The ABCs of B-Movie Bullsh*t -- U is for UFOs

U

is for UFOs

 

Thanks to George Méliès, aliens have been a part of movies from cinema’s very beginning, but they didn’t really start getting their B-Movie due until the 1950s, when the gothic horror films of the 30s and 40s gave way to the sci-fi terror of the post-war, nuclear-threatened world.

During this time, aliens could be actual killer vegetables (The Thing From Another Planet, Invasion of the Body Snatchers) or ones who just looked like killer vegetables (It Conquered the World’s walking piece of okra). They could be big-headed mutants (Invasion of the Saucer Men) or horny Martians (Mars Needs Women). They could be misunderstood messiahs (The Day the Earth Stood Still) or easily understood maniacs (Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers, War of the Worlds).

But the “new horror” of the 60s and 70s didn’t have much use for such fantastical monsters and it took George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to bring the alien back into the pop culture zeitgeist. Their efforts were so successful that reports of people seeing and being abducted by such creatures increased by a shocking degree, with most reporting that their otherworldly kidnappers looked just like the aliens seen at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Since then aliens have appeared in every single genre of B-Movie, from slashers (Evil of the Night) to kid flicks (Mac & Me) to buddy cop movies (Alien Nation, The Hidden) to westerns (Oblivion) to sophomoric unnecessary comedy sequels (Meatballs II). They aren’t going anywhere and we’d all miss them if they did.

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is for UFOs

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