A strange orb appears near a California research institute, intriguing the scientists and worrying the military. Soon it is apparent that someone or something has emerged from the floating sphere as local labs are infiltrated and disrupted; meanwhile, an unusual stranger appears and befriends a crippled lad. Best known as a thread-bare knockoff of the iconic 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' (1951), 'The Cosmic Man' doesn't have much to offer. As the titular being, ubiquitous B-horror thesp John Carradine delivers his lines in the classic stilted alien-monotone (why can so few aliens master both vocabularies and intonation?), and the scenes where he is shown in his (presumably) native form (some kind of a semi-translucent, anti-matter wraith) just look like badly done matte shots. There's is lots of pseudo-science offered up by sage Dr. Karl Sorenson (Bruce Bennett) sprinkled with the occasional fact such as the speed of light but at least his observation that the alien could be completely different from us is a welcome change from the genre's usual expectations. The pacifist message is heavy-handed and the military is represented by a strawman-character, the supercilious Col. Matthews (Paul Langton), who is intent on exploiting the alien technology in the Cold War and fearful about the Reds beating him to it. In case the dangers posed by the ignorant are not sufficiently obvious, Sorenson opines how "Everyone is afraid of scientists", suggesting that fear of knowledge is the real problem. There is an awful proto-romance scene involving war-widow Kathy Grant (Angele Greeene) and the Colonel, and Grant's son, crippled and doomed by some mysterious disease, is an unnecessary intrusion into the story that just sets up a predictable and saccharine event at the climax. The only novel thing in the production is the white sphere floating in the desert (not surprisingly, in Bronson Canyon). The effect is clever and quite well done, especially the scene in which the army engineers futilely try to move the alien artifact. By 1958, the 'alien saviour' storyline had been tapped numerous times (1951's 'The Day the Earth Stood Still', 1954's 'Stranger from Venus', even 1958's abysmal 'The Astounding She-monster') and 'The Cosmic Man' doesn't offer anything new or interesting to the canon. Recommended only to genre-aficionados or fans of the gaunt star.
Review of The Cosmic Man
