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The Day the Earth Stood Still is the point of departure, and there's Scripture quoted at the close to clinch the moral lesson. Resistance to the Cold War arms race is a cosmic beam, seen from the vantage point of a station wagon along the California coast. Dad (Adam Williams) is a technician uprooting the clan to a military base, Mom (Peggy Webber) contemplates the row of trailers separating ocean and missile: "It's the feeling of living so close to the end of the world, maybe." The kids (Michel Ray, Johnny Crawford) are attuned to mysterious forces opposing the launching of a satellite warhead, they nod in agreement to telepathic orders from a pulsing cerebellum in a cave. Other tykes are similarly mobilized, riding bicycles while Army trucks swerve off the road, licking ice-cream while phone lines are scrambled. "All day, the unexpected. Like pebbles dropping one by one, ruffling the surface." The necessity of sabotage "when every hour is a zero hour," laid out by the paradoxical Jack Arnold in a state of tranquil dread. An appropriately nondescript landscape of sea and rock for ersatz homes next to the protruding projectile, cf. Altman's Countdown. Dislocated nation meets disembodied mind, the suspicious paterfamilias (Jackie Coogan) has his memory wiped and the abusive stepfather (Russell Johnson) is blasted by the visitor. "You see, a man of science is like a deep-sea diver. He mustn't be afraid to walk down where it's dark and frightening, in hopes of scooping up a handful of truth." The onus is on the nuclear family, Losey in These Are the Damned takes a different tack. With Raymond Bailey, Richard Shannon, Sandy Descher, Larry Pennell, Jean Engstrom, Johnny Washbrook, and Vera Marshe. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |