It Came from Outer Space - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of It Came from Outer Space or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to It Came from Outer Space

[aaron]

Although credited to Harry Essex, most of the script, including dialogue, is copied almost verbatim from Ray Bradbury's initial film treatment.

[bernice]

Typing the helicopter's number into most web search engines will produce its registration and history (last checked in 2013). Although the copter is shown carrying three people in the film, it was registered as a two seat vehicle.

[dustin]

"Sand Rock, Arizona" appears to be a fictitious town.

[kenneth]

According to a magazine article, the "bubble" effect when the audience is seeing things from the alien's POV was achieved by blowing a specially formulated "tough" bubble around the camera lens. These shots were kept short since the bubbles only lasted a brief time.

[tom]

The Universal-International make-up department submitted two alien designs for consideration by the studio executives. The design that was rejected was saved and then later used as the Mutant in Universal-International's This Island Earth (1955).

[phyllis]

Steven Spielberg has credited this film, and its plot focused on benign alien visitors seemingly uninterested in helping or harming human beings, as the main inspiration for his film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

[brent]

In a separately filmed trailer, Richard Carlson talks to the audience about the film and about Three Dimension; animated sequences attempt to illustrate the three dimensional effect.

[kristina]

Fantastic Something, a Hellenic pop duo with a minor UK hit in 1983 (If She Doesn't Smile), adopted their name from a line heard in the movie ("That fantastic something!")

[veronica]

This was one of the few American movies from the 1950s to place its credits at the end rather than at the beginning.

[kenneth]

This iconic movie is one of those named in the main theme for The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), "Science Fiction / Double Feature".The specific lyric is: "Then at a deadly pace / It Came From Outer Space / And This is How the Message Ran...."

[leo]

A rarity among science-fiction films in that its alien visitors are neither benevolent nor malevolent but instead seem indifferent to anything with our level of intelligence.

[russell]

The first 3-D film to be released by Universal Studios.

[maureen]

The shot of the spaceship destroying a ship was in fact a newsreel shot of HMS Balham exploding after being torpedoed in November 1941.

[duane]

The opening aerial shot is of the Mojave River Narrows in Victorville, CA. As the scene opens, over the rocky hill the town view is looking generally north-west up D-Street (Hwy-18) in 1953 downtown Victorville. The railroad tracks and Mojave River are to the right, and U.S. Hwy-66 (7th Street) turns left off of Hwy-18 and travels south-east through town towards the Cajon Pass. The airport scene was set at the old Apple Valley Airport next to Hwy-18, and across the highway from the old Roy Rogers Apple Valley Inn. Additionally, Sky King's plane, 'Songbird', was based from this same airport around this time.

[lynn]

The registration number assigned to the helicopter now shows (December 2017) that the helicopter was exported to New Zealand, and its registration decertified, in 1959. In 2010, the registration number N189B was reassigned. It now belongs to a fixed-wing, single-engine aircraft.