Preserved by the Library of Congress!

For 24 hours on Sept. 28-29, 2011, TCM devoted its schedule exclusively to films recently preserved by the Library of Congress...and among those movies was none other than this sixty-year-old, $41,000, little-known B picture, and a science fiction one to boot.

A lot of us have long appreciated The Man From Planet X as an overlooked gem, thanks mainly to the directorial and artistic genius of director Edgar G. Ulmer. It was Ulmer who fashioned the film's unique Gothic horror/science fiction atmosphere, overlaying a '50s sci-fi sensibility with an anachronistic '30s look and feel, and presented audiences with a surprisingly complex alien in a unique story that leaves the viewer with no easy answers, quite unlike any other sci-fi film of its era.

TMFPX is also one of the finest examples of creativity in a low-budget film. A filmmaker's talents are perhaps best put to the test when he has little money to work with, and it's Ulmer's care, imagination and resourcefulness that made this very inexpensive movie a polished, professional and involving motion picture. Of course, the writers, actors and crew all greatly contributed to making this film the minor classic it has become, but it's Edgar Ulmer who deserves the lion's share of the credit for the success the film enjoyed in 1951, and the increasingly high reputation it's been getting in recent years.

That reputation has now been confirmed by the action of the Library of Congress in making sure The Man From Planet X is restored and preserved for future generations to enjoy...a tribute to their little film I'm sure its creators would have never dreamed of.