Thirty days before North Korea blitzkrieged across the 38th Parallel, Destination Moon opened with surprisingly large box office.  As the cold war began in earnest, studios rushed their entries into the space race going on before the cameras. RKO had The Thing, Monogram had Flight to Mars, and Darryl Zanuck hired Robert Wise to direct The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Part poetic morality play, part sci-fi adventure, TDTESS asks the question first raised when Oppenheimer tossed a few grams of plutonium into the desert, and ups the ante:  Will mankind’s violent ways lead to our extinction?  And perhaps not through our own hand?

Made for $960,000, the film stands up admirably to the passage of time because its focus is on the universal psychological fear of the unknown, rather than on dated camera tricks and technology.  Religious metaphors surrounding the alien Klaatu are intended to appeal to the subconscious:  a man called Carpenter, the ambassador who urges mankind to choose a path of peace, and the innocent martyr who is resurrected.  Screenwriter Edmund North hoped the parallels to Christ would be subliminal.  Indeed, he said ten years passed before anyone asked him about it.

In the political paranoia and frantic pace of modern society, Klaatu is unable to gain the cooperation of a fragmented earth population until he brings everything on earth to a standstill by shutting off al electricity.  This hearkens back to the ancient Biblical story about the first time the earth stood still, when Joshua asked God to stop the sun from setting to allow the Israelites to win a climactic battle.

But is the choice offered mankind by Klaatu in his final speech a benevolent solution or an invitation to the apocalypse?  We may do well to commit to memory the earth saving words of the film:  Klaatu barada nikto!

Glenna Huffman has worked as a film/video editor for the last ten years and has produced several television specials.  She has also written two as yet unproduced screenplays.

Discussion Panelists:  John Furia, Fay Kanin, and David Rintels