Rewatching THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951) for Alien Visitors, what jumped out at me was how well the film shows the entire world is involved (better, I think, than War of the Worlds did). As the media cover the arrival of Klaatu’s saucer, then his reception and his disappearance, we get shots of France, the UK and Russia listening in; Klaatu shutting down electricity for a day (but not to hospitals, planes or anything else that would cost lives) affects cars, drawbridges, milking machines and soda fountains). The book Seeing is Believing points this film is pro-alien and pro-intelligence — when the U.S. government refuses to cooperate with Klaatu, he contacts Sam Jaffe’s genius scientist and brings together a conference of the world’s top researchers (contrast this with Village of the Damned or The Thing where the scientist’s awe at alien intelligence blinds them to the threat).
While this movie will be the center of my Friendly Aliens chapter, Klaatu is very Tough Love here: he wants us to end war not only for our own good but because if we make it into space with militaristic attitudes and nuclear weapons, we’ll pose a threat to other worlds, and that won’t be tolerated (contrast this with Space Children where the alien brain is purely humanitarian). All that said, this stands as a terrific, entertaining movie; the largely featureless Gort remains one of the great movie robots. “I came here to warn you that by threatening danger, your planet faces danger.”
STRANGER FROM VENUS (1954) is clearly riffing on Day the Earth Stood Still but not very well. Helmut Dantine plays a Venusian who shows up at a small pub in England where he saves Patricia Neal (female lead in the earlier film) from death and offers Earth his world’s advanced knowledge of peaceful nuclear tech if we’ll give up using it for war (the concern is that like Day the Earth Caught Fire we’ll destabilize Earth’s orbit, which will disrupt the rest of the Solar System). This departs from its predecessor by having the government immediately scheme to capture the Venusian ship that arrives to collect Dantine, in hopes of controlling the technology; that doesn’t do much when the film is so stiff, talky and stagebound. And why do the opening scenes make such a big deal of filming Dantine from behind when he’s got a perfectly unremarkable face? “I would like to guess what you are thinking. If I am correct, I will be very disappointed indeed.”
The Alfred Hitchcock/David O. Selznick partnership did not go out on a win with THE PARADINE CASE (1947), a courtroom drama in which barrister Gregory Peck struggles to clear Alida Valli of murdering her blind war-hero husband for his money, a task complicated by his falling in love with the enigmatic woman. While Peck’s acting has improved since Spellbound, he doesn’t pull off the role (Hitchcock wanted Laurence Olivier or Joseph Cotton) and Valli can’t pull off the role, a seemingly elegant and noble woman who’s really gutter trash (something like Rebecca Danvers in Rebecca). In fairness, that’s because Hitchcock wasn’t an actor’s director and his advice pushed Valli to a minimalist performance (“Do nothing, but do it well.”); Ingrid Bergman could have pulled it off, but she and Selznick had fallen out. The end result is a dull, talky drama; Ann Todd plays Peck’s worried wife, a young Louis Jordan plays Valli’s possible lover and Charles Coburn and Charles Laughton have supporting roles. “He couldn’t possibly understand the sacrifice you were making — he’d never seen you.”
Adapted from a stage play, ROPE (1948) is generally considered a lesser Hitchcock effort, but I like it quite a lot. Farley Grainger and John Dall play a pair of 
would-be elitist ubermenschen (they seem to share the smug superiority of the Vanilla Isis Capitol attackers) who murder a classmate just to prove they can get away with it (they’re based on the once notorious killers Leopold and Loeb), then invite his family and fiancee over for dinner with the body hidden in a chest. Alas, they also invites James Stewart, a cynical philosopher whose lectures on the virtues of elitist murder inspired their act — and he starts to suspect they took him both seriously and literally. This was Hitch’s first color film and his first as an independent producer, and it shows his fondness for technique over acting — the film was shot to look as if it was made in one continuous take. Still, the performances of Stewart and the two leads are more than good enough for me to recommend it. “It just seems very funny you two being so intense about an old dead chicken.”
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NOTORIOUS (1946) reunites Bergman and Hitchcock for one of the latter’s classics — though before this rewatching, I’ve never really liked it (I’ve no idea now why not). Bergman plays the patriotic daughter of an American Nazi, drowning her shame in wild parties and booze (the Production Code tidied this up a bit). American agent Cary Grant romances her, then reveals he wants her to spy on Nazi Claude Rains, who’s engaged in sinister doings in South America. Bergman agrees, becoming first Rains’ lover, then his wife, but will he catch on? Does Grant care about Bergman or is she just a tool for him to use?
KRONOS (1957) is the Giant Robot Film With a Difference, the difference being the utterly nonhuman appearance of the eponymous mechanoid (“It’s been named Kronos for the terrifying giant of Greek mythology!”) feeding off human energy sources while mind-controlling scientist Morris Ankrum to further its agenda. This starts weak — the character bits at the start aren’t as winning as they’re meant to be — but picks up steam as it progresses. “I can’t get over the feeling this is the calm before the storm — and at any moment the storm is going to break.”
That said, this film still feels unlike anything else of Hitch’s work. Joseph Cotton is Charlie, the “Merry Widow Killer,” who escapes a police dragnet and holes up in a small town with his relatives, including his namesake “Young Charlie” (Teresa Wright). It’s a warm, vibrant town where everyone knows everyone and where Henry Travers (as Wright’s dad) and coworker Hume Cronyn can happily dicker over which mystery’s method would work best in real life; it makes for a sharp contrast with Charlie’s view of the world as a cesspool where dog eats dog. Can Charlie hide there? Will detective MacDonald Carey open Young Charlie’s eyes to the threat? This one remains a personal favorite. “This world is a hell — why does it matter what happens in it?”
BRIGHTBURN (2019) is an obvious Superman riff in which a young couple rescue a baby from a downed space capsule; when his powers manifest as a tween he immediately begins using them in bad ways, from killing people who diss him to stalking the pretty classmate he’s crushing on. Dark Superman is an idea that has been done a lot — Super-Menace in the 1960s (depicted by Curt Swan here), Stalinist and Nazi alt.Supermen in recent years and the Superman-inspired 
Some years back I caught SABOTEUR (1942) for my film book
honestly don’t think I have any new insights, other than how darn good it is (despite a couple of howling errors in logic). Well-acted but also creepy as hell in a way earlier stories on this theme, such as Heinlein’s Puppet Masters, weren’t; where Heinlein’s a flat out warning against tyranny, the pod people replacing us with emotionless doubles is creepier and much more flexible as a metaphor (a point I’ll come back to in its own post). “Love. Desire. Ambition. Faith. Without them life’s so simple.”
When I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s SUSPICION (1941) in college, I found the ending frustrating and unsatisfying to the point the whole movie fell apart. Rewatching, I see I was right about the end (spoilers will follow) but the film up to that point is very good. Joan Fontaine plays Lina, the spinsterish daughter of a wealthy family (I’m impressed she’s able to come off quite different from her 
LOVE ON A BET (1936) is a fun It Happened One Night knockoff in which Gene Raymond’s future as a theatrical producer hinges on his ability to leave NYC penniless in his underwear and arrive 10 days later in Los Angeles — in those pre-interstate highway days, a much more impressive feat than it is now — with clothes, $100 and a girlfriend. He soon finagles his way into traveling across country with fortune-hunter Wendy Barrie and her snarky aunt Helen Broderick, but will the burgeoning Raymond/Barrie romance survive when she learns she’s his ticket to fame and fortune (I hadn’t realized that particular rom-com plot went back that far)? A fun one.“I despise the odor of toasted marshmallow.”
Joel McCrea plays a crime reporter whose boss ships him off to Europe on the theory a hardnosed investigator with a nose for news will get better scoops than foreign correspondents who just send in the latest government press releases. In Europe McCrea falls hard for Laraine Day, daughter of peace activist Herbert Marshall — this is where the comedy comes in — and meets with a prominent Dutch politician who’s a key player in whether Europe goes to war or not (I don’t really see how the guy could have stopped it, but I’ll accept the premise). When the politician is apparently murdered, McCrea realizes the man was an imposter; Nazi agents have kidnapped the real pol to get the truth about his secret treaty negotiations. Can McCrea rescue him in time? “Your childish mind is as out of place in Europe as you are in my bedroom.”
This is more of a straight horror film than its predecessor; where Blacula centered on the love between Marshall’s Mumuwalde and Vonetta McGee, this one is mostly the vampire killing and turning Los Angelinos, who in turn kill more; it’s about two-thirds done before we get to the plot hook of Mumuwalde wanting Grier to exorcise his vampire side. I’ve gone back and forth over which one is better (I’ve watched these more than once) and this time out the first film gets the nod, if only for Scream wasting Grier (she has little to do but cry and shriek). “Vampires can’t be photographed — every ten-year-old knows that!”
