Unearthly Stranger (1963)

If you grew up on The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, and you liked these, it's not a stretch that you'll find Unearthly Stranger to your liking.This is a Brit B-Movie of the times, the early sixties when the actual talk of UFOs and possible aliens, more or less, began permeating pop culture. By keeping the story compact, using a cast that plays it serious with a bit of intelligence no matter how slightly bare bones the story…it mostly works in it's modest scope.There are some elements to this film that at the time must have seemed tremendously far- fetched, quite unbelievable? It's interesting that many of these elements became more accepted, in fact they've only expanded with time. One of is the element of remote viewing which is alluded as his having something to do with the secret project being studied. The others would be hybrid aliens and some kind of extraterrestrial shut-down of electrically controlled things. Anyone who has read up on more modern UFOs know of cars being disabled, nuclear weapon systems being taken mysteriously off line, and even mysterious unexplainable sounds in whole communities. All of that is already in this movie strangely enough. I'd say it's out there without being too out there at all. At the time I imagine it seemed quite weird. Pretty good in hindsight.

Not a review of this excellent film but, rather, a correction to a few statements made by others...Some people consider UNEARTHLY STRANGER to be an uncredited rip-off of a 1936 science-fiction novel written by William M. Sloane III entitled TO WALK THE NIGHT. After hearing about that, I obtained a copy of Sloane's novel and read it in detail. I can assure you that, while one concept in the movie bears a "slight" similarity to Sloane's book, the overall story and form of execution in UNEARTHLY STRANGER are very different and would not present any grounds for an accusation of plagiarism on the part of the filmmakers. (If this could be interpreted as such, then many writers would have sued THE TWILIGHT ZONE for using similar ideas from their stories and had it pulled off the air.) In UNEARTHLY STRANGER, the scientist's wife is an alien taking physical form by means of mental projection. In TO WALK THE NIGHT, the body of a young retarded woman is possessed by an alien's mind. That, beyond the use of a spiral staircase in an utterly different kind of location and maybe the use of a kind of ethereal fire to destroy evidence, is the only major similarity between the two stories--but it is tangential at best.Also, UNEARTHLY STRANGER is *not* based on a story written by actor Jeffrey Stone. The film's writing credits read "Based on an IDEA by Jeffrey Stone". To us writers, that identifies a huge difference. Furthermore, there is no published record anywhere of a story called BEYOND THE STARS by Jeffrey Stone.Many people familiar with Rex Carlton's work believe him incapable of writing such an intelligent script as the one found in UNEARTHLY STRANGER. But Carlton actually was associated with higher quality films earlier in his career (late 1940's & early 1950's), so one can only presume that the initial screenplay for UNEARTHLY STRANGER is still dominantly his work (though it obviously received uncredited polishing by the British filmmakers prior to shooting).

There are a handful of fine films that have never been released on tape or disk. Sometimes they show up on the few independent TV stations around the country that still have access to the old collections of movies that used to circulate in the days before cable. Nearly lost films, except in the memories of people who saw them at drive-ins or on TV before the current age of homogenous viewing. Unearthly Stranger is a perfect example of this kind of film. Not the masterpiece that Invasion of the Body Snatchers is, Unearthly Stranger is still a wonderful science fiction story with trappings of the paranoia that characterizes Body Snatchers, I Married a Monster, and other, earlier, SF films. Stranger was a throwback when it was new, and that may be why it was pretty much ignored when it was released. With DVD releases of an awful lot of true garbage, there really is no excuse for the continued neglect of this stylish, almost lost movie.

A fairly slender story is provided with meat thanks to naturalistic dialogue delivered by a good cast. All the principle performers bring real commitment and humanity to their roles but, for me, it is Phillip Stone who stands out. His role as the doubting scientist who slowly realizes that his and his colleagues' work has come under hostile alien scrutiny is given great credibility by this underrated actor (underrated except by Stanley Kubrick who featured him in no less than three out of his thirteen films). The love story element is quite touching and is played for keeps by John Neville and Gabriella Licudi.Memorably eerie things to watch out for are the unblinking aliens and a piping hot casserole casually removed from an oven without gloves! This film makes a good companion piece to Invasion (1966), another low-key British sci-fi film which doesn't sacrifice character exposition to special effects and camp stylistics.