Countdown: The Top 10 Sci-Fi Movies of the 50's

There have been hundreds of incredible science fiction flicks over the past century or so, from the earliest silent films like A Trip to the Moon and Metropolis to vast and mesmerizing space epics like Avatar. There’s something about the mystery and allure of far-off worlds, mankind’s potential for technological wonders, and the potential for those same wonders to prove mankind’s ruin, that bring us back again and again to the stories of what might be.

In the US, the 1950s was a time that embodied precisely that same allure. We had just emerged victorious from World War II with the power of the atom at our command. In one very literal fell swoop we had taken a tremendous technological stride that held the potential to usher us into a bright and shining future. And yet the terrible power of what we had achieved, and the possibility that it might be used against us, left the country with an undercurrent of fear. This mixture of hope and fear, optimism and dread, is what made the 1950s the ideal era for the science fiction film, and Hollywood proudly took up the call.

Here we’ll take a look at the top 10 science fiction films from 1950 through 1959. These are the movies that, though they may be set in a distant future or halfway across the galaxy, can be considered the zeitgeist of 1950s America and have left an enduring mark on our culture to this day.

#10 – It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958)

Starting out at the #10 spot is a film that straddles the line between science fiction and horror. It! The Terror From Beyond Space is a direct antecedent to a variety of space-horror movies, most notably Ridley Scott’s Alien. A crew of astronauts is sent to Mars on a rescue mission. When they arrive on the red planet, they find a lone stranded survivor, whom they arrest convinced that he murdered his shipmates. But as they head back towards Earth they discover the real culprit has snuck on board, a space vampire (yep, that’s right). As crew members fall into its clutches one by one, the astronauts need to find a way to destroy the monster before they reach Earth.

#9 – The Thing From Another World (1951)

Produced by Howard Hawkes, The Thing From Another World is a film of surprising subtlety despite a somewhat ridiculous-sounding premise. A team from the U.S. Air Force (plus one reporter and his secretary) is sent to Antarctica to investigate a space ship found frozen beneath the ice. Unfortunately in their excavation attempts they accidentally destroy the ship, but are able to recover an alien life form frozen solid in a block of ice. Of course it thaws and begins terrorizing the team, feeding on the Earthlings’ blood. Through excellent dialogue, subtle humor, and masterful pacing, The Thing From Another World distinguishes itself from a host of similar movies made around the same time.

#8 – Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956)

There are only a handful of films that are as aesthetically influential as Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. By 1956 flying saucers were already the established mode of transportation for extraterrestrials, but visual effects legend Ray Harryhausen went the extra mile with his stop-motion saucers, giving them a visual weight and physicality that pushed special effects realism to new heights. The plot is about as complicated as the title would imply, alien UFOs attack Earth and wreak havoc on various landmarks, but Harryhausen’s ships have influenced the motion and design of nearly every cinematic flying saucer since.

#7 – 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)

Another masterwork by Ray Harryhausen, 20 Million Miles to Earth takes place after a US space shuttle crashes into the Mediterranean Sea on its return from Venus. The expedition brought a specimen back from the blue planet, an egg which soon hatches and grows into a twenty-foot reptilian creature. The climax of the film, when the creature climbs to the top of the Coliseum in Rome only to be shot down by rockets, is extremely reminiscent of the 1933 King Kong, as is the prophetic closing line, “Why is it always, always so costly for man to move from the present to the future?” taking that final moment to hammer home the film’s message, shared by so many science fiction films. The tremendous battle sequence between the monster and an elephant at the Rome Zoo is one of the great scenes in stop-motion history and a crowning achievement of Harryhausen’s career.

#6 – The War of the Worlds (1953)

Based on the story by H.G. Wells (though vastly altered) and following on the reputation of Orson Welles’ infamous radio broadcast, The War of the Worlds is the first of several films on this list to feature a direct allegory to communism, the predominant social anxiety of the era. The technologically superior Martian race, in an act of desperation, invades the Earth in order to escape the fate of their dying planet. Unlike other adaptations of the story, this 1953 film version follows prominent scientists and military men as they wage their war against the invading Martian ships. The War of the Worlds is perhaps not the best science fiction movie of the 1950s, but it may be considered one of the flagship films that define the era.

#5 – Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

One of the all-time greats of science fiction cinema, Invasion of the Body Snatchers has thoroughly ingrained itself on the cultural collective consciousness. Set in the small town of Santa Mira, the townspeople are slowly being replaced by alien duplicates, devoid of emotion, who plan to slowly replace the entire population of Earth. This is one of the many and one of the best cinematic metaphors for the threat of communism making its way into American society.

#4 – The Blob (1958)

The third allegory film on our list, The Blob is the physical embodiment of “creeping communism.” A meteorite falls to Earth containing a gelatinous alien life form. When an old man investigates the meteorite, the blob attacks and slowly devours him. The sluggish amorphous creature grows ever larger as it consumes everything in its path. The 1958 original was the screen debut of Steve McQueen and regained popularity after the action star became increasingly famous from other roles. In 1988 The Blob was remade. The revision, in which the blob was the byproduct of a government experiment, reflects shifting social anxieties and reinforces the power that science fiction wields in allegory.

#3 – Gojira (1954)

The only non-American film featured in this list, Gojira is one of the great misunderstood films of the 20th century. US audiences know this movie better as Godzilla, but until recently only a re-cut and significantly altered version of the original film was commercially available in the States. The original cut of the film deserves vastly more respect than it has been given as the monster, Gojira, symbolizes the emotional and economic destruction left on Japan in the wake of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Recognizing the unfavorable implications this would have for an American audience, the film was edited, inserting an American narrator, resulting in a sanitized and dumbed-down movie devoid of  subtext. The original Japanese version is now available in the US though, and should be sought out by anyone who’s bothered to read this far.

#2 – The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)

No list of great science fiction films, regardless of era, would be complete without The Day the Earth Stood Still. Like so many other science fiction films of the 1950s, this one features an alien ship threatening humanity, but it is unique in that it places humanity at fault. The alien Klaatu points out the destructive course that humanity has taken and has come to destroy us so that he may save the Earth. In an era of “red scares” and McCarthyism, for a film to challenge the status quo so directly was downright daring. The Day The Earth Stood Still turned a disapproving eye towards the state of the world in 1951 and remains, over 50 years later, a prime example of what science fiction film can and should be.

#1 – Forbidden Planet (1956)

Science fiction history, and film history as a whole, wouldn’t be the same without Forbidden Planet. It has been cited as a major influence on Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, and is considered a landmark film in visual effects to this day. The art department and effects team on Forbidden Planet raised the bar for nearly every field of movie magic. Marrying split-screen traveling mattes with animation, jump cuts, and other techniques, Forbidden Planet took relatively simple effects and executed them with unprecedented precision and skill to produce tremendous results. On top of the visual effects, Forbidden Planet was the first theatrically released film to feature an entirely electronic soundtrack. Heavy use of the Theremin and other devices would literally set the tone for science fiction soundtracks for decades to come. Bernard Herrmann, who would later go on to become a legendary composer, worked as an orchestrator on this film and its influence can be heard throughout Herrmann's long collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock.

Forbidden Planet opens as a ship captained by Commander J.J. Adams (an early non-comedic role for Leslie Nielsen) approaches the planet Altair IV, beautifully and eerily rendered in painted backdrops of alien vistas. Commander Adams and his crew have been sent to investigate the loss of communications with the colony on Altair IV. They find only two survivors, the hyper-intelligent Dr. Morbius and his daughter Altaira, along with their mechanized servant Robby the Robot. Dr. Morbius has been studying the long-extinct Krell who formerly inhabited the planet before mysteriously dying off. As the scientist probed the mysteries of the ancient race, his companions in the colony began to die off just as the Krell did.

Dr. Morbius has been compared to Shakespeare’s Prothero, but the character here embodies the film’s message that regardless of how technologically and intellectually advanced we become, humanity will never be able to escape our own emotions and baser instincts. It is this message that continues to fuel countless works of science fiction even today. Good sci-fi like The War of the Worlds and The Blob act as a litmus test for the concerns and anxieties of the moment, but great sci-fi takes us to a foreign galaxy in the distant future to show us the things that will always remain the same.