Radar installations around the world track a UFO circling the globe at 4,000 miles per hour. One famous newscaster after another hits the airwaves with the breaking news. In one of the greatest, most iconic sequences in science fiction, the glowing saucer floats over the mall in Washington D.C. and lands on a baseball diamond in President’s Park.

The inhabitants of the saucer are Klaatu, an articulate gentleman from outer space (Michael Rennie, in his screen debut) and a 7-foot robot called Gort, who vaporizes the army’s weapons with its laser eye when Klaatu is shot in the hand. Taken to Walter Reed Hospital, the “spaceman” requests the U.S. Secretary of State assemble the leaders of the world so he can present them with an important message all humans must hear.

When later informed that the Soviets refuse to meet in Washington, while the U.S. president refuses to meet in Moscow, Klaatu responds, “I’m impatient when I encounter stupidity. My people have learned to live without it.” He seeks permission to move among the ordinary people so he can investigate our “strange, unreasoning attitudes.” Klaatu is told that this won’t be possible either.

Escaping from the hospital, Klaatu checks into a boarding house and befriends a secretary named Helen (Patricia Neal) and her young son Bobby (Billy Gray). After visiting Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial, Klaatu makes contact with the leading scientific mind of the day (Sam Jaffe) by breaking into his study and solving an impossible n-body equation on the blackboard.

Klaatu convinces the professor to assemble the world’s leading scientists so he can deliver his message. To show that he means business, he suppresses electrical power around the world – with the exception of hospitals or airliners currently in flight – for thirty minutes. A massive manhunt for the spaceman ensues, during which Helen attempts to hide Klaatu until he can present his message. He tells her should anything happen to him, she must deliver a code to Gort to keep him from destroying Earth, “Klaatu barada nikto.”

In the mid-’80s, Arthur C. Clarke ranked The Day the Earth Stood Still #7 on his short list of greatest science fiction movies of all time. I’d definitely place it in my top 5. Directed by Robert Wise, the film features no monsters or mass destruction, but manages to captivate and intrigue more than fifty years after it was made.

I loved this movie. There is absolutely no fluff, no bad scenes anywhere in the 92 minute running time. Wise stressed a straight forward, no frills style in order for the story to appear as realistic and believable as possible. With a strong, thought provoking screenplay by Edmund North (adapted from a story in Astounding Science-Fiction by Harry Bates), and with an outstanding cast, the film is a classic of the sci-fi genre.

Since it’s not about people running from robots and death rays, The Day the Earth Stood Still unfolds in a natural way that actually highlights the performances. Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal and even the kid do really strong work here. Wise builds realism by cutting to bystanders around the world as they react to up to the minute news on the spaceman.

A recurring theme here is mankind’s tendency to employ violence when confronted with the unknown. The film is filled with questions about why we still react this way, and whether we’ll evolve before destroying ourselves. Released only six years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the public must have been wondering the same thing. In the end, it’s just a great story, delivering a surprising amount of suspense as Klaatu attempts to elude the military and address the world’s scientists.

The film’s terrific score was composed by Bernard Herrmann, who used theremins to create the simultaneously creepy and wonderous music. Herrmann pitched one theremin higher, the other lower, making this one of the first films to feature a largely electronic score. The unique sound became the official soundtrack for ’50s alien invaders, mimicked all the way up to Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks!