Cold War fears made the 1950s a golden era for paranoid science-fiction flicks. TIME looks back at the decade's best outer-space and nuclear-monster movies.
The young audience for ’50s sci-fi movies lived in a democracy of blissful ignorance. With no Internet blogs to alert them to cult films, and with few newspapers reviewing B pictures, kids went innocently to Saturday matinees and consumed whatever they were fed. Even an Edward D. Wood, Jr., movie. Bride of the Monster, Night of the Ghouls, The Sinister Urge: all were no-budget fiascoes — movies so cheesy, cheese would say they stink. What makes them watchable is Ed Wood’s unconquerable passion, which kept him going through so many (self-made) disasters. His anti-masterpiece, described by Mystery Science Theater’s Michael J. Nelson as “the Citizen Kane of bad movies,” is this interspecies marriage of sci-fi epic and zombie thriller. As the ads read: “Unspeakable Horrors From Outer Space Paralyze The Living And Resurrect The Dead!” Many more people have laughed at Plan 9‘s inadequacies than ever saw it in the ’50s. The difference is, today’s connoisseurs are ready to sneer. Once upon a time, though, the movie was met with a theater-full of youngsters, wide-eyed with perplexity.
In a quiet, sunny California town, some of the folks are behaving…a little off. That’s what their concerned relatives tell Dr. Miles Bennell. Sea pods from outer space, replacing the real townspeople as they sleep with alien simulacra, is the film’s official explanation (from the Jack Finney novel). But Body Snatchers is more plausible as a supple metaphor for 50s alienation, conformity and political hysteria. The pods could be Russian or right-wing — we said it was supple — but either way it’s scary: the people you love have ceased to be themselves, because they no longer can love. Officially remade three times, this Don Siegel version is the simplest, sleekest and best. It’s also the only movie that made 50′s kids, after they saw it, go to bed with the light on. Actually, we didn’t need a night light, because we were afraid that if we fell asleep, we’d wake up as pods.
In light of the Material Girl performing at Super Bowl XLVI, TIME takes a look at her life and career, both of which have been lived firmly in the public eye.
