With The Sound of Music, director Robert Wise made one of the first musicals to feature Nazis. This, however, is a very different take on the alien invasion routine. The term "flying saucer" had barely been coined when this film landed smack dab in the middle of Washington. Then he revealed the inhabitant wasn't a raygun-wielding little green man hellbent on world domination, but rather a cultured gentleman, Klaatu (Michael Rennie), who has come to warn us off mankind's path of self-destruction.
After the jumpy US military accidentally wound him, his robot guardian Gort (Lock Martin) arrives on the scene to demonstrate, in no uncertain terms, the incredible danger humanity is facing. Wise's unconventional approach extends further than just having the audience willingly root for the alien above the humans but also in the design and delivery of the movie.Gort is an impressive sight: smooth and silvered, eight feet tall, and with a disintegrator ray where his eyes should be. Never do you doubt his colossal power. There's an innovative score too, by the legendary Bernard Herrmann, which uses Hammond organs, electric guitar, cello and theremin, and is key to why this film, with its strong pacifist message, is such an enduring classic.
