IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE: 1953 A semi-professional astronomer(Richard Carlson) is the first to arrive at an apparent meteor impact near his home of Sandrock, Arizona. Descending into the smoking crater, he alone sees the gigantic space sphere before debris slides to bury it. He climbs out, and is surprised when nobody believes his story.
	He and his girl, Ellen (Barbara Rush) run off the road to avoid one of the cyclopian crew that left the sphere before the slide. Things get weirder when they stop to question two telephone linemen, Frank and George, about the strange events. The presence of the invisible aliens following the linemen's truck down the dark desert highway is conveyed through their creepy theme music. The astronomer finds the truck abandoned and follows the sparkly snail trail the aliens leave to meet a zombie-like George.
He says Frank "went off to look around", but Carlson sees an arm behind a rock. They flee, but produce no evidence when returning with the Sherriff. Back in town, and with even less credibility, Carlson sees and confronts the linemen. They convince him to help give the aliens time to leave Earth. Again, with the scary music. Meanwhile, at an old mineshaft near the crash site, 3 prospectors are abducted like Frank and George were. Carlson gets a call from the law.
	Realizing things are not right, the Sherriff begins to help Carlson when a phone call tells them that Ellen has been taken, and the aliens want to meet the astronomer near the mineshaft. The image of Ellen leads Carlson there. A voice reaches him, and he demands to see the speaker or he will not help. These aliens are so nice, they don't want to tell us we aren't fit to handle their technology, and claim to avoid us and assume our forms to not scare us with the hideousness of their true appearance.

Again Carlson is swayed to help them escape, but the Sherriff is skeptical. Back at the courthouse, seeing Frank's double walking around is too much for the lawman, so he and the astronomer briefly duke it out. A posse chases Frank while Carlson warns the aliens. At the mine, Ellen turns a mean laser wand on her man! Bullets do work on these xenomorphs, and Carlson proceeds to find his own double preparing to destroy the ship, to keep it from the hands of man.
	He convinces the aliens to release the hostages, and dynamites the mine entrance to impede the posse. The Earth rumbles, the ground shakes, the special effects reverse themselves! All eyes are upon the restored extraterrestrial soccer ball as it hurdles into the night sky. Please forgive any jabs taken at this brilliant film. The first collaboration of Jack Arnold and William Alland spawned many 50's treasures. Debates linger regarding the creditation to Ray Bradbury, as only 3 elements were preserved from his original treatment: 1)the aliens are not portrayed as hostile; 2)one line of dialog; 3)one line of narration. The screenplay by Harry Essex takes so little from the Bradbury piece, that Universal Studios should still smile upon their success at technically legitimate name dropping.
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