In terms of ’50s, campy, sci-fi B-movies that are actually pretty good, you don’t get much better than “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”
This is your pinnacle Cold War B-movie. Dozens if not hundreds were released in the ’50s, some are remembered, some are exceptionally bad, and a select few, like “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” actually have some merit.
The films played on the fears surrounding a potential Soviet attack and the many forms they could find to strike. We see such methods as toxic shrinking gas in “The Incredible Shrinking Man” and aliens embodying exact replicas of people we know and love in “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
“TDTESS” reverses the assumption that there will be an invading force aiming to destroy mankind. In this film, the enemy is blatantly mankind itself and our lust for violence amidst ignorant fear. Continue reading “Rapid Response: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)”