MovieChat Forums > The Man from Planet X (1951) Discussion > Thank you, TCM, for restoring my mental ...

Thank you, TCM, for restoring my mental health.

posted 9 years ago by jacksflicks
2 replies | jump to latest

I saw The Man From Planet X last year. I didn't realize I'd seen it before, as a young kid, until the scene where the girl looks into the porthole, face-to-face with the spaceman. There's nothing gross about him, nothing particularly menacing, either. It's just, suddenly there he is, close-up, with this super-creepy, super alien look -- and the girl's bloodcurdling scream to complete the package.

You have to put yourself into a child's mind. It's about images. Even in black & white he was green! There are Val Lewtonesque atmospherics here. Kinda creepy, a miasma covering everything. Watching in the dark....

That moment had given me nightmares for years. Now that I've seen TMFPX a lifetime later, I realize where those nightmares came from. This is how psychoanalysis is supposed to work, except instead of a shrink all I needed was TCM!

How about you? Maybe not nightmares for years, but did that scene scare the bejeezus out of you?

[–] hobnob53 9 years ago

Oh God did it! Still does, even though I know it's coming.

I thought the alien's impassive visage made him much more frightening than the more expressive or "human" aliens seen in most other films with humanoid beings.

[–] sumankey13 9 years ago

One of the scariest scenes so far----beyond THAT-- was when the two initially approach and start backingup-- they didn't back into the alien, as i feared but instead, the giant pinpoint laser beam "eye" came out and stunned the professor into stupesville

thank god i'm seeing this classic as an adult (on Comet t.v.)--that alien doesn't freak me out as much as it would've as a child (like so many other posters here)

*Sometimes, I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!*