Not of This Earth *** (1957, Paul Birch, Beverly Garland, Morgan Jones) – Classic Movie Review 3,916

Roger Corman’s enjoyable, efficient and imaginative vampire-plus-alien 1957 hybrid movie Not of This Earth features a classic prototype ghoul from outer space.

A US small-town is disturbed by the arrival of a new neighbour, Paul Johnson, (Paul Birch) whose eyes can suddenly go Day-Glo, and local resident Nadine Storey (Beverly Garland) investigates.

Paul Johnson doesn’t fit in because of his stilted formal speech and his sunglasses, which he wears even in the dark. It’s lucky that he wears the dark glasses though, because they hide his blank, white-eyed stare that kills his victims by burning through their eyes and into their brains.

His first victim is naturally a teenage girl walking home at night from a date, and he removes her blood using tubes and canisters he keeps in his aluminium attaché case.

Johnson is of course not of this Earth, actually an alien from the planet Davanna, Johnson hires nurse Nadine Storey (Beverly Garland) to look after him in his house.

If producer-director Roger Corman’s vampire-plus-alien 1957 hybrid movie Not of This Earth is not quite the Fifties sci-fi classic promised by its brilliant title, it is at least as good as its budget would allow.

It is written by Charles B Griffith and Mark Hanna, and stars Paul Birch, Beverly Garland, Morgan Jones, William Roerick, and Anna Lee Carroll.

Corman’s enjoyable, efficiently made and often-imaginative movie features a classic prototype ghoul from outer space with a need to take home Earthlings’ blood to his planet Davanna, whose humanoids face extinction through blood disease.

Dick Miller provides the laughs as the vacuum cleaner salesman Joe Piper, trying to sell a cleaner to Paul Johnson (Birch).

Corman recalls: ‘It was one of the first movies I mixed horror with traces of humour. The mix proved so successful I continued it in later films.’

However, Griffith said he wrote the part of the vacuum cleaner salesman for himself. Griffith recalled that the film ‘started all this X-ray eye business’. He said: ‘Most of Roger’s themes got established right in the beginning. Whatever worked, he’d come and take again, and a lot of things got used over and over.’ Indeed in 1963 Corman made The Man with the X-Ray Eyes.

Paul Birch complained about having to wear white contact lenses all day during filming. Birch and Corman got into a shoving match on the set, and Birch quit, so Corman had to use a double in Birch’s dark glasses and slouch hat to finish his scenes.

Also in the cast are Morgan Jones, William Roerick, Jonathan Haze, Anna Lee Carroll, Pat Flynn, Roy Engel, Barbara Bohrer, Tamar Cooper, Harold Fong, Gail Ganley, Lyle Latell and Ralph Reed.

Producer-director Roger Corman’s independently made 1957 American black-and-white science fiction film is made for his Los Altos Productions for release by Allied Artists. It was released in a double bill with Corman’s Attack of the Crab Monsters on February 10, 1957.

It originally ran 67 minutes but was expanded in 1962 for TV syndication to 71 minutes, including duplicate scenes.

There are two remakes so far – in 1988 as Not of This Earth and 1995 as Not of This Earth.

The cast are Paul Birch as Paul Johnson, Beverly Garland as Nadine Storey, Morgan Jones as Harry Sherbourne, William Roerick as Dr F.W. Rochelle, Jonathan Haze as Jeremy Perrin, Roy Engel as Desk Sergeant, Dick Miller as vacuum cleaner salesman Joe Piper, Anna Lee Carroll as Davanna Woman, Pat Flynn, Barbara Bohrer, Tamar Cooper, Harold Fong, Gail Ganley, Lyle Latell and Ralph Reed.

Roger William Corman (April 5, 1926 – May 9, 2024).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3,916

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com