User Reviews

As a late-comer to the heated debate about this movie, let me make my position clear. I am a Jack Arnold fan.

For me, Arnold's contribution to Fifties SF movies is greater than any other director. But he was heavily dependent on his screenwriters. When the screenplays were good he turned in some of the best SF movies of the decade: It Came from Outer Space; Creature from the Black Lagoon; Incredible Shrinking Man and, to a lesser extent, Tarantula. When they were poor (Revenge of the Creature; Monster on Campus) all he could do was make the pictures watchable: he couldn't make them good.

Apparently, Space Children was his personal favourite amongst his SF movies and the one on which he lavished most care, but it definitely falls in to that second category. It is watchable, but no more.

It establishes a good atmosphere. Arnold invests an ordinary stretch of coastline with the same eerie ambiance as the Black Lagoon and the desert locations of It Came from Outer Space and Tarantula. He also gets good performances from his juvenile cast. As a group, they are the least objectionable movie kids of the Fifties.

The problems all lie in the screenplay, which is derivative, half-baked and repetitive. The screenplays for Revenge of the Creature and Monster on Campus were simply trite, mechanical and by-the-numbers. This screenplay is actually incompetent and there is ultimately nothing Arnold can do to salvage it.

It is a movie with a message, but that message is thoroughly hackneyed. The mysterious (usually alien) stranger who uses almost magical powers to save us from our own follies is an idea that has had many outings over the years: Things to Come; The Day the Earth Stood Still; Stranger from Venus; The Cosmic Man; Strange World of Planet X and even Plan 9 from Outer Space. Space Children adds nothing new to this somewhat self-righteous, preachy sub-genre.

The SF content is completely haphazard, so we never really know what is going on. For example, when the alien lands it causes power cuts that extend as far as the rocket launch site, so it not clear why the alien needs to enlist the aid of the children in the first place (anyway, why not work through adults?). The nature of its connection with the children is also somewhat vague. Does it possess and coerce them, or merely enlist their voluntary aid? The visuals often suggest the former, but the intent of the story implies the latter. Then again, what help does it require? What do the children actually do to stop the launch of the missile? If it is telekinesis, why do they have to break into the launch site? Why does the alien grow in size during the course of the movie?

The SF content is so incoherent that the story can only really be viewed as fantasy. For example, the alien's use of children rather than adults is not dictated by the logic of the story: it is basically a poetic device. But even fantasy needs its own rules if the story is to grip. This movie has none, so it feels like random a sequence of events.

The dramatic structure of the movie is weak. It starts well enough, with the arrival at the missile base, the landing of the alien, its discovery by the children and its first communication with them. After that, it just meanders all over the place. There is no steady build up of tension and no real climax. Things happen, but for no particular reason.

For example, there is apparently a second alien arrival, but we only see one alien. We have to assume that, for some reason, it departed and then returned again.

There is a pointless sequence where Bud takes his father to the cave, they retrieve the alien and carry it off to their cabin - only to return it to the cave the following day. This adds nothing to the story and only contributes to the sense that the movie is just an endless succession of people going backwards and forwards to the beach.

The business of the adults finding out what is going on, but being unable to tell anyone about it, is also redundant.

The death of the drunken father is so poorly handled we don't really know what has actually happened. The implication is that the alien has killed him, but this undermines the notion that it is essentially benign. Probably what was intended is that the shock of encountering the alien caused him to die of natural causes (there is some dialogue with the doctor that lends weight to this interpretation) but here, as elsewhere in the movie, even the simplest plot points are fudged.

The truth is that all these scenes are mere padding. The picture seems so aimless because, having set up the basic situation, it is just marking time until the thwarting of the rocket launch and the final revelation. Take away these irrelevant scenes from the middle of the picture and there simply wouldn't be enough footage for release as a feature film.

It is hard to see how this relatively straightforward story could have been written any worse. What did Tom Filer and Bernard Schoenfeld do to earn their money?

Despite all these reservations, the movie is by no means a complete dud. It defects are mitigated by merits that other low budget SF of the era didn't have. Arnold tries his best to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but cannot quite manage it. Nonetheless, I am glad I finally have it on DVD to complete my Jack Arnold collection (even if it is a soft, second or third generation copy).

However, if I was trying to convince people that Arnold's SF films should be taken seriously I would be very wary about showing them this movie.

I didn't see this as a kid, but in my 50s,when it appeared as some Saturday afternoon movie.

A combination of an alien creature with atomic bombs, multi-staged rockets and communist threats kind of threw everything into one basket so this was probably a stretch even when it was made. Add to that making the main protagonists a group of children muddied it up even further.

The acting was pretty good. Since I knew Russell Johnson only as the Professor, it was fascinating to see him playing the ugly, tough guy role he was known for. Michel Ray was too dreamy-eyed and hammy, even for a kid. Jackie Coogan was fun and Peggy Webber adorable. The science, on the other hand, was pretty bad but that's to be expected. As others have noted, it was way too preachy and pie-in-the-sky. The alien was interesting but not particularly compelling.

Overall not a bad way to spend 90 minutes on a slow day, but if it's sunny outside, let it go.

***SPOILERS*** Despite its very low ratings from the movie critics the movie "The Space Children" is one of the most thought-provoking motion pictures to come out of Hollywood in the 1950's in its addressing the dangers of nuclear proliferation and the cause for nuclear disarmament. "The Space Children" ranks right up there with "The Day the Earth Stood Still", which was released seven years earlier in 1951, in making that very important point crystal clear to the movie going public.

With their dad David Brewster, Dave Williams, working as an electrical technician at the Eagle Point Project young Bud & Ken, Michael Rey & Johnny Crawford, are somehow contacted through mental telepathy by this "Brain" from outer space. The two boys are told by the "Brain" to go to this secluded cave on the beach for farther instructions.

At the cave both Bud and his kid brother Ken find a number of like-wise kids there who's fathers, like Bud and Ken's, are involved in the Eagle Point Project. The Eagle Point Project is being fined tuned to send a missile into space that will, after going into orbit around the earth, be able to launch a nuclear weapon anywhere on the planet in case a war breaks out between the US and the Soviet Block including Red China.

The children are instructed to convince their parents working on the project to stop the launch of that missile called "The Thunderer". The children are told telepathically that if the missile is launched there'll be dire consequences not only for the country, the US, who launches it but the entire earth as well!

The movie has the children, mostly preteen-agers,try to convince their parents to get the missile launch stopped with only Bud and Ken's dad David Brewster finally seeing the light. That's only after David was paralyzed by the "Brain", that looks like a pipping hot blob of lava, from outer space when he tried, with a bolder, to smash it. Getting his feelings, by his son Bud touching his arm, back David desperately tries to get the missile launch called off but is declared, by those in charge of the launch, either delusional of suffering from burnout. It's then that David is ordered by the head of Project Eagle Point Lt-Col Manly, Richard Shannon, to be sent to a local military hospital for much needed rest, from the stress of his heavy workload, as well as be put under mental observation.

With the Thunderer scheduled to be launched within the hour the children now on their own, with the ""Brain" directing them, enter totally unnoticed, as if their invisible, by the military sentries the super secure missile site and somehow disarm the Thunderer making it totally useless! It's during that same time that Dr. Wahrman, Raymond Bailey, one of the top engineers at Eagle Point also realizes that what Bud and his fellow adolescents are saying is the God honest truth! Seeing with his own eyes the kids involved in a number of strange and unexplained incidents leading up to the missile launch Dr. Wahrman came to the conclusion that their being guided from something from outer space with powers beyond his imagination!

The film has a bittersweet ending with Bud and his brother Ken as well as the rest of the children proving, by the "Brain" revealing itself to those in charge of Project Eagle Point, that their right about the dangers of testing Thunderer and the dangers of nuclear testing for strictly military purposes. What leaves the audience and the "Space Children" a bit concerned is will they-the adults running the world-now learn from what they've seen and stop nuclear testing. Or will that timely lesson have to implemented on them, with deadly force if necessary, by their space neighbors who are now monitoring them here on earth as well as in the far off and distant universe!

If you instantly think of the 1961 cult classic "Village of the Damned" and its 1964 follow-up, "Children of the Damned", then you are not alone. This is definitely a C-grade variety of that plot with a bit of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" thrown in. A whoosh through the sky gets the attention of a child whose parents are arriving at a nuclear plant where a missile is ready for testing. The parents do not see this strand of something moving through the air, so when the boy disappears to go exploring in beach-front caves, he encounters a strange group of children and a little tiny blob of something that somehow gives them directions to sabotage the launching of this missile. A sign from God? Visitors from outer space? Hopefully not that creepy flem-like blob from a recent Steve McQueen movie that swallows its victims whole and has that ghoulish song about that thing that creeps and glides across the floor.

It all unravels in 69 minutes, thankfully enough time to eat a bag of popcorn and laugh at the silly adults who are at first unaware of how the children are acting different all the time. A father chases his son over rocks, repeating over and over how he's going to break his neck when he finds them then literally becomes a frozen pop-circle when he sees the blob. Scientists wonder how the children break into the locked military base, then simply tell them to "scat!" without further investigation. And when the blob, which has gotten bigger, starts batting a single eye, don't be drinking your soda, 'cause you'll douse your TV screen with another sticky substance as you accidentally spit it out in laughter.

I know the writers of this movie probably meant well in the nuclear era of the late 50's, but the unintentional humor takes this film all over the place. Throw in such TV sitcom actors as Russell Johnson, Jackie Coogan and a toupee-less Raymond Bailey, and you'll find yourself snickering. When Bailey (Mr. Drysdale of "The Beverly Hillbillies") confronts the eye-batting blob and pleads to be let in on the secret, this film hits its nadir. No fan of "The Addams Family" will take Coogan (Uncle Fester) seriously as he disciplines a child. A biblical quote at the end tries to explain it all but just adds to the ridiculousness of it all.

I can't understand the low rating this interesting film has on IMDb either! I just watched it for the first time, and I found it very entertaining, compelling, atmospheric, and ahead of its time.

The most interesting aspect of the film is not the cold war intrigue but the war between the old and new generations. The children (with the guidance/power/control of a growing, glowing alien brain) rebel against their military-industrial complex parents. The parents attempt to fight back, resorting to physical violence against their own kids twice in the movie. In the end (mild spoiler alert here) the kids get the upper hand. One of the most interesting lines for me comes at the admittedly heavy-handed preachy ending (what 50's sci-fi film would be complete without a pedantic lecture about the dangers of man and science going too far?). But here, the leader of the rebellious alien-allied children says something about how ALL the children of the world joined together to oppose the military buildup. "You mean all the children in Russia and Prague too?" says one of the military leaders. And this, a full 10 years before Prague spring and the Democratic Convention Riots. Someone saw the youth revolt coming!

It's a great looking film too. The landscapes are so bleak and eerie, and the children's faces are so interesting and ambiguous. So much is done with silent looks in this movie! And forget about whatever silly TV shows you might have seen the actors in, the performances are good. Russell Johnson (aka, The Professor) is a great physical actor here, and Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester) is good too. The best performance though is the leader of the children, Michel Ray, who is impressively understated and subtle for such a young actor.

This is a smart, well made movie, much better than Invaders from Mars (which has a rating on IMDb exactly twice as high as The Space Children). I say you should definitely give it a chance.