Space Children, The
Entry updated 16 February 2017. Tagged: Film.
Film (1958). Paramount. Directed by Jack Arnold. Written by Bernard C Schoenfeld, from a story by Tom Filer. Cast includes Jackie Coogan, Johnny Crawford, Michel Ray, Peggy Webber and Adam Williams. 69 minutes. Black and white.
This was the last of Arnold's cycle of sf films with producer William Alland, though here the studio is Paramount, not Universal. In this earnest but likeable moral fable, a group of children are "taken over" by a benign Alien resembling a glowing brain (which expands as the film progresses). The peace-loving alien's aim is to use the children in the sabotage of a missile project on which their parents are working, and it gives them special powers to help them do this. The alien is not entirely a pacifist; it kills the brutal father of one of the children. Arnold makes his usual evocative use of landscape – this time a remote beach. [JB/PN]
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