The 1950s were a good era for science fiction and fantasy to make the transition from the flickering small screen hearth of television to the cinema of the masses. In 1955, Hammer Studios had adapted Nigel Kneale's 1953 BBC serial The Quatermass Experiment into the proudly X-rated Quatermass Xperiment and ushered in the age of Hammer Horror, and would likewise option Kneale's 1955 continuation Quatermass II (as the 1957 Quatermass 2) as well as his teleplay of the same year, The Creature (as The Abominable Snowman [also 1957]). The realm of the phantastique was not the sole province of the BBC, however, and the ITV network soon got in on the act with the six-part 1956 serial The Trollenberg Terror by Peter Key and the same year's The Strange World of Planet X. Penned by actress and writer Rene Ray - making it a rare early example of a female-authored slice of SF television - and directed, like The Trollenberg Terror, by Quentin Lawrence for the ATV stable - Planet X is sadly , like many TV series and serials of the 1950s, lost. However, along with its stablemate, it would also be translated from small to big screen in 1958 via Ray's novelisation of her scripts the previous year - adapted by Paul Ryder (no, not the one from the Happy Mondays) and Josef Ambor.
Whereas The Trollenberg Terror would be helmed in its cinematic incarnation (also known in the US under the more lurid title of The Crawling Eye) by its original television director Lawrence for Robert Baker and Monty Berman's Tempean Films, The Strange World of Planet X (or the more prosaic Cosmic Monsters) was overseen by Scottish director Gilbert Gunn (miscredited on the US VHS release as 'Gilbert Dunn') for independent producer George Maynard - both films would be distributed by the Hyams brothers' Eros Films in the UK and Distributors Corporation of America in the States.
Somewhere deep in the heart of the monochrome 1950s English countryside, the driven Dr Laird (played by the fantastically-named Alec Mango) is performing experiments in magnetic fields*, much to the chagrin of the locals - rural types, farmers, tinkers and so on - as they keep blowing out the vacuum tubes of their television sets, and to the detriment of his lab assistant Sayers who is injured by the arcing and sparking of the malfunctioning machinery. Much to the spluttering consternation of Laird and his chief assistant Gil Graham (Forrest Tucker, of both The Abominable Snowman and The Trollenberg Terror) Sayers' replacement arrives in the both female and French form of Michele Dupont (the authentically Gallic Gaby Andre, her dialogue dubbed by a British actress whilst retaining references to her nationality and a French accent). As the trio demonstrate the scope of their experiments' abilities to Brigadier Cartwright (Wyndham Goldie, in his silver screen swansong), who is interested in the possibility of 'action from a distance' military applications, a sudden violent electrical storm above the building causes an enormous feedback loop in the equipment. The morning papers carry the news of not only environmental disruptions both on land and at sea, but mass UFO sightings around the local area.
This is due to the arrival of a strange visitor from another planet (Martin Benson, the ill-fated gangster Solo from Goldfinger [Guy Hamilton, 1964] and Father Spiletto in The Omen [Richard Donner, 1976]) on a mission to stop humanity's destruction. This Klaatu from Nabiru adopts the not-at-all inconspicuous pseudonym of 'Mr Smith', putting him on the radar of security man Jimmy Murray (Hugh Latimer) when he begins questioning Graham and Dupont about their top secret work. Having to convince that he isn't a spy, but an alien agent of another kind, he delivers the news that the experiments could not only have disastrous results including affecting the Earth's axis but have already had a devastating effect upon the ionosphere - allowing in powerful cosmic rays that, rather than bestowing the powers of the Fantastic Four upon those with whom they come in contact, have turned a local forest-dwelling vagrant into a radioactively burned maniacal rapist and mutated the local bug life into insectoid monsters. When the now clearly derangedly single-minded Dr Laird ascends into full mad scientist mode, shoots a superior in order to continue with his prohibited experimentation Smith is given permission to stop him and so calls in a flying saucer drone strike to decimate the lab.
Featuring great b-movie sequences of the local armed forces facing off against giant insects and the local teacher (Patricia Sinclair) being menaced in her schoolroom by menacing invertebrates, as well as a cast of familiar faces such as Dandy Nichols and Geoffrey Chater, this is a great slice of schlock with a message a la Robert Wise's seminal The Day the Earth Stood Still delivered in inimitable British quota quickie style.
*(My personal favourite Magnetic Fields experiments are 'Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits' and 'Born On A Train')
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