Movie #31: The Man From Planet X

Welcome to Sci-Fi 100! 

100 Sci-Fi movies in 100 days!

"The Man From Planet X" is a 1951 sci-fi movie directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and stars Robert Clarke, Margaret Field, and Raymond Bond.
The movie is about a mysterious planet that is headed very close to the Earth. An American reporter heads to a small Scottish Island to investigate the experiment that a scientist is working on that ties in to this mysterious planet. Once there, they discover a spaceship in the foggy moors that belongs to an alien scout sent ahead from the approaching planet to plan an invasion. The alien scout has a ray on his ship that can hypnotize humans and then he can control them like puppets. But this alien isn't any match for Scotland Yard! That's right.

                    Click the box above to view the trailer

The film looks very good... the black and white images are very sharp and contain great contrast. The acting is good too. The plot isn't so bad except for how one scientist learns to communicate with the alien... through geometry "the universal language." Yea. If I ever confront an alien I'm going to jot down some geometry on a note pad and show it to him and see if he understands that I'm asking him "what are you doing on our planet?" It worked in this movie!

The alien costume was done cheesily well and the alien mask/makeup was very strange. I have never seen another alien depicted in such a manner.
The sets were very small and the whole film was contained in just a few locations. The fog hid a lot of its' shortcomings. Not much more that I can say about this movie. I enjoyed it, but it's not one I would watch often.

- Patrick Shawn Bennett
Broadcasting from the foggy moors of a Scottish Island.