The Day the Earth Stood Still

I recently re-watched The Day the Earth Stood Still, one of my favorite movies since I first saw it roughly 50 years ago. As I wrote about it 15 years ago, This is one of the first serious science fiction films, and since the minimal special effects take a back seat to old-fashioned concepts like “story”, “character development” and especially “acting”, it’s still better than just about everything which has come along in the genre since. Michael Rennie’s portrayal of the alien diplomat Klaatu set the bar for humanoid aliens for decades. But this was the first time I saw it under the influence of THC, thus allowing me access to a new level of appreciation of how good it is. The skillful direction of Robert Wise (The Haunting, The Sound of Music, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture) and the striking and innovative score composed by Bernard Herrmann (Citizen Kane, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, and Psycho) create a dark, paranoid, and suspenseful mood which marks the film from the outset as a…