They Came From Outer Space Read online

  THEY CAME FROM OUTER SPACE

  JIM WYNORSKI (editor)

  It takes some of the better-known science-fiction movies (some of them so bad that it might be better if they never had surfaced, some so good that you will wish, even if the movie can no longer be had, to watch it) and gives you the stories upon which these movies were based.

  After each story is a full credit run for the screened movie, including actors, special effects people, director, camera personnel, etc. Required reading for movie buffs, old and young.

  DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC.

  Garden CiTy, New York

  Copyright 1980 by Jim Wynorski ISBN: 0-385-18502-2

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 80-2249

  All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America

  To HARLAN ELLISON, who started it all!

  Thank you.

  FOR AID, SUPPORT AND COMFORT, A SPECIAL THANKS TO: Terry and Bill Wynorski, Esther and Andrew Varga, Forrest J Ackerman, Ellen Asher, Marlene Connor, Mark McGee, Ron “The Collector” Borst, Mark Frank, R.

  J. Robertson, Denetia Arellanes, L. Q. Jones and Dr. Paul Johnston.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Introduction Copyright 1980 by Ray Bradbury

  Dr. Cyclops by Henry Kuttner. Copyright 1940 by Better Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1967 by Popular Library, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the Harold Matson Company, Inc. Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr. Copyright 1938 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1968 by Conde Nast Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., 845 Third Avenue, New York, New York 10022

  .

  Farewell to the Master by Harry Bates. Copyright 1940 by Street &

  Smith Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1968 by Conde Nast

  Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author’s agent,

  Forrest J Ackerman, 2495

  Glendower Avenue, Hollywood, California 90027

  .

  The Fog Horn by Ray Bradbury. Copyright 1953 by Ray Bradbury.

  Reprinted by permission of the Harold Matson Company, Inc. Deadly CiTY by Ivar Jorgenson. Copyright 1953 by Quinn Publishing Company, Inc. Reprinted by arrangement with Forrest J Ackerman, 2495 Glendower Avenue, Hollywood, California 90027

  .

  The Alien Machine by Raymond F. Jones. Copyright 1947 by Standard Magazines, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., 845 Third Avenue, New York, New York 10022

  .

  The Cosmic Frame by Paul W. Fairman. Copyright 1955 by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Reprinted by arrangement with The Ackerman Science Fiction Agency, 2495 Glendower Avenue, Hollywood, California 90027

  .

  The Fly by George Langelaan. Copyright 1957 by H.M.H. Publishing Company, Inc. Reprinted by arrangement with Forrest J Ackerman, who is holding a check for the heir/estate, 2495 Glendower Avenue, Hollywood, California 90027

  .

  The Seventh Victim by Robert Sheckley. Copyright ) 1953 by Robert Sheckley.

  Reprinted by permission of The Sterling Lord Agency, Inc. The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clarke. Copyright 1950 by Arthur C. Clarke.

  Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, 845 Third Avenue, New York, New York 10022.

  The Racer by Ib Melchior. Copyright 1956 by Dee Publishing Company,

  Inc. Reprinted by permission of The Ackerman Science Fiction Agency,

  2495

  Glendower Avenue, Hollywood, California 90027

  .

  A Boy and His Dog by Harlan Ellison. Copyright 1969 by Harlan Ellison.

  Reprinted by permission of and by arrangement with the author and the author’s agent, Robert P. Mills, Ltd., New York. All rights reserved.

  PICTURE CREDITS

  DR. CYCLOPS, Courtesy of Universal Pictures.

  THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, Courtesy of RKO General Pictures.

  THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL Copyright 1951 Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp. ALL RIGHTS ReSERVED.

  THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS Copyright 1953 Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. TARGET EARTH, Courtesy of Allied Artists.

  THIS ISLAND EARTH, Courtesy of Universal Pictures.

  INVASION OF THE SAUCERMEN, Courtesy of The Samuel Z. Arkoff Company.

  THE FLY Copyright 1958 Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  THE TENTH VICTIM, Courtesy of Avco Embassy Pictures Corp.

  2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY Copyright 1968 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. DEATH RACE 2000, Courtesy of New World Pictures, Inc. A BOY AND HIS DOG, Courtesy of LQ Jaf Films.

  CONTENTS

  THE TURKEY THAT ATTACKED NEW YORK an introduction by Ray Bradbury

  Foreword

  DR. CYCLOPS by Henry Kuttner (filmed as DR. CYCLOPS, 1940)

  WHO GOES THERE? by John W. Campbell, Jr.

  (filmed as THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, 1951 )

  FAREWELL TO THE MASTER by Harry Bates (filmed as THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, 1951 )

  THE FOG HORN by Ray Bradbury (filmed as THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, 1953)

  DEADLY CITY by Ivar Jorgenson (filmed as TARGET EARTH, 1954)

  THE ALIEN MACHINE by Raymond F. Jones (filmed as THIS ISLAND EARTH, 1955)

  THE COSMIC FRAME by Paul W. Fairman (filmed as INVASION OF THE SAUCERMEN, 1957)

  THE FLY by George Langelaan (filmed as THE FLY, 1958)

  THE SEVENTH VICTIM by Robert Sheckley

  (filmed as THE TENTH VICTIM, 1965)

  THE SENTINEL by Arthur C. Clarke (filmed as 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, 1968)

  THE RACER by Ib Melchior (filmed as DEATH RACE 2000, 1975)

  A BOY AND HIS DOG by Harlan Ellison (filmed as A BOY AND HIS DOG, 1975)

  THE TURKEY THAT ATTACKED NEW YORK

  an introduction by RAY BRADBURY

  EVERYONE KNOWS how you make a pearl: feed a grain of sand to an oyster and hope the oyster gets wondrously ill.

  Everyone thinks they know how to make a motion picture: feed the right story into a Hollywood dream factory and hope for similar, oyster results.

  Easier said than done, as can be witnessed by reading the stories in this collection, then sitting in a dark theater for days, viewing the calamities—and sometimes the beauties—that came from ingesting ideas and cranking them through a camera. A few pearls here and there, but, more often than not, as in the case of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, the camera swallowed the dinosaur and birthed a titmouse.

  More of my very personal reactions later.

  Why am I up front here writing about these stories and the films that arose from same? In many cases I read these stories years ago when they were first published. I knew some of the authors well. I have seen most of the films, many of them a half dozen times. I have been at the premiere performance of at least four of the films included here.

  But long before that my cinema training began with a maniac mother who had to be dragged from silent movie theaters, after late matinees, by a hungry husband or a son sent to fetch mama home. More often than not the son forgot why he had come and stayed with mom for one more rerun.

  During those hideaway hours I fell in love with the hideous beauties created by Lon Chaney and the brontosaurs in The Lost World who fell off cliffs and landed on me. When Nemo’s submarine, run by Lionel Barrymore, surfaced in MGM’s The Mysterious Island, I surfaced with it and read Jules Verne the next day. When the futuristic dirigible in Fox Films Just Imagine sailed over Manhattan, I was up there in it. In 1935, when Cabal in Things to Come told me to head for the stars, I listened, I flew.

  Why
is it important to put together a collection like this one? First off, to show how material from one medium can cross-pollinate another.

  Then, quite often there is the shock when one discovers that the original story was better than the film that grew from it. Finally you realize that in many instances you could remake the story as a new film, base it more closely on the original story, and wind up with a motion picture that would hardly resemble the first cinema version.

  “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, Jr., is a fine case in point.

  Someone really ought to reread this story and then go make a proper film based on Campbell’s evocative concept. The Thing, popular as it was, finally wasn’t quite good enough, was it?

  Similarly, there are rumors that Twentieth Century-Fox may make a sequel to The Day the Earth Stood Still. If they do, they would be wise to reread Harry Bates’s “Farewell to the Master” before doing so.

  They might well decide to stuff his pages directly into the camera.

  The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is probably the worst of the lot. My story, from which it was supposedly drawn, actually appears for only a few minutes in mid-film and then mercifully vanishes.

  How, you ask, did this come about? Why did I let the producer/ director ruin my tale? The facts are simple enough—and fairly amusing.

  Ray Harryhausen, the animator of the prehistoric beast in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, grew up in Los Angeles, where we met in 1937, and talked about nothing but dinosaurs. Our dream was to make a film together one day, I to write it, Ray to animate the lovely creatures.

  In early 1952 I got a telephone call from a Hollywood producer asking me to come by to look at the script of a dinosaur film he was making, with Ray Harryhausen as animation expert in charge. I dropped in, read the script in an hour, and was then asked if I would revise the script.

  “Maybe,” I said. “And, incidentally,” I added, “this film story bears

  a slight resemblance to a tale of mine called ‘The Beast from 20,000

  Fathoms’ that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post a few years before.”

  The producer’s face turned to cheese. He swallowed, we exchanged a few more words, and we both staggered away from each other. Outside, I burst into a shout of laughter. Unwittingly, the people connected with this epic had borrowed a concept from my Post story, written it into their script, forgotten where the idea came from, and summoned the original author to revise it!

  There was no trouble, no recriminations, no accusations. The next

  afternoon a cablegram arrived from the production company asking for

  permission to purchase the rights to my “The Beast from 20,000

  Fathoms.”

  The purchase was allowed and the film made. Those of you who have seen it know that it wasn’t much of a film. All the good things are Harryhausen’s.

  When the dinosaur is on camera, things are fine, thank you. When the action stops and the talk begins, children—the best critics—run up and down the aisles to he rest rooms.

  So the film didn’t so much as flake one barnacle off my Post story.

  Someday it’ll be made over—and made right.

  There’s a happier ending here, I must add. John Huston read “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms,” thought he sensed the ghost of Melville in it (though I had never read Melville until after I met Huston), and offered me the job of screenplaying Moby Dick. I accepted and moved up to a greater beast in a greater book and film.

  I cite this personal example because it probably represents, in one form or another, the problems faced by the writers of the stories in this book and the fate that befell their good children once they reached the idiot hands of those studio heads, who feel they must open every can of beans and drop a few buffalo chips in for creative flavoring.

  The fun, with a collection of this sort, is rating stories versus films as you go. Was or wasn’t the film, Dr. Cyclops, better than the story?

  Was or wasn’t The Seventh Victim an improvement, on screen, over the Robert Sheckley story? Boring, when it wasn’t confusing, was the general verdict.

  Was The Fly, as made by Twentieth-Century-Fox, as much fun as George Langelaan’s printed tale? My daughters have seen the film ten or twelve times, but there is a touch of derision in their sit throughs.

  Finally, of course, we arrive at the earthshaker. Arthur C. Clarke’s evocative and very small “The Sentinel” is one of those incredible bits that grew outsize to become a massive Rorschach test for late-night cinema fiends to view upside down and sidewise, with beer, mescalin, or both for visual aids. The story plus the film have probably caused more all-night conversations and destroyed more quasi-intellectual friendships than any other film/story combination in history.

  What you have in this book is, I would guess, a semester course in ideas, fiction writing, and the art of cinema as it is practiced to birth or abort. Within a few months of publication this volume will probably be seized upon for such a bug-eyed, beer-guzzling, hot-air course.

  It almost seems appropriate here, toward the end of my introduction, to mention the fact that the title of this book is remarkably close to the first film story that I wrote for Universal back in 1952, lt Came from Outer Space. The story isn’t included here, but my experience with it might shed a little light on why fiction is so often excellent and films so often shoddy.

  I was called in by Universal in the summer of ‘52 because, as usual, visions of bright box office danced in their heads. All they knew was that they wanted Something to arrive from Outer Space: a grisly monster, a proper fright that the Westmore brothers could have fun with in the makeup department. In my preliminary talks with the producer and director, I could see we were light years apart. I wanted a more subtle approach, something with a real idea in it. They saw only the obvious—and the vulgar obvious at that.

  I proposed a compromise, and told them that over a two- or three-week period I would write not one story treatment for them but two. One version, with their mildewed idea, would be for them. The second, better version would be for me. On the day I handed both treatments in they would have a week to decide which story to use. If theirs, I would pack up my typewriter, steal some paper clips, and leave with no hard feelings. If mine, I would stay on and finish a fuller version.

  Surprisingly, they bought the concept, though the dice were loaded. If I wished, I could have done a really bad first script, using their creaking machinery as center. I didn’t. I wrote as good a script as I could.

  Considering it was done with the Westmore family leaning over my shoulder, it was all right.

  The second outline-treatment, my own just for me, went faster and better.

  I had some good fun with it.

  I turned both stories in and waited, sure that they would choose the wrong one and I would head home, not much wiser and a lot poorer.

  They made up their minds quickly. Within forty-eight hours they called and said, “We like your story, your idea, your version better. Do it your way.

  We’ll stand aside.”

  Frankly, I was stunned. I had everything packed, ready to leave.

  Instead, immensely pleased, I sat down and did a truly dumb and innocent thing: I wrote not the thirty- or forty-page treatment they had asked for but, delighted by the idea, a whole screenplay in treatment form, some ninety pages.

  They got, in essence, an entire screenplay for the grand sum of three thousand dollars, which was my final salary for the four or five weeks I had stayed on at the studio. With the treatment in hand, they fired me and hired Harry Essex to do the final screenplay (which, he told me later, was simply putting frosting on the cake). Why had I made it so easy for him, he asked when I met him later. Because, I replied, I was a fool, and I was in love with an idea—a good combination for writing but a bad one when you find yourself back out on the street supporting a family.

  The film was made and, of course, the studio couldn’t resist shoving back in some of their bad ideas. I warned
them not to bring the “monster” out in the light—ever. They ignored my advice. The bad moments in the film come when the monster does just that: stops being mysterious, steps out, and becomes a laugh riot. Nevertheless the film was good, a modest attempt by all, and a financial success.

  Years later I got my greatest reward, however. Going to meet Steven Spielberg for the first time, on the morning after a preview of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the first thing Spielberg said as I shook his hand was: “How did you like your film?”

  “What?” I said.

  “Close Encounters wouldn’t have been born,” he explained, “if I hadn’t seen It Came from Outer Space six times when I was a kid. Thanks.”

  Enough. It’s time for you to turn the pages and get on with these stories, remembering how good they were and how often the films that stumbled in their footprints displayed the same nimbleness as the mummy pursuing the terrified lady in high heels across the swamp—not well, but he did finally get her.

  When you finish the book, you just might begin to understand what 2001:

  A Space Odyssey was all about.

  And, remember, I was the chap who viewed the remake of King Kong and titled it The Turkey that Attacked New York. Dino De Laurentius has never forgiven me. I hope he never does.

  FOREWORD

  ONCE UPON A TIME there was a wonderful theater ... a cavernous, three-level showplace where a kid and his friends could lose the blues any Saturday afternoon for only six bits. It was called the Cove and it had the works—ushers in gaudy red jackets, a giant screen set off with textured velvet curtains, and a nice old lady behind the candy counter who actually melted honest-to-goodness butter for the popcorn.

  If you hit puberty anywhere before the late 1960s, there’s probably a “Cove” tucked away among your fondest memories as well.

  For it was in these marvelous old palaces that we all got our first look into the future. Along with the cowboy shoot-‘em-ups and detective mysteries, a new type of genre film hit the silver screen with a splash as the nation entered the atomic age in the late 1940s.

  Perhaps you were one of the first to see such prophetic pictures as Destination Moon or Rocketship X-M during their premiere engagements.