A favourite of mine since adolescence, IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE not only holds up well, but gets better with each viewing. Like THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, it creates and justifies a set of images and methods that would be copied by other films to the point of cliche.
Everything is here: a small town, an eerie desert setting, the sudden appearance of an alien ship and chameleonic beings, the paranoia that comes with incomprehension. All of this would be seen again later in countless films, but IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE feels new. Like a fresh-water spring, it remains clear and unpolluted by later developments.
It also stands out as one of the few science fiction films of this period to reveal the aliens as non-humanoid, monstrous, yet beings that can be understood and respected. In that sense, IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE could almost be a refutation of THE THING. It even recalls the final message of that film ("Watch the skies!"), but with a difference in both tone and implication:
"There'll be other nights, other stars for us to watch. They'll be back."
That sense of hope might feel uneasy, perhaps even fragile, but in the end, it remains hope.
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