold.

An alien ship crashlands in the desert; this is witnessed only by a couple, John Putnam (Richard Carlson) and Ellen (Barbara Rush), who are relaxing in the man's house on the outskirts of the local town. Putnam is an avid astronomer and is instantly fascinated by what all this may mean, but his 'head-in-the-clouds' reputation causes problems for him later. He's the only one who manages to catch a glimpse of the alien ship at the crater he investigates, before a landslide buries the evidence. Everyone else just figures it was a standard meteor and regard his comments as wild talk.


________________

Pretty soon, however, a couple of the local handymen are behaving strangely — because they're not the same handymen any longer. Complicating matters further is the local sheriff (Charles Drake), who has a thing for Ellen and is hostile towards Putnam.

It boils down to the question of whether the aliens are benign or might be fabricating claims about simply needing to make repairs to quickly depart. Putnam becomes the sole reasonable voice (though Ellen backs him up) as everyone else is prone to panic or distrust.

Putnam, however, has his own innate prejudices to overcome: near the final act, he demands to see the alien as it truly appears, in the belief that he can handle the alien appearance; but, it proves to be a bit much for him.


______________

This retains some of the ideas and even poetic tonality from Bradbury's story (it should, as Essex copied much of Bradbury's treatment, just adding some dialog) and is one of the more intelligent sf offerings of the fifties. The key elements are the mysterious quality of the desert (when something alien might be there) and the sense of paranoia (when someone may not be who he seems).

There's also a commentary on how mankind needs to evolve before contact and relations with such aliens can be attained without violence; this preconfigures many later sf properties, the big one being Star Trek. It lacks a true sense of excitement that informs the best sci-fi films — but it's a thoughtful, elegant approach to the subject matter.

BoG's Score: 7 out of 10



Trivia From Outer Space: one of the handymen is played by Russell Johnson, later the Professor on Gilligan's Island.





BoG
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Robert (Butch) Day
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 27, 2019 11:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here is what I call the "Stellar Accelerator":





Butdid you know that this device was used in Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Go to Mats (1953) as a info storage device and spy communicator?



Sort of a precursor to the Krell library in Forbidden Planet, perhaps?
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 28, 2019 9:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This movie holds up well....Especialy in sharp b&w. The 3-D effects are still effective in 2-D!
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 19, 2019 10:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Eadie wrote:
Same picture you posted of the Xenomorph but brightened to show the background.



It looks like a guy in a dark sweater with a shirt under the sweater holding the Xenomorph on a stick.

Ah, rrree-spectully, I must disagree, Dr. Eadie!

Zis interrrr-petation of zee background is obviously a latent manifestation of yourrr deep zeated neurosis concerning men who stand in zee dark and threaten nightmare creatures vidt blunt objects!

Or perhaps it's just a man vidt a cigar — and ZAT vould be very disturbing
! Shocked
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 12:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

alltare wrote:
I saw this the first time as a kid. Two 3D scenes were impressive enough to me that I still remember them vividly today. The first was at the beginning of the movie, when Carlson and Rush were looking through his telescope. He swung the scope around toward the camera and I flinched out of its way.

The scene of the floating tray with a beer bottle and a glass in Fantastic Invasion of Planet Earth / The Bubble is so amazing it makes that bad movie almost worth watching! Laughing

alltare wrote:
The other memorable scene was when Sawyer was working at the top of the telephone pole. The camera looked down on Sawyer from above, and past him down the ladder to the people on the ground. The depth of the 3D image was very effective. Another of Bud's stills is from that scene, but taken at a different angle. Both of these scenes are still on the flat DVD, but it's pretty obvious that they were intended for the 3D camera.

This is an example of how effect 3D keeps us fully engaged in the movie, even when mundane ordinary things are being shown. We're so surprised by the illusion that we feel we're "right there" and our suspension of disbelief is fully engaged! Very Happy

alltare wrote:
I don't know where I read or heard the following about the flaw in the meteor footage:

The incoming meteor prop was reportedly a heavy metal sphere with hexagonal cutouts, with some kind of flare or sparkler inside. From a distance, it was slid down a long wire toward the camera as it burned. The "post" seen above the meteor is the equipment suspending it from the wire. Cameras are expensive, so it was actually a mirror that the meteor crashed into, while the camera viewed the meteor's reflected image at a safe distance.

The square thing to the left of the approaching meteor is actually part of that mirroring system. I can't quite figure out the relative positions of camera, mirror, and meteor in that shot, but this explanation makes more sense than anything else I've read.

Orzel-w did a masterful job of explaining how that worked (complete with diagrams that will boggle the mind) on page 2 and 3 of this thread.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 30, 2019 3:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

The Wikipedia article for this fine movie has a section called Sequel which describes a poor attempt to follow up on the original.
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A made-for-TV sequel entitled It Came from Outer Space II was released in 1996, starring Brian Kerwin, Elizabeth Peña, Jonathan Carrasco, Adrian Sparks, Bill McKinney, Dean Norris, Lauren Tewes, Mickey Jones and Howard Morris.

Written by Jim and Ken Wheat, it was directed by Roger Duchowny, and was his final work before retiring. The story is essentially a remake of the first film, with former small town resident Jack Putnam (Kerwin) returning and witnessing an alien craft landing. Strange things then begin to happen, with his neighbors behaving oddly and the power going off and on.

Writing for The Radio Times, Alan Jones gave the film one star out of five and called it a "lacklustre update" which was "proof positive that 40 years of technical advances can't compensate for poor production values, boring characters and a complete lack of thrills." He summarized: "file this under "don't bother"."

Leonard Maltin called the original "intriguing" and "remarkably sober for its era, with crisp performances and real restraint, even in its use of 3-D", and the 1996 effort "a much inferior remake, rather than the sequel the title suggests."

In the New York Daily News, David Bianculli wrote that "the fact that this is a remake not a sequel, yet carries the suffix II anyway, is a clue about how clearly the makers of this new version were thinking when they made it. In other words, not very."

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This preview does a great job . . . or discouraging everybody from watching this piece of crap.
Rolling Eyes

______ It Came From Outer Space II Trailer 1996


__________

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alltare
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 30, 2019 9:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I notice that despite the title's implication that it is a sequel, the trailer above calls it a remake (at 1:12).

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Krel
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 30, 2019 10:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bob Burns has the Alien, or rather it's head and arms. If it's not a reproduction someone made for him. From it's size, I think that the Alien might have been a puppet.

David.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 18, 2020 6:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

On April 18th, a beautiful Saturday evening here in North Carolina, All Sci-Fi member Phantom and I were all set to watch this movie together in a synchro-cinema using All Sci-Fi's Chatzy room! Very Happy

But just as we were about to start, Phantom's internet connection went out and we had to postpone our shared movie! Shocked

I called him to offer my condolences, and I told him that the same thing happened to me about ten years ago when I arrange an epic synchro-cinema event which included seven members of the board to watch my favorite science fiction movie — The Space Children.

This was several years before that beloved movie had finally been released on DVD, so I created several DVD-R copies of the movie and mailed them to all the participants!

So, when my own internet went out just when this carefully planned occasion had barely started, I was devastated! Sad

However, the internet seems much more reliable these days, so I hope we can plan synchro-cinemas with the members of All Sci-Fi again soon.

If you're interested in doing this, please send me a PM.

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 18, 2020 9:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey Bud, we watched it in the chat room two weeks ago! Of course it's always worth a re-watch!
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