It Came from Outer Space

"Fantastic sights leap out at you!"

1953 1h 20m EN

😐

6.3

MID

★6.3TMDB · 260

Science FictionHorror

Synopsis

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Author and amateur astronomer John Putnam and schoolteacher Ellen Fields witness an enormous meteorite come down near a small town in Arizona. Putnam becomes a local object of scorn when, after examining the object up close, he announces that it is a spacecraft, and that it is inhabited...

“Fantastic sights leap out at you!”

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Cast

Richard Carlson
John Putnam
Barbara Rush
Ellen Fields
Charles Drake
Sheriff Matt Warren
Joe Sawyer
Frank Daylon
Russell Johnson
George
Kathleen Hughes
Jane Dean
Dave Willock
Pete Davis (uncredited)
Alan Dexter
Dave Loring (uncredited)

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Jack Arnold
Writers: Harry Essex, Ray Bradbury
Languages: English
Countries: United States of America

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

RUNTIME

Did you know

80 minutes exactly — the "classic feature" runtime most directors aim for.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Shot for just $0.8M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

ERA

Did you know

73 years old — a genuine piece of film history.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

CINEMA

Did you know

Part of the "It Came from Outer Space Collection" — so the characters or world continue elsewhere.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

ERA

Did you know

Directed by Jack Arnold, shot by Clifford Stine. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Irving Gertz. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Paul Weatherwax shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Richard Carlson and Barbara Rush and Charles Drake carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Jack Arnold directs. Clifford Stine behind the camera. Irving Gertz scores. Paul Weatherwax cuts. Runs lean at under 100 minutes. Profitable at the box office. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

180 minutes exactly — the "classic feature" runtime most directors aim for.
2Shot for just $0.8M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.
373 years old — a genuine piece of film history.
4Part of the "It Came from Outer Space Collection" — so the characters or world continue elsewhere.
5Directed by Jack Arnold, shot by Clifford Stine. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
6Original score by Irving Gertz. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
7Editor Paul Weatherwax shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
8Richard Carlson and Barbara Rush and Charles Drake carry the top of the cast.
9Marketing tagline: "Fantastic sights leap out at you!".
10IMDB entry: tt0045920 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
11Classified under 21 themes, including "spacecraft", "small town", "arizona", "alien life-form".
12Released under 27 different titles around the world.

The technical file

Cinematography: Clifford Stine
Original score: Irving Gertz
Editing: Paul Weatherwax
Costume design: Rosemary Odell
Makeup / hair: Bud Westmore
Runtime: 80 min · 1h 20m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $800,000
Box office: $1,600,000
Return: 200% of budget
Original language: EN
IMDB: It Came from Outer Space (1953)

Part of

It Came from Outer Space Collection

Series of films about an amateur astronomer who suspects alien influence affecting the local townsfolk's behavior when a spaceship crashes in the Arizona desert.

Also by

Jack Arnold

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Community reviews

What people are saying

John Chard2019-06-19
★ 8/10
Because you don't understand it, you want to kill it. An alien ship crashes into the desert, at first it's thought to only be a meteorite, but small time scientist Richard Carlson gets to view the stricken ship before it is totally buried beneath the collapsing crater it created upon its crash landing. Nobody believes Carlson, but soon the aliens start taking on human form and it's then that everyone else must sit up and take notice before it's deemed too late. It Came From Outer Space stands as one of the better sci-fi pictures to come out of the Cold War 1950s. Based on the Ray Bradbury story "The Meteor", the story leans heavily on anti-conformist themes and confidently trumpets something different to ourselves actually having the damn right to be different, and that is something I can personally truck with. As with most of the other films from the sci-fi/alien genre, "it" perfectly captures the paranoia of the people, the sense of mistrust befitting the atomic age, the fear of the desert never more evident than it is here. Directed with some style from genre guru "Jack Arnold" ("This Island Earth"/"The Incredible Shrinking Man"), the film was originally shot in 3D, and though sadly I have never been able to see the picture in that format, I can certainly imagine greatly the impact that certain scenes would have had. The picture is also notable for the use of POV shooting from the alien perspective, all fuzzy focus from a spherical single eye, it works real well and would be something that many other film makers would use from here on in. This is not a film that relies on creatures to see it home safely, in fact we barely glimpse the creatures here, but we don't need that to be the case, for they make their mark regardless, all of which leaves It Came From Outer Space as a very knowing and quite often intelligent piece of work. 8/10
CinemaSerf2026-01-05
★ 6/10
When a fireball blazes through the sky then leaves a smouldering crater in the desert, local writer “Putnam” (Richard Carlson) decides that he and girlfriend “Ellen” (Barbara Rush) have to hop on their friend’s helicopter and explore the scene. Thing is, when he gets to the bottom of the rubble he could swear he saw something. Before he can get any corroboration, a rockfall buries the site and with the army as disbelieving of his subsequent assertions as every one else, it doesn’t look like anyone is going to be digging anything up. It’s when they are driving back into town and encounter the telephone repair guys “George” (Russell Johnson) and his pal “Frank” (Joe Sawyer) that they get their first real clue that something is amiss. Is it benign? Is it malevolent? Is it all just their imagination amidst the Joshua trees and creepy crawlies of the desert? There can’t have been much cash to spend here, so Jack Arnold has wisely decided not to try to dumb the thing down with cheap visual effects and endless latex. Nor does it turn into one of those militaristic exercises where the potential visitors are surrounded by tanks and Howitzers. The idea that there could be visitors to this planet and that they might be trapped is approached with more of an open mind by “Putnam” and that helps sustain the adventure for a seventy minutes that asks us a few questions along the way. The production is basic and Carlson doesn’t really get very much help from the constantly over-dressed Rush but it’s still a decent watch.