This is a 1953 film that holds special significance for me since it was likely the first science fiction movie I ever saw, even if I saw it only in part at the time, which would be 1965 or 1966. As with Lost in Space, which had debuted in the Fall of 1965, I saw this movie at a neighbor’s house one afternoon. Neither was the kind of show or movie my parents would have on TV at home.
The story opens with a boy, David MacLean, who uses an alarm clock to wake up at 4am to stargaze with his telescope through his bedroom window. The alarm wakes his parents too, who come to investigate. David says, but Dad! Orion is at zenith! And it won’t happen for another 6 years! He pronounces it OH-rion, not oh-RI-on, as astronomers do, and it’s impossible for Orion to appear at zenith (from this presumably middle America town), and if it did it wouldn’t happen only every six years. That’s Hollywood astronomy for you. (To be fair, there’s a small town in Illinois near where my parents grew up that pronounced Orion the same way.) His father uses the scope to look at Rigel (he pronounces it ‘regal’, not RYE-jel) and Bellatrix, and his mother turns on the ceiling light, which would ruin the boy’s night vision. Bad parents! (These are the kinds of things I remember after decades, more than the exact plot.)
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