Goofs for
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: In some shots, the robot's head has air vents under the chin. In others there are no vents.
  
  
• Continuity: In one scene near the end, the sound of an airplane approaching can be heard, then there is a cut to another angle and the sound is absent.
  
  
• Continuity: When Helen is taken into the spaceship and is sitting on the bench her right hand is alternately by her side/behind her back between shots.
  
  

• Continuity: In final scene, Gort alternately stands feet together/feet apart between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: When Klaatu is stuck in the elevator with Miss Benson, explaining that all electricity on planet earth is now neutralized, there is light beaming onto their faces and bodies through apparent grates in the elevator. Being that the elevator is indoors, and that all electricity is non-functional, the inside of the elevator would be pitch black.
  
  
• Continuity: During the electrical blackout, cars can still be seen moving in one shot.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When Helen and Klaatu are going to the professor's, the army states that their cab is heading northwest on Connecticut at Columbia Rd. The cab then passes under the Dupont Circle underpass on Connecticut AV. The underpass is south of Columbia Rd, not north. Also, if the professor lives near the State Department, they are going the wrong direction. The State Department offices are south of Columbia Rd.
  
  
• Continuity: Three muzzle flashes, one report! In the close-up of the quick-triggered soldier atop the tank turret, we see and hear him fire his pistol, but for the sharp-eyed, the wide-shot of the tank crew that follows, reveals the visible but silent muzzle flash of both soldiers' side arms.
  
  
• Continuity: During the electrical blackout, a Coca-Cola sign is still flashing.
  
  
• Continuity: Klaatu tells Professor Barnhardt that he was in room 309 of Walter Reed Hospital, but the number on his hospital room door is 306.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Fly wires can be seen holding up Helen Benson as Gort begins to carry her toward spacecraft.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Gort picks up Patricia Neal, and turns back toward the space ship, you can see the zipper on the front of Gort's costume, near the neck
  
  
• Continuity: Drew Pearson's desk doesn't have any pens on it when he starts his broadcast. There are two pens directly in front of him on the desk when the camera angle changes.
  
  
• Continuity: The crowds begin to scatter as the spaceship draws close. But, in the long shot of the landing, no one is moving until the vehicle gets extremely close to the ground. In fact, it comes close to landing on a couple people.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In some long shots of Gort walking, wrinkles in the legs of the costume are clearly visible. (However, it could be argued that, coming from another planet, Gort is made from a very flexible kind of metal that is completely unknown on Earth.)
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Gort moves behind the wall to pick up Helen, the frame shifts slightly. This was because director Robert Wise stopped the camera, moved in a rig to hold Patricia Neal and started again (Lock Martin could not do it on his own - see trivia).
  
  
• Continuity: During the montage shots of newspaper headlines during the hunt for Klaatu, a photograph shows him still standing on his ship holding out the viewing device which was shot out of his hand. During the earlier scene of his emergence from the saucer he didn't produce the device until leaving the ramp and approaching the onlookers.
  
  
• Plot holes: In the boarding house scene, Drew Pearson states that the only means of identifying Klaatu are the photographs taken outside the spaceship, in which his head is covered by a helmet. However, Klaatu had also spent three days at Walter Reed Hospital, and any of his caregivers could have provided authorities with a detailed physical description. Also, Professor Barnhardt's representatives, the ones that bring Mr. Carpenter (Klaatu) from the boarding house to the Professor's study- appear to be government representatives of some kind (certainly the one who brings Klaatu into the Professor's house and waits outside the door is a military man - he's in uniform). None of these men recognize and/or are suspicious of Klaatu, despite the Feds having an APB out on him, and conducting a massive manhunt.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): At the beginning, H.V. Kaltenborn mentions the 'beautiful spring weather' in the Nation's capital, but we find out later that it is July (Klaatu sees a dry cleaner's receipt on his suit dated 7-18-1951). In spite of the spring and summer references, when Klaatu and Billy walk around Washington, many of the trees are still bare as they had yet to regain their leaves. (Filming had started early in the year.)
  
  
• Factual errors: Klaatu's meeting is scheduled for 8:30pm, but when he starts to address the crowd it is dark outside, which wouldn't occur until at least a half hour later in Washington in July.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scenes showing the arrival of the military, Klaatu's injury and the eradication of the weapons, the shadows of the military equipment, spaceship and actors change radically. The first shadows shown of the tanks are long as if the time of day were either very early morning, or, more likely, late afternoon. Then Klaatu leaves the spaceship, he throws a fairly short shadow such as one showing within an hour or two of noon. The tanks and Gort also show the short shadows. When Gort starts to destroy the tanks and weapons the shadows are still indicating that it's perhaps 2pm. When he finishes, a few moments later, the shadows are long and drawn out, like they were at the beginning of the scene. In movie time, no more than 10-30 minutes has passed while the shadows say it's more like half a day.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Gort begins marching down the ship's ramp at the beginning, a shot shows the crowds running away in panic. The shot is clearly a speeded-up film of the crowd, most of whom were plainly walking away from the scene rather leisurely. Also, when the shot switches back to the retreating military men, the crowd can be seen still standing behind them, not having moved at all.
  
  
• Factual errors: As pointed out in an earlier Goof, H.V. Kaltenborn refers to "the beautiful spring weather", while later on the tag on the suit Klaatu has "borrowed" shows the date 7-18-51. But Bobby at one point asks his mother if he has to go to school tomorrow, and later there's another reference to his being in school. Unless Bobby has been flunking out and is attending summer school, he would not be going to school in July.
  
  
• Plot holes: During the power outage, there are a bunch of military guys sitting around talking about how the blackout is world-wide, how hospitals and airplanes in flight were not affected, and how communications are also down world-wide. If communications are down, they couldn't know the extent of the outage.
  
  
• Errors in geography: At 12:00 noon, (Washington DC Time, EST) when all the Earth's electricity is suspended, clips show people in daylight in other parts of the world. Some of those places (such as France) might still see the sun as high as depicted, but others (like Moscow) would not.
  
  
• Continuity: After Bobby follows Klaatu to the spaceship at night, he tells his mother that he followed him to the mall. Also, immediately on landing, an excited pedestrian yells that they landed on the mall. In fact, the opening aerial shot clearly shows that the ship landed on the White House Ellipse, not the mall.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Klaatu is shot in his left shoulder, yet we see him wounded on the ground and leaning against his left side, his left hand on the ground. That would have been too painful and instinctively Klaatu would not have leaned on the side he was shot.
  
  
• Plot holes: The cabbie's selective hearing. With a saucer in the city, an alien at large, a massive world-wide power failure, a stepped-up manhunt, and all of D.C. now cordoned off with troops on the streets, the taxi driver (Harry Harvey) still manages not to notice the dire "destruction of the Earth by robot" talk and language lesson taking place in his back seat. Well within earshot of the man, Klaatu and Helen aren't even whispering or trying to conceal their concern. "Say, what's going on 'hear'?" is right.
  
  
• Continuity: At 12 noon when the Earth "Stands Still", a power boat can be traveling under a bridge, with the motor clearly running.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: A photograph shows the famous publicity still with Gort to the left of the photo and helmet-clad Klaatu to the right and slightly behind his robot, waving at the crowd. This never happened: Gort only came out after his master was shot down, therefore at this point in the movie both aliens were not seen together on the vessel for that photograph to be taken. Additionally, at the end of the movie, Klaatu is not wearing his helmet when he waves goodbye to Helen and Gort has long disappeared inside the spaceship. However, this being the 1950's, the current journalistic "truth in media" standards had not yet been adopted, so it is entirely possible (in fact, probable) that the newspapers simply took various photographs of Klaatu, the gizmo in his hand, Gort and the space ship and com posited them together to produce the image used. This was a widespread and accepted practice among newspapers at the time (most notoriously in the 1920's) and while very few respectable, mainstream newspapers resort to such photo tampering, even today tabloids like The Weekly World News still employ similar methods.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Bobby is doing his math homework, Klaatu looks over his shoulder and says: "All you have to remember is, first find the common denominator, then divide." Division of fractions doesn't require a common denominator. In fact, the original script says "subtract". (However, Klaatu's method could work. e.g. To divide 1/3 by 1/4 find the common denominator and re-express as 4/12 divided by 3/12. Then simply divide the 4 by 3 to get the answer: 1 and 1/3. Ten out of ten for alien mathematics!)
  
  
• Continuity: After all electrical and mechanical activities have been frozen by Klaatu, the first few frames of film in the sequence showing cars stalled on a bridge also show a motorboat zipping down the river, unaccountably unaffected by the process.
  
  
• Factual errors: During the electrical blackout there are several scenes showing Diesel buses and trucks stalled along with the other vehicles. Diesel engines do not have spark plugs and therefore do not need electricity to keep running once started. However, the scene of a Diesel locomotive stalled is correct because they are Diesel/Electric where the Diesel engine turns electric generators which supply electricity to motors which actually drive the train.
  
  
• Continuity: When Gort picks up Mrs. Benson (Patricia Neal) she is wearing shiny black high-heeled shoes. In the scenes immediately before, such as when she had kneeled down by Klaatu's side after he had been shot, she was wearing low-heeled matte finish shoes.
  
  
• Continuity: At the beginning of the time electricity is out, we see a police car rolling to a stop. However, right behind him is a black car accelerating to catch him and pull up behind.
  
  
• Continuity: Bobby and Klaatu visit the grave of Bobby's dad. While still at Arlington National Cemetery, they decide to go to the movies that afternoon. That evening, back at the boarding house, Bobby tells his mom "we went to the movies, and got ice cream cones, and then we went to see Daddy".
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: While it has been noted that it would not be dark at 8:30 p.m. in Washington D.C. during the late spring or summer (when Professor Barnhardt's meeting is set to begin), in the film it had been pitch black for hours before the climactic scene at the spaceship - from the time Tom arrives back at his office, through the cab chase, Klaatu's shooting, Gort's retrieval of Klaatu and the scenes back inside the ship - none of which is credible for that time of year.
  
  
• Plot holes: Gort leaves the ship, walks to the jail, retrieves Klaatu's body, and carries it back to the ship - all apparently without being seen anywhere on the streets of Washington, D.C. - surely an amazing accomplishment for a ten-foot-tall robot. [Gort is described as an eight-foot-tall robot - not ten] And how did he know where to find Klaatu? [Gort activated himself immediately upon Klaatu being killed, indicting that Gort was somehow monitoring Klaatu. It stands to reason that Gort would be able to easily find Klaatu.]
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the shots from behind of Gort carrying first Helen, and later Klaatu, into the spaceship, the people being carried are clearly either small adults or adolescent children dressed to resemble Helen and Klaatu, in order to give the illusion of greater size to Gort. The small size of their limbs, and the differences in their relative heights and appearance from the close-up shots of Gort carrying the actual Helen and Klaatu, make this obvious.
  
  
• Plot holes: It is an almost universal custom for a boarder to pay in advance before to being given a room. "Mr. Carpenter" (Klaatu), as we quickly learn, has of course no money - yet gets the room (and board) anyway.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the spaceship (seen as a glowing white disc) is tracked across the sky in Washington, D.C., it passes a flagpole atop a building. As the ship is supposed to be in the background, the flagpole should remain in full view as the ship passes behind it. But a close look shows that the disc briefly blots out part of the pole as it passes (due to an error when the disc was optically printed onto the film). But the effect makes it seem as if a tiny ship had just passed in front of the flagpole.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Gort goes to collect Klaatu's body he passes Helen as he walks to the door of the central room in the spaceship and what looks like a large tear can be seen in the front of his otherwise solid looking left leg.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Some suggested it's impossible for Klaatu to learn handwriting via radio, however, TV broadcast is also a form of radio wave.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Gort's ray makes a jagged irregular shape on the prison wall, but any form of energy weapon should produce a perfectly round hole.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Klaatu mentions he traveled a distance of 250 million miles. That distance would put him between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. This would seem to indicate that he traveled to Earth from the solar system's asteroid belt, whose orbital path stretches from 200 million to 300 million miles from the sun. A straight line from here to there would put him past the belt itself (250 million miles from here would be an orbital distance of 342 million miles, or 3.7AU) but you can't travel in straight lines in orbital mechanics, so a travel distance of 250 million miles should put him somewhere in the belt.
  
  
• Errors in geography: A colonel orders his troops to block off all streets intersecting Connecticut Avenue "along a line from Wisconsin to the park." Connecticut Avenue and Wisconsin Avenue do not intersect.
  
  
• Continuity: As the spaceship races across the world, scenes of successive radio announcers (or people listening to them) are shown, apparently in order of their broadcasts. When the BBC announcer in England is shown delivering his broadcast, the clock behind him reads 8:33 (p.m.). The next shot shows radio commentator H. V. Kaltenborn doing his broadcast from Washington, D.C. The clock behind him reads 3:24. Since Washington is five hours behind London, and assuming the broadcasts were indeed shown in order, Kaltenborn's clock should have read no earlier than 3:33, and probably a minute or more later than that.
  
  
• Factual errors: In his TV broadcast, Drew Pearson says the spaceship landed in Washington at "3:47 p.m., Eastern Standard Time". But since the film takes place in the summer (according to Major Carpenter's clothing tag, dated 7/18/51), Washington would have been on Eastern Daylight Time, not Eastern Standard.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After Klaatu is shot, blood is seen on his shoulder. But when he's actually shot, not only is there no sign of his being hit in the shoulder, the device he's carrying is blasted out of his hand, and his physical reactions clearly are those of someone just shot in the hand or wrist. Not to mention the device is found shot apart, damage that could not have happened to it just from falling onto the grass, and had Klaatu been hit in the shoulder.
  
  
• Plot holes: When Klaatu asks Mr. Harley if he could speak to the United Nations about his mission, Harley allows that they could call a special session of the General Assembly, but warns Klaatu that "The United Nations doesn't represent all the nations," after which he and Klaatu completely abandon the idea of using the UN as a forum. But the UN has always allowed observers from non-member states and organizations to attend its sessions (though they may not speak or vote), so there was absolutely no reason why the UN could not have been used for such an extraordinary purpose as hearing Klaatu's proposals.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): At the end when the military is following the cab, the soldier refers to "plan 'B'... BAKER". Military phonetic for 'B' is BRAVO.
  
  

• Plot holes: SPOILER: Towards the end of the film, when Helen travels to the landing site to deliver the message to Gort, she doesn't encounter a single curious tourist, bystander, or onlooker at the saucer site (it looked like there were hundreds when the saucer landed). And it isn't as if the place is heavily guarded and security is keeping the crowds away. Other than the two guards that Gort vaporizes right in front of the saucer, there doesn't appear to be anyone there at all - Helen just walks through the park, goes under the fence, and strolls right up to Gort and the saucer.
  
  

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