Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professors Popinjay

—–It made sense to film westerns in the 40’s and 50’s. Much of the country looked like a desolate ghost town and everyone still dressed like cowboys anyway. Okay so that’s an exaggeration but seriously, did they have to build giant sets to create the illusion of a dry gulch with a dilapidated shanty where a grizzled old prospector panned for gold? No, because all that was right over there. Even the prospector was there and ready to become a hollywood movie star. I hear that’s how Mathew McConauhey got his start.

—–What didn’t make sense on the economy scale was making science fiction films. I don’t blame them for being ambitious. In fact the ambition of filmmakers who sought to innovate beyond their technical limitations have lead to many great inventions and not just those solely pertaining to the entertainment industry. For more information on this subject do a Google search!

—–Today, it almost seems there are no limitations as to what can be achieved on film so a filmmaker’s ambitions are thwarted only by the pocketbook. Back in the day, it was a different story. The laptop of the 1950’s was roughly the size of the Sistine Chapel, capable only of punching random holes in cardstock, and the only time it was actually put on someone’s lap was to make them confess they were a witch. Needless to say, green screening and wire removal was not an option. This meant if your film featured an alien, that alien’s head had to be constructed from paper mache and must look as dumb as possible.

—–While I always commend the effort that goes into a film, even such films into which was put no effort whatever, the poor execution due to technical limitations, I believe, is probably most noticeable in 1950’s sci-fi films. Why do I give you this preamble on these kinds of difficulties? To tell you, for a long time in the film The Man from Planet X, despite being filmed in 1951, it really did not suffer from over ambition and technical limitation. I mean it eventually did but not for the most part. The pacing was good, the story was engaging, the alien was not even posited as the villain. Instead some human jerk was antagonizing. That was kind of a foreign concept at a time when anything foreign was shot at and put in a concentration camp.

—–The Man from Planet X was filmed on the same set as Ingmar Bergman’s Joan of Arc and if you know Ingmar Bergman, you know he usually had a budget. So the atmosphere was pretty authentic and spooky with the exception of a castle tower that looked like it was borrowed from the balcony scene of a local middle school’s rendition of Romeo and Juliet meet Frankenstein. (If it’s not a thing, it should be.)

—–It wasn’t until the mention of a possible alien invasion that I said “Uh-Oh” and not because I was invested in the plot… which I admittedly was… but because I knew that this was definitely an ambition beyond the filmmaker’s means. I suddenly found myself wanting not to know what was going to happen next in the film, but rather how they were going to accomplish it financially. Perhaps they would have a bake sale?

—–The underlying menace of The Man from Planet X was the ever looming Planet X drawing closer and closer to Earth carrying with it the unknown and all the hysteria that comes with it. It was eventually revealed this threat meant invasion, or in the best case scenario, occupation as Planet X was freezing to death. So what thwarted this infamous Planet X man and his evil plans to save his race from extinction? I’ll tell you, right here and right now, and I will give you ample time to stop reading before I tell you just in case you want to see this amazing ending for yourself of your own accord without taking my word for it which I am just about to reveal any second now here it is: The human’s figured out what knob on the alien’s suit turned off whatever he was breathing. This is how the alien is thwarted in EVERY… SINGLE… CONFRONTATION. His alien brethren clearly got word of this breach of knowledge and the ever looming planet did a 180, never to return until maybe they find a less available place to put that gas knob.

—–I laughed out loud when that planet zipped off because it was FAST. Usually you think of the cosmic ballet as a slow and stately choreography with Johann Strauss’ Blue Danube playing sweetly over it but not this time! The planet leaving scene took about 15 seconds (tops) and should have included a slide whistle sound effect. This begs the question “If these paper mache headed weirdos can make their entire frigid planet zip around space like a spaceship, why not just zip it to another sun?”. Whatever, I don’t care.

I don’t do movie reviews.

-Professor Popinjay

PS- In the film Looney Tunes: Back in Action, during the Area 52 scene, the alien from The Man from Planet X can be seen among several other movie monsters. Does this fact make Looney Tunes: Back in Action suck less or more. You decide!