The alien sounding “music” was created with a unique “musical” instrument called a Theramin. It became the campy cliche sound for early sci-fi flicks.

The woman at the breakfast table who said she suspected the spaceman came from "you know where" was referring to our Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union.

While not full of blood and gore, it focused on the human frailty of not being in control of your life and destiny. That's more scary as you can't see or control that.

The average ticket price for a movie in 1951 was 47 cents. That two dollars would have gotten them into the movies and gotten them a large buttered pop corn and two sodas for refreshments (probably with enough left over for bus fare home)! :D

Henry...when you intoned Klatuu Barada Necktie... your pen cap immediately flew off! Your pen is Gort! 🤔

You forget Klaatus people have been listening to radio transmissions. that's how he learned English. As he said he does not care about petty squabbles as long as you keep them on Earth.

The reason there are no photos of his face is he kept his helmet on till he got to hospital. No photographers allowed inside.

A buzz bomb was what the Allies called the German V-1 in WWII. Because of the sound they made. if the sound stopped be someplace else 🙂

So good that you're doing this brilliant classic, Henry, long ignored by lesser KZfaq reactors who only copy each other over and over ad nauseum. Bernard Hermann did the scores to a lot of Hitchcock films, such as "Psycho." You wondered how the Earth would give Klaatu their response, but remember that they're monitoring our radio and TV. Visiting every nation? That's a lot of nations. Better to have their representatives come to one spot for him to speak to them simultaneously. I presume you've already seen "Psycho." That's a masterpiece if ever there was one.

coolest movie

One of the best sci-fi movies ever made. IMO there are three landmark sci-fi movies for all the others that followed...Fritz Lang's brilliant silent epic Metropolis from 1927, The Day the Earth Stood Still and Kubrick's 2001.

This movie scared me so much as a child. Gort was scary as heck. When thus movie came out, you could not see the strings holding Helen up. Restoration process of film caused the visual of the strings. I think it's a great SiFi movie for it's time period. Many of your reasonings and comments about what Klatu should have done are valid. But movie would be super short. Has to have a longer story line of course.

This is a classic film.

FYI, the equations on the Professor's blackboard is indeed a problem in celestial mechanics, specifically, the Three Body Problem, which, as a practical matter, isn't solvable analytically, but only by using a lot of raw computing power. Hands down, my favorite science fiction film from the period, made on a budget of just under $1 million ($12 million today). It's not about the special/visual effects (although they are competently executed and pretty convincing) it's all about the story and the characters. The movie holds a mirror to its audience, and asks us tough questions about human aggression, tribalism, and of course nuclear war. It's hopeful, too, despite ending with a big question mark. Klaatu is able to find people on his own wavelength: Bobby, Helen, and Professor Barnhardt. I also like the scenes where Klaatu, in an understated way, deals with the strangeness of ordinary objects Earth, playing with Barnhardt's pipe, a music box at the boarding house, Bobby's flashlight (especially when Klaatu gets aboard the ship, and forgets that he still has the flashlight in his hand, something an ordinary person might do).

The instrument you are confused about is called a theramin.

Indeed, Klatuu barata nichtu! Compare and contrast with Evil Dead III where the exact same phrase was reused as a spell.

I recommend you watch Forbidden Planet, which came out a few years later.

Saturn orbits at 884M Miles from the sun, Jupiter 250M, Mars 141M , Earth 93M.

Yes...when the old lady at the dinner table says she suspects the "aliens" come from "right here on Earth" she is referring to the Soviet Union. This movie has a number of messages contained within it, one of which is that it can be a bad thing...even a dangerous thing...to fear outsiders too much, because your fear of the unknown could lead you to treating a possible friend as if they were an enemy...perhaps even to your own downfall and ruin. It is a not entirely gentle reminder to Americans who were gripped in the fear of Communism of the post-WW2 Red Scare...and this movie came out at one of the high point of US paranoia about the commies. This was the time when the Soviets had gotten the bomb much sooner than anyone expected them to...and everyone thought that proved the US was crawling with Soviet spies...plus this was before the death of Stalin, who was hugely feared by Americans.

Freaked people out in 1951

👍🙂❤️ The “aliens” HAVE to land in America. How else will “they” find us. Most extraterrestrials speak English, landing in America only makes sense. Thank you for sharing your videos with us. 👍🙂❤️

i look foreward to the day aliens come and start talking about the great almighty spirit, causing much smarty pants to be filled with poop

It is also has a lot of Jesus stuff. His initials are JC. His name is Carpenter. Coming back to life. Preaching peace. iirc there is more but I don't recall what, exactly. I just recall there were censorship issues over the idea. Rick and Morty had one of the best, albeit weird, small allusions to the film in their micro-verse episode. The Slow Ramp bit. "Wait for he ramp, Morty! They love the slow ramp. It really gets their dicks hard when they see this ramp just slowwwwly extending down."

You ridicule the aliens for landing first in the United States (of course). Perhaps you are unaware that the United States was the only one in the world with an atomic bomb at this time.

They are not bold. They are ignorant.

The music you were ridiculing was the ORIGINAL weird alien music, written for this movie. Because of its excellence, it has been copied ever since. Your suggestions for broadcasting the message are not well thought out. Due to suspicion and technological capabilities for fakery (even worse today), the message needed to be delivered in person to a large number of credible representatives from the nations of the world. Also, the answer to Klaatu's message is human behavior---it doesn't need to be delivered to Klaatu like a letter. We are free to blow ourselves up here on Earth, but if we export our violence to space, then Gort and its colleagues will obliterate Earth automatically.