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This movie is a lot - but ultimately disappointing

posted 9 months ago by avortac4 (3751)
6 replies | jump to latest

First I want to express my admiration for this little movie. It is very fascinating from the get go, and although all the tropes and clichés are exhausting, you can forgive all that to a movie made in 1963.

I like some of the more interesting camerawork, but I am not fan of all the unnecessary dutch angles and such, so it is a bit of a hit and miss. There are a couple of places where the camerawork was unexpectedly great - good enough for even me to notice (usually I don't).

Then there were some weird, completely unnecessary 'errors', as in jumpcut in the middle of a straight shot, usually the moon poster. Why would they introduce a jumpcut where it's completely unnecessary? I guess for camera to pan to, and then from the poster was done separately, but often the pan didn't start from some scene from before, but from a jumpcut already pointed at the poster, so it makes no sense.

The acting performances are sometimes a bit clunky, but all the actors have some kind of weird charisma, and other times, they are really good.

The amazing thing of a movie made in early sixties, is how well it keeps your attention - I bet even the 1-second attention-span modern people could watch this without feeling bored. The pacing feels natural and yet there's almost never a dull moment.

The ending twist was straight from the Twilight Zone, and any modern movie viewer can see it coming from miles away.

There are some pretty silly, unbelievable things that bring the movie down a few notches, and the overall stupidity of 'Extra-Terrestrials being evil monsters with no humanity' must have been groan-inducingly stupid even for 1963. Why is it so rare in these movies to see good people that live on other planets?

One very silly thing was the whole 'kids react adversely to her'-thing. Why would that make her so sad, when she is supposedly trained to kill people? The lives of some alien kids should mean nothing to her.

If SHE can 'love' and be so emotional and snowflakey about everything, why is the secretary so cold and emotionless? You can't have it both ways - either this kind of 'space travel' gives you 'human emotions', or it doesn't. The ending, thus, makes no sense. The secretary should be able to feel some kind of sympathy/empathy/guilt/etc.

Also, 20 years? Twenty years is NOTHING in the cosmic scale! The actual Extra-Terrestrial visitors have been here even before Earth was habitable - they had bases on the moons, that were more stable at the time (yes, Earth had two moons, and it was the other moon exploding and raining on the planet that ultimately sank Atlantis and brought the ice age).

So, my point about the kids is - why would ALL of the kids behave the same way, move backwards in an orchestrated, practiced, synchronized motions?

Are you telling me kids are more sensitive than adults, but there are no exceptions? There MUST have been some 'thicko' kids that don't feel anything about her, and would just stand around screaming insults to the weird, staring auntie. Come on, ALL kids are super sensitive? That makes no sense. (A weird sidenote - the kids' faces look weirdly 'adultlike' compared to modern people, don't they?)

The baby I can understand, but some youngster tough guy wannabe bully fatsos? No WAY they would be 'sensitive' enough to feel anything about this woman.

So how do they manufacture/fabricate their bodies? I mean, you can't just materialize a body out of thin air just by concentration, no matter how much you train, and still be able to be a lowly enough soul to be able to kill. When you reach the level where you can just form a physical body with pure thought, you are no longer anything recognizable as 'bipedal human', you are a third level entity that hasn't required a body for any reason for a really long time.

The eyes open-thing - some people do sleep their eyes open, but then there's REM-sleep, which would look wild that way. The eyes would not just be staring up.

Also, if sedation makes them 'lose concentration', why does sleeping NOT make them lose concentration? Isn't it the same thing, except natural vs. artificially induced?

Do they 'materialize' naked? Or why do the clothes not disappear? Do they create a fully perfect human body by pure thought but can't create clothes? Or do they arrive naked and steal clothes somewhere, in which case, there should be a 'clothes robbery epidemic' going on, which should raise a few eyebrows!

Why did the cloroform not work until the secretary fell all the way to the ground?

If 'losing focus' means 'disappearing', then why don't they disappear more often, since no one can keep focus all the time, why does this 'loss of focus' sometimes appear as 'not blinking' and 'metal skin that doesn't get burned'?

I don't care what planet you are from, if you are on Earth in a functional human body, the surface of that body WILL get burned if it touches 250 degrees metallic stove, oven or casserole dish!

[–] avortac4 (3751) 9 months ago

Why do the tears from the body she created burn that very body? I mean, the tears are not from some OTHER body, they are not some separate, different mechanism, so why can't she form a body that contains liquids that, when dispersed from eyes, DON'T burn the skin?

Why couldn't she simply 'focus more' and fix her face BEFORE opening the door?

How can the protagonist be so sweaty for so long, but almost NOT AT ALL out of breath at the same time? Doesn't he think to wipe his face just a little bit? Weirdly, the sweat just STAYS on the face, instead of running down the skin, like it normally should..

The speech the protagonist gives to the secretary in the end is weirdly optimistic and almost jingoistic - 'we will win' - err, excuse me, what? These people have been sabotaging your operations for 20 years without a hitch, always successfully, and yet you think you can somehow win, especially since they are SO FAR ahead of you in this particular space race? I guess there are parallels to the USA vs. Russia space race (and all the politics and fakery and murder that came with it), but still.

The most annoying thing about this little movie is exactly that - it's a very small story, told in a very small way, happening in a very small group of tiny locations. Even some Twilight Zone episodes feel bigger and more vast in all these areas and more.

The jump from the fat guy telling they have no record of her existing to the woman walking around on the street is QUITE jarring, I thought my video skipped there or something, but nope - apparently that's how it's supposed to be. It's like watching some completely different movie all of the sudden.

The musics are IRRITATINGLY loud and chaotic, basically the equivalent of listening to some drunken neighbour pounding his family around his apartment right next to or above yours, mashing their heads against the walls and so on. Like, who thought that kind of 'pounding music' would be a good idea? Why is it SO LOUD as well?

[–] avortac4 (3751) 9 months ago

It's like you can barely hear the speech, if you keep the music at 'tolerable level', but then you have to lower the volume near zero when the music starts torturing your eardrums and sensibilities. What the heck is this?

I am not expecting Jon Williams or Alan Silvestri, but come on, that's like a toddler just pounding some toy against the floor! Awful stuff.

When I say this movie is small, it's because the concept is disappointingly stupid, narrow, hostile and fear-based. If they dared to introduce a little bit of color into it, instead of being black and white in the most predictably nationalistic and supermacist way, this movie could be an underrated masterpiece. It betrays its own, originally pretty intriquing ideas by just making it another 'monster amidst us' horror crap. I hate horror crap.. why do these supposed SCI-FI ideas always devolve into 'monster horror' in the end?

It's so disappointing and so flat.. there's no nuance at that point, there's no intrique, no mystery, no expansion.. just contracting to a smallest possible fearmongering primality without ever visiting the spirit's potential for greatness and expansion.

The beauty they could have shown or even told us about that exists in better worlds.. but I guess we can't have that when we have to keep people scared and paranoid, and we can't admit our world is not the best. It's like some third-world sh1thole, where people are convinced their rotten, cockroach-riddled, dirty piss-smelling land of feces is somehow the BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD! (Visit any of these countries and tell me anyone living there has a truly realistic view of which countries are good and which are bad, and find even one individual who isn't completely patriotic and 'proud' of 'their' country.. good luck!)

What COULD have been... if we had followed a more unconventional path, shown more of the 'good people' instead of just 'bad people', just like there are people that don't LIKE this kind of military projects on Earth

[–] avortac4 (3751) 9 months ago

.. showing that there are similarly this project-protesting people on the homeworlds.

Another missed opportunity was to show their 'real bodies', what they might have looked like and so on.

It's just so annoying that the way this was explained was so hazy and unclear, that it raises more questions than it answers.

It's pretty weird that they think they can travel purely by concentration, but yet somehow have to construct 'incompatible bodies out of thin air', to 'become different creatures', but ONLY when they concentrate, because when not, the newly-created bodies somehow revert .. back to their own bodies? I mean, if it's physical body-free travel, which I think was the whole idea, then why.. how.. what.. ???

This makes NO sense!

Also, even if she does not FEEL her hands burning, she should realize what heat does on ANY planet... so she should still have the reflex of protecting her hands from the heat. Also also, this should STILL create some kind of chemical reaction, like smoking skin or something (almost regardless of what that skin is made of, especially if it's soft and malleable enough to pass as human skin).. you can't just have material that is 100% immune to effects of heat, or it is quite the coincidence! And why would she 'materialize' such a body?

Is that fake body 'fully functional', by the way? When did they get married, and what if she had lost 'concentration' during the wedding?

I was half expecting her to have brainwashed or hypnotized him to think they have been married for a long time, although she just met her (a bit like in the two versions of the Japanese movie, 'Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo' - 'A Girl That Leaped (I don't believe in 'lept') Through Time' (rough translation)).

How does she know english language, and so perfectly that no one suspects anything? Even the best agents have to train and practice hard to become natural, nativelike and fluent.

[–] avortac4 (3751) 9 months ago

How does she learn so easily to form the words and other linguistic sounds with her newly-formed mouth, lips, etc.?

I mean, it takes AWHILE for a human to learn how to use physical vocal cords again after spending time in the astral world. Babies can't talk for a reason!

How does she, not only form perfect vocal cords, lips, mouth, teeth, etc. etc. just by pure concentration? Wouldn't that kind of body be at least a little bit etheric and fluctuating? How can she make it so physical and so perfect, especially if it's so malleable she can just 'wish it to heal'?

So could she have an arm cut off and just 'wish a new arm' and she'd be perfect again? Where does she get the human blueprint to be able to pull off all this?

I was expecting it to be a 'soul enters an already-existing physical body and THEN exhibits weird and unusual behaviour', but nope.. if they can materialize bodies this way, then forget space travel, what could they materialize in their home worlds by PURE THOUGHT? I mean, spaceships, housing, etc..??

So, what travels through space, and why does she talk about dying? Is there another body sitting in some chair, completely unconscious, connected to this 'space-traveling' soul that can materialize new bodies on other planets easily?

There are just so, SO very many questions this kind of premise produces and doesn't answer in this movie.

I also find it a bit pompous, egotistical and ridiculous - so, perfectly realistic for some militaristic operation - that they go STRAIGHT to 'non-physical space travel with materialization of another body by pure thought and being able to make it not only functional, but incarnatable' and so on and so forth..

That's like a caveman thinking they might be able to create a tool to punch a rock to make a perfect Katana sword.

That's like someone that has never learned to walk, wanting to take part in a high-level Tae-Kwon Do kicking competition.

Why won't they research the basics first?

[–] avortac4 (3751) 9 months ago

I mean, you have to learn to crawl first, then you can learn to walk on all fours, then you can learn to stand, and only then can you learn to walk. Only THEN can you even hope of learning to jog, run, or kick, and only then can you learn to START learning how to learn the very basic Tae Kwon-Do kicks!

You can't just go straight to the most sophisticated and demanding 'Break 7 boards with one jump' type of spinkicking and win the world championship!

You have to at least learn to walk first.

So I found it VERY peculiar and curious that they would jump STRAIGHT into this super complicated and SUPER demanding thing that requires basically an Adept-level spiritual level to even be able to attempt it... instead of, let's say a bit more modest goals, first.

How about.. telepathy? That's low-level spiritual ability everyone has, but most have put to a coma. Animals have a low-level telepathy in a very instinctual and primal form, which is why dogs always know the EXACT moment you decide to start heading back home - this has been proven with cameras and timing things, there is no doubt. A dog will react to the owner's real intention to head back home EVERY time at the same second the decision is made.

(Of course there are also animals that have dulled these instincts, or have had them dulled by people)

There are real projects that have been going on WAY longer than '20 years', about things like Remote Viewing and other so-called 'psychic abilities'. These are WAY easier to utilize and train than what these people immediately try to do.

I would even say telekinesis would be WAY easier to do than all that 'space travel with materialization feature installed' stuff they are trying to pull off. Seriously, WAY!! easier.

Even predicting the future accurately would be more doable by low-level cretins, like this planet's populace (especially nowadays, but even in the 1960s).

[–] avortac4 (3751) 9 months ago

The last thing I want to say about this little movie, is the 1960s lifestyle, feel, sounds, etc.

The 'walking' sounds are a bit much sometimes - all that clipclop multiplied a bit too many times, and the 'S'-sounds sometimes sounding like they clip..

But the typewriter sounds - ahhh, balm to the wounds, music to the soul!

The oldschool telephone sounds, wow... I could just live in those sounds and swim in them and throw them up in the air so they will rain back all over me, ah. What amazing time it was to be surrounded by sounds we never hear anymore in our daily lives, and I am realizing just how much I miss those.

The offices also look so different from anything you see in movies anymore, and the absolutely luxurious house, although 'small setting' in a movie perspective, would be amazingly paradiselike to live in. The old cars, don't even get me started.

All in all, an intense, mesmerizing, glorious adventure into a different world... the world of the 1960s moviemaking, sounds, visuals and lifestyle, only ruined by its smallness on all levels.

The scope of the story is tiny, even if the idea is supposedly big. The settings, the premises, the areas are a bit claustrophobic, you don't ever get any sense of 'vastness', no matter how much they talk about space.

BTW, why doesn't the secretary just murder both of the people, since the chloroform does not seem to affect her at all? If she can murder by pure concentration, why doesn't she?

It's a 'packed' little movie, but in the end, let down by the very fact, that it IS, indeed, a 'little' movie, when it could have been so much more. The poster promises a lot that the movie just doesn't deliver.

It's a valiant effort and surprisingly interesting for what it is, but in the end, I would rather watch a couple of the more classic episodes of The Twilight Zone - at least there's a chance it will make a bit more sense and lend a sense to a bit more grandeur.