What do you find most striking/interesting/relevant/significant/innovative about the film and why?
Given the lack of advanced of digital technology available to the film industry then, the way special effects were created was through a synthesis of camera work and the use of props. The low budget of the film had compelled them to use props consisting of condoms, oatmeal etc. together with filming techniques to replicate certain scenes like the tunnels or the heat-ray effect. These innovative methods of mixing prop-use and camera tricks, have mostly been replaced by digital technology.
Poor representations of what we would come to expect of advanced technology, these special effects back then would have been the acceptable visual standard of portraying the scientific fantasies of the 1950s era. These different special-effects standards notwithstanding, the genre-function of science-fiction is to represent a sort of fantasy with hyper-real elements, while concurrently being a parody of contemporary issues. Hence, with the normative expectations of that genre in mind, it is interesting to see how cinematic expectations have changed, for example, to see how boiled-oatmeal coupled with camera tricks could pass off as a heat-ray’s effect then. However, a judgment regarding the proximity to reality between past and present visual effects can be passed while avoiding anachronisms. Hence, where hyper-real elements – successful exaggerations of reality where representation fades into reality – that are achieved through special effects become backgrounded items not to be focused on, the other aspects of film like theme and plot can become foregrounded within the framework of Science-fiction genre.
What are some of the film’s key similarities to (and/or differences from) other films screened (or discussed) in the class?
Many critics have understood and identified the