Jim Wynorski - They Came From Outer Space

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

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 80-2249

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

by Popular Library, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the Harold Matson Company, Inc. Who Goes

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 York10022 .

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 ,California90027.

Reprinted by permission of the Harold Matson Company, Inc. Deadly CiTY by Ivar Jorgenson.

Ackerman,2495 Glendower Avenue,Hollywood ,California90027 .

permission of the author and the author’s agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.,845 Third

Avenue,New York ,New York10022 .

by arrangement with The Ackerman Science Fiction Agency,2495 Glendower Avenue,Hollywood

,California90027 .

arrangement with Forrest J Ackerman, who is holding a check for the heir/estate,2495 Glendower

Avenue,Hollywood ,California90027 .

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.

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

2495

Glendower Avenue,Hollywood ,California90027.

Reprinted by permission of and by arrangement with the author and the author’s agent, Robert P. Mills,

PICTURE CREDITS

DR. CYCLOPS, Courtesy of Universal Pictures.

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

RIGHTS ReSERVED.

EARTH, Courtesy of Allied Artists.

THIS ISLAND EARTH, Courtesy of Universal Pictures.

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

THE TENTH VICTIM, Courtesy of Avco Embassy Pictures Corp.

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)

THETURKEY THAT ATTACKEDNEW 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 aHollywood 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 overManhattan , 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 onCampbell ’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 aHollywood 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.

Both were dismissed as mere hokum by critics, but today, just thirty years later, their respective visions

of lunar landings and Martian explorations have already slipped into past history.

But back then movies such as The Day the Earth Stood Still and It Came from Outer Space were being

made just for the dreamers, an enthusiastic young crowd more than willing to be whisked off into deep

space or brave the unknown perils of an alien invasion. In our far-reaching imaginations, we all took the

dangerous interstellar journey to war-torn Metaluna in This Island Earth; fought the invisible “monsters

from the Id” on the Forbidden Planet; then returned to Terra in order to quell the Invasion of the Body

Snatchers.

Big budget or small, an all-star lineup or a cast of complete unknowns, the early science fiction pictures

all had one thing in common—they inspired an undeniable “sense of wonder” in thousands of

impressionable youngsters. They even induced some to pick up an SF paperback or magazine and get a

helping of the real thing.

I know ... because it happened to me. Just after a screening of Universal’s The Incredible Shrinking

Man, there came an overwhelming compulsion to buy a copy of the now classic novel by Richard

Matheson.

It meant giving upfive ten -cent comic books, but the half a buck was willingly handed over and the

edition promptly tucked between the covers of a textbook for easy round-the-clock access. By the time

the last chapter went flying by, I knew the pile of comics at my bedside just wouldn’t cut it anymore. For

here was excitement and adventure that no caped superhero could ever equal. And like a true SF addict,

I had to have more—right away.

Most weekdays found me haunting the local library and secondhand bookstores, searching out names

like Asimov, Sturgeon, Bradbury and Clarke.

Meanwhile, on weekends, I specialized in leading gang safaris to every theater in a ten-mile

radius—exposing friends to the latest fantasies fromHollywood .

Sometimes an excellent screenplay and fine ensemble acting stole the show, as in pictures like The Thing

from Another World, Village of the Damned, and The Day the Earth Caught Fire. Other times, it was the

special effects department that kept us riveted with films such as War of the Worlds, Earth vs. the Flying

Saucers, and The Time Machine.

Right behind the revered classics were a fair share of honorable mentions: imaginative movies that, for

one reason or another, failed to live up to their full potential. Journey to the Seventh Planet, with its novel

premise of an omnipotent brain controlling a world, is a prime example of a great idea mired in cheap sets

and confusing direction. Other titles from this wide category include such favorites as Mario Bava’s

haunting Planet of the Vampires and Edward L. Cahn’s suspenseful It: The Terror from Beyond

Space—both early precursors to 1979’s immensely popular SF shocker Alien.

Yet, as in all genres, for every worthwhile effort there were also dozens of “Grade Z” clunkers glutting

the market. Remember the mass disappointment when the alien in Flight to Mars turned out to be

character actor Morris Ankrum in a moth-eaten spacesuit? Or how about the booing and hissing for Fire

Maidens from Outer Space when the monster was revealed as a man wearing a turtleneck sweater over

his head? And although many have tried, who can forget the ghastly alien gorilla in Robot Monster?

Today, of course, even the most popular SF films of yesteryear have been outdistanced by the likes of

Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And why not! Youthful directors George Lucas and

Steven Spielberg are both admitted devotees of imaginative film and literature. They too grew up reading

Amazing Stories and sitting front-row-center for Not of This Earth and Invasion of the Saucermen.

Perhaps someday, thanks to the influence of Luke Skywalker and the Mothership in CE3K, a director

of tomorrow will bring even more breathtaking speculative adventures to the screen. But for now, let us

celebrate some of the fine films and gifted authors that started it all.

From Henry Kuttner’s fast-paced “Dr. Cyclops” to Harlan Ellison’s award-winning “A Boy and His

Dog,” here are a dozen of the most famous SF tales ever put on celluloid. So let the houselights dim....

The curtain goes up immediately.

Jim Wynorski January 1, 1980

Hollywood, California

DR. CYCLOPS by Henry Kuttner filmed as

DR. CYCLOPS

(Paramount, 1940)

The diabolical Dr. Frankenstein, the maniacal Dr. Moreau, and the schizophrenic Dr. Jekyll—all have

taken deservedly prominent places in the Mad Scientists’ Hall of Fame. But wait! One of the most

cunning and twisted brains in the annals of fantastic literature needs mentioning: the malevolent Dr.

Cyclops.

Jim Wynorski - They Came From Outer Space

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: