Because of this, Tom's pot roast remains frozen and Crow has melted himself into a puddle of goo while exercising. Opening: Crow and Servo get their Thigh Master and Thawmaster switched around.
#PEGGY WEBBER MST3K MOVIE#
For a work of 1950s science-fiction, The Space Children is unusually optimistic, sitting as it does astride Cold War anxiety while holding an unusually determined pacifist position.The Movie Main article: The She-Creature (film) Synopsis Īn amoral hypnotist transforms his beautiful assistant into the form of a prehistoric sea monster using past-life regression. Once again, Arnold uses desert locations with haunting effect – “all this ocean and sand,” Mikel Ray says at one point, “it seems like another world” – a line that could sum up the recurrent theme that runs through the body of Jack Arnold’s work.Īs with It Came from Outer Space, Arnold liked to subvert expectations of the alien threat – the alien is not a malevolent invader but is eventually shown – akin to Michael Rennie in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) – to have come to hold humanity back from its more warlike tendencies. Nevertheless, Arnold creates moments of undeniably eerie atmosphere with the children entering into the cave. The story descends into much running around between the beach and the missile base. Some of this is also due to Arnold’s prosaic handling – rather than dealing with the horror of takeover, Arnold gives us scenes down at the level of the blob killing a drunken father as he attempts to beat one of the children. The Space Children is not another Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) or even Arnold’s own It Came from Outer Space in terms of paranoia – perhaps the idea of possessed children and the violation of traditional family had more chill impact back then.
The children gathered around the alien blob The performances from the kids, which include a young Jackie Coogan among their number, are not too bad. For all that it attempts, the film achieves it with modesty. In most regards, The Space Children is a perfect little 1950s B-picture. It is certainly the most overlooked films in Jack Arnold’s oeuvre and in recent years has attained an unjustified bad reputation – even being screened on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988-99, 2017-8). The Space Children is a modestly enjoyable, if minor entry from Arnold. He subsequently made Monster on the Campus (1958) but even the most ardent fan of Arnold’s work is hard-pressed to defend that, as well as a couple of comedy ventures into genre material with The Mouse That Roared (1959) and Hello Down There (1969). The Space Children was Arnold’s last worthwhile venture into science-fiction. In particular, Arnold’s films of the 1950s have a haunting sense running through them of man allegorically alienated amidst the landscapes of the Earth.
Arnold’s works always stood head and shoulders above the B films of his contemporaries and contained a superb sense of atmosphere and place.
Arnold first appeared with It Came from Outer Space (1953) and went onto classics like The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Revenge of the Creature (1955), Tarantula (1955) and The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). Jack Arnold was the foremost director among the 1950s Golden Age of Science-Fiction.
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