'THE SPACE CHILDREN'......NUKE KIDS ON THE BLOCK.....

The Space Children (1958)   This obscure, long forgotten gem came from that cult sci-fi dynamic duo of Producer William Alland and director Jack Arnold......

               Earlier in the 1950's, these two pumped out a slew of iconic classics for Universal Studios......"It Came From Outer Space", "Creature From the Black Lagoon", "Tarantula", "The Incredible Shrinking Man", "Monster On The Campus", "Revenge Of The Creature".....

                Film buffs well remember Alland as the dogged reporter tracking down the hidden meaning of 'Rosebud' in "Citizen Kane"........and Jack Arnold's directorial career covered every genre imaginable - everything from "High School Confidential", "The Mouse That Roared" to countless TV episodes....("Gilligan's Island", "It Takes A Thief", "Love-American Style")

                The duo moved over to Paramount for "The Space Children"...... and their studio new overloards obviously held Alland and Arnold to an even more rock-bottom budget than they'd had for their Universal fantasies..........the film looks as rushed and cheap as any 1950's hour-long TV show.....(and only a few minutes longer)

                 The film also stands apart from the Universal sci-fiers in its strong moralistic, anti-war, anti-nuke message.......and in its final minutes carries the same warning for humanity delivered by 1951's "The Day The Earth Stood Still"........Alland and Arnold once again spun gold from the poverty-row budget they were given to work with.......skillfully deployed to hammer home a stern lesson for Cold War warriors.....

                  Which is........."Attention, Earthlings......this is your neighbors from outer space......stop threatening to blow each other the f*** up with H-Bombs or else. Don't make us come down there and send you to your time-out corners..... clean up your act and wise the f*** up, already."

                  And so a glowing, pulsating Alien Blob comes floating down on a beam of light. landing near a temporary beachside community of rocket technicians........who just happen to be working on "The Thunderer", a big-ass rocket that'll launch an H-bomb into permanent orbit around the Earth.......you know, in case we get antsy about the Russkies and want to drop a nuke in their borscht.

                    The blob speaks telepathically only to the kids of the rocket techies, turning the tykes into sort of a benevolent, pacifistic 'Village Of The Damned' sabotage team.  Under the semi-hypnotic control of the blob, the kids set out to teach their parents and the U.S. military that when it comes to  'No Nukes'. they ain't messin' around.......make no mistake, 'The Thunderer's gettin' ripped asunder and goin' under......

                      As a fascinating side note, the blob also takes a dim view of the standard parental corporal punishment so prevalent in the 1950's.......when one of the dads threatens to smack around his son, his arms go numb........and the film's one outright villain, a drunken abusive stepfather, gets Blob-o-fied into a corpse with his eyes still wide open.   The blob won't stand for any of that 'spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child' crapola......not when there's rockets to dismantle.....

                      It's a swift, crisp little movie and to the delight of Baby Boomers, it's heavily loaded with instantly recognizable faces.......Jackie Coogan from "The Addams Family", Rayond Bailey from "The Beverly Hillbillies", Russell Johnson from "Gilligan't Island", Johnny Crawford from "The Rifleman".........and two of BQ's personal all-time favorites.....Adam Williams (the knife-hurler from "North By Northwest") and Sandy Descher (forever immortal as the little girl who froze moviegoers to their seats when she shrieked at the memory of "Them!" in 1954)

                BQ considers "The Space Children" a must-see for all lovers of classic movie sci-fi.....
.....we give it a full 5 glowing, pulsating blobs...(*****), a FIND OF FINDS. Now if only the blob would come back and shake some sense into those brain-dead climate deniers........