THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL - Klaatu Barada Necktie!

In the Beginning, all was darkness. And god said let there be lips, and there were and they were red and they said. . . .

Michael Rennie was ill
The Day the Earth Stood Still,
but he told us where we stand.

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to my Rocky Horror Picture Show tribute reviewathon, where I don’t actually review Rocky, but instead every movie mentioned in the song Science Fiction Double Feature.

Yes, I'm that huge a film geek. You're welcome.

Based on the short story Farewell to the Master by Harry Bates, The Day the Earth Stood Still opens with a flying saucer landing on the Ellipse in Washington DC. After the military, the press and hundreds of civilians have gathered, the saucer opens and Klaatu (Michael Rennie) greets the crowd. Klaatu is an alien who has traveled 250 million miles (proving yet again that Hollywood has no sense of scale - that's what, just inside the orbit of Jupiter?) to deliver a message to the peoples of earth: cease our self destructive ways or immediately face the consequences. "It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder."

The military, responding with typical 1950's paranoia, shoot him*.

Needless to say, this doesn't go down well with Klaatu's companion - the honkin' big robot Gort who then disintegrates every weapon the Army has on site. Klaatu manages to calm down Gort, leaving him to stand watch over the ship while he is taken away to a nearby hospital.

Despite Klaatu's gestures of peace, the government is afraid that his visit is an overture to all out invasion and makes the alien more a prisoner than a welcomed guest and diplomatic representative.

Of course to a being as powerful as Klaatu, a simple thing like a locked door wont stand between him and his mission - and promptly escapes custody. Wandering the streets of Washington, Klaatu adopts the name Carpenter (one of the many Klaatu-as-Christ parallels) and rents a room at a boarding house, meeting Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) and her son Bobby (Billy Gray). Helen and Bobby quickly warm to Klaatu, eventually earning the aliens' trust, confiding with them his true identity and intent. And so, as the Government's man hunt for Klaatu intensifies, it falls to Helen and Professor Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe, who almost wasnt allowed to shoot thanks to the Hollywood blacklist) to calm a frightened public and prevent Gort from unleashing his awesome destructive power before it’s too late. . . .

While I hate the idea of Hollywood raping the past for any nugget to remake and reimagine, I do have to admit that I love the attention that the old movies get. Classics that would often get forgotten by today's "hip, young" viewers that are too cool for a creaky old black and white movie might get new life when the studio turns the cross-promotion marketing machine up to 11.

And really, if any movie deserves attention, it's this one.

Made just a scant 6 years after World War II and in the middle of the Red Menace Scare and flying saucer frenzy, The Day The Earth Stood Still is a cautionary tale about man's inherent inability to play well with others. It's not so much a science fiction flick about what does happen, but what could happen. Unlike most Sci-Fi offerings full of exploding landmarks, bug-eyed monster and epic battles, we get sophisticated, intelligent storytelling and underlying threats of what might occur.

Michael Rennie - a relative unknown at the time - plays the spaceman perfectly, giving him a stone faced detachment, an alien composure of someone in control as the situation spins out of control all around him. Rennie may have been an unknown, but he sells the roll flawlessly. It's easy to see how the movie would have suffered if the Studio Execs has gotten their way and Spencer Tracy or Claude Rains had gotten the roll instead.

Director Robert Wise (who has about as diverse a film career as one could hope for, from West Side Story to the very first Star Trek flick) keeps things straightforward, but really shows off his skills as an editor, pulling in several masterful montages throughout the movie. If you add in Lyle Wheeler and Addison Hehr’s simple and elegant art direction and add in a outstanding and unforgettable score from Bernard Hermann - face it, the Theremin IS the sound that everyone associates with fifties flying saucer movies - and you cant help but have a winner on your hands.

So good at drawing you in and hooking you line and sinker the movie is, you cant help but not notice the laughable aspects of the film. There are only two guards posted on Gort, a weapon already demonstrated to have unspeakable power? And the army doesn't seem too terribly concerned about securing the site. Of course that may be because after the first day, nobody seems to care that there's a flying saucer sitting in the middle of the park or that there's a giant robot just standing around. Where are the reporters? Where is the crowd? It can't be that the military evacuated the city - life outside the park moves on like normal.

Speaking of Gort, this 10 foot tall inhuman looking robot melts his way free of a solid block of plastic, marches across the city, smashes down the wall of the city jail, retrieves Klaatu's body, and returns to the spaceship without anyone seeing him? Despite not but an hour earlier the city was on high alert to catch Klaatu?

And Klaatu has the vast power to neutralize earthly power sources all over the globe, yet he cant complete his mission by simply communicating to the whole Earth, all at once? The Space Federation of Planets doesn't have chat room technology?

And then of course my favorite bit - although I can hardly blame the movie for this one - the two doctors discussing Klaatu's life expectancy, wondering why humans don't live longer - while prominently lighting up a couple of fags. The scene is played totally straight, mind you. It's only with 50 years of hindsight that it becomes funny.

But you know, all these are little niggling points. As the great Mystery Science Theater mantra said: "If you're wondering how he eats and breaths and other science facts, repeat to yourself 'its just a show. I should really just relax'."

THE DVD -
There are two versions of The Day the Earth Stood Still on DVD, an older release and a new special edition designed to cash in on the remake's release. I have the older one, so I cant discuss the most recent effort.

The Studio Classics version of The Day the Earth Stood Still is a nice, slick looking package. The print looks great and is free of blemishes and other source flaws. The digital clarity does, however, have a down side. The wire-work harness that lets Gort "pick up" Patricia Neal and carry her away in true 50 monster movie fashion is now painfully obvious.

THE EXTRAS -
We get a double-sided, dual-layered disc - which is always slightly annoying, but nothing I cant live with. The first side sports an audio commentary by director Wise recorded just before his death and fellow director Nicholas Meyer (The mastermind behind The Wrath of Khan), who acts as interviewer. Wise discusses at length his involvement with the picture and brings all kinds of cool trivia, behind the scenes facts and other production information.

We get a 1951 Movietone newsreel, showing off the cultural context of the fifties perfectly - the Miss America pageant, The 9th annual Worldcon and diplomatic snubs at the UN. Following that is the typical 50's B-movie trailer for TDTESS, filled with hyperbolae and exclamation points.

The second side includes a 70-minute documentary with interviews from Wise, producer Julian Blaustein, Patricia Neal, Billy Grey, and pretty much everyone who was still alive at the time of shooting the extra. The documentary is packed with information, trivia, memories and other production tidbits. There's a side-by-side comparison of the video restoration, a handful of photo galleries with production stills, PR photos, posters, lobby cards and one-sheets, the Shooting Script, miniature work and even the original blueprints for the flying saucer set.

Rounding the disc out, there are completely unrelated trailers for One Million Years BC (oh, Rachel Welsh in a fur bikini. . . . drool) and the considerably less drooltastic Journey to the Center of the Earth.

THE BOTTOM LINE -
The Day the Earth Stood Still is one of the all time classics of fifties science fiction films, right up there with Forbidden Planet, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Incredible Shrinking Man.






*although to be fair, Klaatu asked for it. He's surrounded by nervous, heavily armed military men in a first contact situation when he reaches into his clothing for an unfamiliar object and snaps it open? Klaatu says that our ignorance is no excuse, but that's a two-way street. He knows we're ignorant and war-like, so how stupid would you have to that your first action on a new planet is a potential threat from the unknown?