'The Day the Earth Stood Still'

        From the minute Gort, a ten-foot tall robot, walked down the runway from his spaceship, I was mesmerised. When you are six staying up late is exciting enough, but when you’re six - staying up late - waiting for your dad to come home - during a ferocious thunderstorm, you really have to keep an emergency set of clean underwear beside you. But this is exactly what I found myself doing. Sitting in the dark, which was only interrupted by the crackling coal fire, the flickering black and white portable TV and the occasional flash of lightning, I flicked through all 3 available channels and found an old movie called The Day The Earth Stood Still.

For those that don’t know, the film’s plot revolves around the reasonable enough premise that an alien comes to earth, sent by a federation of planets, in an attempt to convince mankind that they are making a huge mistake by testing nuclear weapons. The spaceship lands in Washington D.C., fair enough as it is the capital of the world, and it’s peaceful pilot Klaatu (played by Michael Rennie) emerges to warn us of the error of our ways. This peaceful message is misconstrued, which may or may not have had anything to do with the massive robot he brought with him, and an over-excitable soldier shoots him. He’s taken to a military hospital and promptly escapes. Posing as a mere human he moves into a boarding house and, since he will find it difficult making contact with the appropriate authorities without landing himself back in military custody, he proposes a demonstration of his power - now this is the pivotal point of my story, remembering the ferocious thunderstorm raging outside, the lateness of the evening and my youthful naiveté - what Klaatu proposes to do is cut the power from everything on earth. That’s right every single thing, barring of course planes in flight, hospitals or anything that could endanger life (let us not forget he is peaceful). So here I am, warm, over stimulated and agog in front of the TV as this alien reveals his audacious plan. A plan of such monumental proportions could not fail to convince everyone on earth that these aliens mean business, it certainly had me taken in and I was in primary two! He even tells the people of Earth exactly when it will happen. Just as this crucial time draws near, Patricia Neal and Micheal Rennie enter a lift - I scootch closer to the TV - Patricia Neal tries to believe Michael Rennie’s crazy talk, but she is a rational woman and this kind of event is just not on for those in full charge of their faculties. It’s at this moment the power goes out and I’m not talking about on TV, I’m talking about the TV. The TV, the street lights, the fridge, everything. I’m not left in complete darkness there’s the fire and of course the lightning, but I’m six, fire and lightning aren’t going to reassure me. So I shoot off to bed, as fast as my stumpy little legs will carry me, to the only 100%, impenetrably defence against alien attack known to man, a duvet. The next morning I peek out from my quilted shelter, to the comforting flash of ‘00:00’ on my alarm clock and breath a hearty sigh of relief.

So, as I grow, I eventually come to realise that there is more than just a faint possibility that the events of that night were nothing more than mere coincidence, but still to this very day I have been unable to bring myself to test a nuclear weapon; what I have done is watch at least one film almost everyday since. The effect of that evening has never faded, the story may have become slightly romanticised as my aging mind struggles to remember even the most recent events, for example I don’t remember if I was exactly six at the time and I’m not sure that the power failed at that precise moment, but I like to believe that it did, and it doesn’t matter anyway. The point of the story is not the details but the fact that on that evening that film altered my life. It’s a huge part of the reason I love movies so much and why I optimistically dreamt of one day making movies. Movies that would, hopefully, disturb small children as they sit alone at night in their homes and alter their outlook on life forever.

 The Day the Earth Stood Still is a seminal science fiction film, directed by Robert Wise in 1951 and was remade in 2008 by Scott Derrickson. This remake will form the basis of my next post. J