The Day the Earth Stood Still

Made long before digital special effects, The Day the Earth Stood Still still brings a chill to the spine, as a brooding alien and his giant silver robot land in Washington. It's one of the best examples of a 1950s Cold War paranoia movie substituting aliens and their rocketships for the threat of Soviet invasion.

The mildly preachy point – that we must all learn to live together or die – doesn’t take too much away from the fun, and actually adds a nice political sheen to this classic movie.

The Plot

So much DNA of sci-fi to come was extracted from The Day the Earth Stood Still that it seems familiar even if you’ve never seen it. The helpless Earth woman in the arms of the pitiless robot. Useless human weapons zapped by superior alien technology. You’ve seen it all – not before, but since.

Here’s how it goes: The extremely skinny but otherwise human-looking Klaatu (Michael Rennie) arrives amid the Washington monuments in a flying saucer with his robot companion, Gort. He comes in peace, but informs the authorities that unless we humans stop our warring, we will be annihilated by an interstellar police force made up of Gort's invincible robot pals.

This does not go down well. After the earthlings mistakenly bust up Klaatu’s precious gift to the world, an alien medical device, Gort melts some army guys with his death-ray vision. Klaatu disguises himself as a local to figure out just what the problem is with these earthlings.

He checks into a boarding house under the name of Carpenter (biblical symbolism alert), where he is befriended by young widow Helen Benson (Patricia Neal). Helen is strangely drawn to Klaatu, no surprise when we meet her lame, headline-hunting fiancé (Hugh Marlow). She helps Klaatu hide from the authorities, and he comes up with a really impressive way to show the world he means business.

It’s all put together with a groundbreaking score by Bernard Herrman, who later scored many Hitchcock films. Herrman used theremins, weird Russian instruments that sounded eerily new at the time, and are now the universally recognized soundtrack for spookiness.

The Cast of 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'

Rennie, who never quite made it to stardom despite a long and varied career, is effective as the coolly intellectual messenger from the stars. Neal puts in a fine, tense performance that has nothing in common with the long tradition of sci-fi bimbos who were to follow. And a rumpled Sam Jaffe delivers an engaging turn as the brilliant scientist Klaatu enlists to help him communicate with the world’s leaders.

Still, the silent Gort (Lock Martin) steals the show in his matte silver robot suit. Meant to be super-strong space Kevlar of the future, watch for his suit to wrinkle a bit at the elbows and knees when he moves. At least we can’t see the zipper.

The Bottom Line

Any self-respecting sci-fan will want to see this one, if only to hear the immortal line “Klaatu barata nikto,” the phrase intended to stop Gort from destroying the world. It’s appeared everywhere from the campy horror movie Army of Darkness to an old Alice Cooper song. And Gort himself has a sneaky cameo in Men in Black.

The special effects are hokey by today’s standards, but The Day the Earth Stood Still largely avoids the cheese factor so prevalent in early sci-fi – despite the fact that the movie was marketed with a hilarious poster of Gort holding a scantily clad blonde who does not actually appear in the movie. Nevertheless, it’s a thoughtful, intense film that still entertains.

Recommended for You

If you liked The Day the Earth Stood Still, If you like War of the Worlds, you might also like Forbidden Planet, This Island Earth, When Worlds Collide, Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Omega Man.

'The Day the Earth Stood Still' at a Glance:

Year: 1951, Black and white
Director: Robert Wise
Running Time: 92 minutes
Studio: 20th Century Fox