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42 reviews in total

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26 out of 29 people found the following review useful:
Why it is worth seeing, 8 August 1999

Author: humble-2 from Los Angeles, ca

Just saw this at the Edgar G. Ulmer retrospective at the American Cinematheque. I wasn't expecting much, but found it entertaining, well-paced and beautifully photographed. Robert Clarke discussed this 6-day, $41,000 curio after the screening. Seems this was the first film EVER to deal with aliens making contact with the Earth. It broke the house record at Oakland's Fox Theatre. If you can allow for the cheap sets, this one is worth a look. Ulmer's camera work, including numerous tracking shots, are superbly done. Also, the whole film was shot on the set for Ingrid Bergman's "Joan of Arc."

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23 out of 25 people found the following review useful:
Classic among Big-Headed Monsters, 13 April 2000
Author: clearwrite from US

One of the five sci-fi's I remember every single detail of from my earliest days as a fan. For the genre, I think it's considerably above average. The moor is nicely atmospheric. There's one of every character in the book: the good guy, the bad guy, the local sheriff, the lovely damsel, her father the old professor, etc. The scene where we're looking for the first time through the window of the ship and the visitor peeks out from the other side is easily as good as the three-fingered-hand-on-the-shoulder in War of the Worlds. Nice "character" to the visitor, for whom, like Karloff's Frankenstein, we end up feeling some empathy .

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19 out of 22 people found the following review useful:
A Shoestring Budgetter., 18 June 2004
Author: walt whizzer (audiohead78@yahoo.com) from Georgia, USA

A shoestring budgetter directed by Edgar Ulmer. One of the first (if not the first) alien invasion films. The little alien, a child-like being with a big, solemn face, is known to Scottish villagers as 'the bogey' and strikes mortal terror into their hearts with his HypnoRay, a laserlike beam which reduces them to easily programmable zomboids. His motives are unclear throughout the film until a hypnoidal Dr. Mears 'spills the beans' near its end. Strong points: eerie atmosphere, production design; moody 'film noir' photography, engaging music score and interesting story. Weak points: muddled script(more plotholes than a Stephen King cemetry); stilted dialogue and wooden acting. Recommended only for diehard 1950s sci-fi fans(like myself)- this film is both a joy and a disappointment.

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18 out of 23 people found the following review useful:
a day late and a dollar short, 23 April 2004
Author: march9hare from sparks nv

a diminuative alien arrives on Earth in what looks for all the world like an oversized Christmas tree ornament and terrorizes a sleepy little Scottish town. Ultimately, both he and his spaceship are destroyed just as Planet X whisks by the Earth. This early fifties sci-fi effort was rushed into production to capitalize on Howard Hawks' "The Thing", and looks it. How rushed? Would you believe a six day shooting schedule? Six days; that's all Mid-Century Films could afford with a budget of less than $60,000. Shot on sets leased from the Hal Roach Studios (most were originally used in the film "Joan of Arc") and with less-than-convincing backdrops, this film somehow manages to capture a moody atmosphere that's perfect for the genre. Add to this an eerie score, and you can just overlook the genuinely hilarious alien. Everything about this creature screams "CHEAP!!!", from the obvious duct tape around the mouthpiece to the control valve on his backpack that looks like it was stolen from Alice Kramden's sink. What optical effects there are are nicely rendered by Jack Glass, and most of the performances are okay, especially that of Roy Engel, who plays Constable Tommy with an accent that would make James Doohan envious. Margaret Field plays Enid, Professor Eliot's daughter and the (we guess) love interest for Robert Clarke, the American reporter. We used the modifier "we guess" because there's no chemistry between the two, despite Clarke's repeated - and obvious - advances. A good deal of the dialogue is pretty strained, as well. Example: Prof. Eliot says to the two: "Let us concentrate on this remarkable object" and:"Ssshh! The scale is delicate; it responds to a breath upon it." Does anybody talk like this? Nobody we know. In spite of all this, plus the fact that the terror is somewhat forced and just why the alien's spaceship comes equipped with a hypnotic ray is never explained, believe it or not, "The Man from Planet X" isn't really a bad film, just a cheap one, and Robert Schallert fans can add a star. Try it; believe us, you COULD do worse!

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13 out of 18 people found the following review useful:
Dr Who, where are you?!, 10 July 2001
Author: whrichards from Oxford, England

Having caught this film quite by accident, i felt gripped not only its innate cheesiness but also several little gems of direction and production design. If you can get past the stereotypes (doddery professor, beautiful daughter, brash American newsman), and the awful accents (isn't that policeman Irish, rather than Scottish?!) The Man From Planet X is a very watchable b-movie. The alien reminded me of the last days of the Spirit comic strip and the lonely croft amongst the billowing fog was a very stark image. Add to this the beautifully sleek (although wholly impractical) spaceship, typically 50s in design, some great chiarascuro cinematography (the alley abduction scene), plus that low-pitched camera outside the dungeon, and you've got a very technically engaging movie.

Never mind that the plot's got more holes than a string vest (where did all those soldiers come from?) and the acting and script are as wooden as a Scots pine dresser, enjoy it on a technical level if you can't engage with the human drama. As with many films of this ilk, the denoument was a bit hurried but all in all, this watches as well as (or dare i say, better than) any episode of Dr Who - with which it shares many similarities.

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8 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
It Ain't No Highland Bluff!, 20 January 2007

Author: BaronBl00d (baronbl00d@aol.com) from NC

An elderly scientist has discovered that a new planet has somehow changed its orbital path and will soon come dangerously close to the Earth. An American reporter goes to the northern most reaches of Scotland to meet with this professor in hopes that he can tell the world of his findings. Upon arrival he meets the young, beautiful daughter that he knew previously as a gawky child and a Dr. Mears, a scientist that should have been jailed for some past crimes but somehow was not convicted and was staying at the Professor's castle because of their former relationship as teacher and pupil. It is with this exposition that famed B director Edgar G. Ulmer then sends an alien in a small, weird-looking spaceship to this area for the purpose of scouting out another place for his/its own kind. Well, the story takes some interesting, some obvious steps in terms of fleshing out the story, but when the end result is viewed - one should be impressed with several things. First of all, the budget for this film was incredibly small. Ulmer rented out the old sets from Joan of Arc and then transformed them into the castle and Scottish bogs. They are convincing thanks to his heavy use of fog machines. The fog swirls and floats throughout. His special effects are not that bad either for the budget. The alien created looks surprisingly eerie in the fog as it looks through its glass helmet with those glazed, cold, blank eyes. But Ulmer does more than just create an alien that terrifies a region. Ulmer gives the alien a bit of soul. He ends up being a menace, but a question arises that would he have been that same menace if an evil human being had not been involved in trying to communicate with him. Ulmer leaves the answer to you - and it is a stylish, almost profound thing to do in a film like this. Make no mistake, The Man from Planet X is a B picture all the way, but it is a quality B picture with solid, innovative direction, haunting images, good acting from Robert Clarke as the lead, Margaret Field(Sally Field's mom) as the love-interest/daughter, and good-old William Schallert as the conniving Dr. Mears. My favourite performance though is by Roy Engel as a Scottish policeman. He can chew up some scenery!

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6 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Terrifically awful, but just awful enough to attract cult and camp fans only, 23 October 2010

Author: secondtake from United States

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.

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8 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
A Murky But Predictable Space Invader Movie, 7 August 2002
Author: daytimer59 from Baltimore, Maryland

The Man from Planet X, as an early 50's space invader movie, isn't among the best of that type and scarcely lives up to the hype it got at the time. It has most of the familiar elements common to sci-fi invader movies of the day: a strange ship landing from another planet (reminds you of a diving bell); a hostile alien (reminds you of a diver); a kindly old scientist; a devious assistant bent on personal gain; an attractive young lady; a handsome reporter; a headstrong police inspector; the usual enslaved villagers and the troops called in near the end to confront the ship. The atmosphere on the foggy Scottish moors masks the poor set quality. The alien communicates through musical sounds, an idea that was used much later in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Overall, the movie is murky, uneventful and predictable. Despite its mediocrity, it is important from a historical perspective, as it was among the initial entries to the sci-fi wave to follow.

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10 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
Weird but compelling no-budget sci-fi, 11 February 2002
Author: lorenellroy from United Kingdom

Edgar Ulmer was an absolute master of turning sow's ears into ,if not silk purses,at least something sturdily functional.Consider his masterpiece "Detour"--a cast not overburdened with either charisma or even basic competence,sparse sets and a perfunctory running time,The result? a brilliant,and disorienting movie,"The Man From Planet X"has a similar zero talent cast,phoney fog shrouded Scottish moorland setting and dialogue that might well ave been devised by a blindfolded monkey with a typewriter from which several keys are missing.Result? an odd and compelling little picture about alien contact that stands up well against other pictures from its era.

A rogue planet is about to crash into earth and brilliant professor Field,his daughter Enid and power crazes assistant Dr Mears are joined in their remote Scottish observatory by ace American reporter John Lawrence.Enter a somewhat whey faced alien who Mears wishes to exploit for commercial gain.Said alien can turn people into zombiefied creatures to do his bidding

Who will triumph in the end? Watch and find out-its 70 minutes reasonably well spent if you can tolerate cliche ,bad acting and stereotypical characterisation(not to mention some highly dubious Scottish accents)The quality of direction from a Poverty Roe specialist makes it all curiously watchable

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4 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Mildly Entertaining and Historically Important, 11 October 2010

Author: Jay Raskin from Orlando, United States

If this film had come out in the mid-50's, it could be dismissed as another low-budget, silly outer space invasion movie. However this movie appears to have been the first of such space invasion movies. It opened in March of 1951. Later that year came the openings of "The Thing from Another Planet" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still." Two other 1951 films, "When Worlds Collide" and "Superman and the Mole Men" have some space invader elements, but don't quite qualify for the genre.

The fact that it was shot in six days on a budget of $43,000 makes it more amazing. Compare that to "The Thing From Another World" ($1.6 million) or the "The Day The Earth Stood Still" ($1.2 million). While none of the technical aspects come near those two movies, the movie does have an interesting style and look that foreshadows the 1953 classic "Invaders From Mars" and even has elements from "Invasino of the Body Snatchers".

The movie is a little ambiguous about whether we are dealing with unfriendly (a la "The Thing")or friendly aliens (a la "The Day"). It seems a bit schizophrenic here with an alien that can be scary in one scene and downright adorable in another. Not having any prior such movies to really go by, the writers seem unsure in which direction to go.

Robert Clark is fine in the lead as a newspaper reporter. Margaret Field (Sally Field's mother) is good as the female love interest. William Schallert (Uncle Martin or Papo on "The Patty Duke Show) stands out as a surprisingly creepy scientific assistant.

What really carries the film is Edgar Ulmer's energetic direction. Ulmer ("Black Cat" "Dishonored Lady" and "Detour")always keeps the viewer on their toes, inserting off-beat and unexpected material in nearly every scene.

It is a must for film history buffs and others will find it engagingly silly.

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