User reviews

Others have said, "The Cosmic Man" draws heavily on the ideas, characters presented on "The day Earth Stood Still", and I agree with them.

But, it is still a decent low-budget movie. It is well-intentioned and one can feel that a honest effort was put into making it.

Special effects are at a minimum. The Cosmic Man's spaceship is nothing more than a white sphere with a somewhat irregular surface. There are no blinking lights, no rubber-suited monsters.

The Comic Man is one of these movies to be watched on a rainy Saturday night when there is nothing else to do. In this type of circumstance, "The Cosmic man" can be a good time-filler.

Watch and enjoy for what it is.

It reminded me of "The Day The Earth Stood Still" but it wasn't as good. Not so scary creature and a very unusual spaceship. It has to be considered in the context of the times, which was the late 1950s. During it's day it probably was a good, scary Sci-Fi movie that gave the viewers nightmares after watching it. Over the years it's lost a lot of it's effectiveness. Consider that you are going to watch a 1959 movie. Things were different then. This movie should be considered a semi classic Sci-Fi, old fashioned drive in movie. It wasn't the best that came out of the 50s but I thought it was very enjoyable and a must see for any classic Sci-Fi viewer.

Although the idea for the story is completely ripped off from The Day The Earth Stood Still and the production values are practically opaque in this film, The Cosmic Man has a nice story to tell with a good cast of sincere competent players. Seeing John Carradine heading the cast I know the man was not to discriminate in those science fiction films he starred in I was expecting the worst. I was pleasantly surprised at how good it was.

Instead of Washington, DC for a landing, a small spherical spaceship travels and lands in a mountainous of the USA. It is plain that a man not like any we know has emerged and is in the area. Played by John Carradine The Cosmic Man is human like in general appearance, but he's not threatened by any of our more conventional like weapons. He takes refuge in a resort lodge owned by Angela Greene and he bonds with her son Scotty Morrow who is crippled and terminal.

The debate between scientist Bruce Bennett and military man Paul Langton as to what to do with this alien invader takes up a lot of the film. If you remember in The Thing the same debate takes place between Air Force Colonel Kenneth Tobey and scientist Robert Cornthwaite. Here we have a different winner.

I can't go further about the plot, but The Cosmic Man is a sincere plea for peace not just on earth. In the end Carradine The Cosmic Man leaves a legacy of love that there is no mistake about.

This is not The Day The Earth Stood Still, but this particular science fiction film from The Fifties while not great is unjustly neglected.

"The Cosmic Man" is a charming attempt to make a $5.00 version of "The Day the Earth Stood Still". It's an extremely low-budgeted Sci-Fi movie from the late fifties, so this generally means there are stern scientists talking a lot of pseudo-philosophical gibberish and asking themselves way too many rhetorical questions, villainous looking military men fantasizing about weapons of mass destruction and mysterious alien forces with minds that are immeasurably superior to ours. When a spherical UFO – a gigantic golf ball actually – is discovered in a small Californian canyon community, the army wants to nuke it and a local scientist wants to study it. Meanwhile, the alien passenger sneaks out of his interstellar golf ball and begins exploring the earthly habits, rites and inhabitants. This is where our cute and cheap little B-movie rips off "The Day the Earth Stood Still", in fact, as the alien witnesses the imbecility and self-destructive nature of the human race. How come aliens get such a kick out of observing how stupid we are? Like in a few hundred of the films he starred in, John Carradine receives top-billing even though he appears all together perhaps for a whole five minutes. "The Cosmic Man" is often rather dull and doesn't contain any real action, but it certainly has good intentions and an earnest supportive cast.

You can say a lot about John Carradine but dull he isn't except, of course, in THE COSMIC MAN. He has very little screen time and when he does appear it's behind the darkest pair of goggles this side of The Invisible Man. His affected, halting "alien speak" hampers him even further so he's not a exactly ball of fun and neither is the movie. I know it's a personal quirk but even as a kid I never liked genre films with child actors as major characters and when they play for sympathy (the boy has polio) it gets even more cloying.

On the plus side, there are atmospheric touches in a couple of scenes with Carradine printed "in negative." This, however, is more than balanced by scads of talking head scenes, some of which includes the leading lady wavering between her two oldish, low-charisma suitors Bruce Bennett and Paul Langton. It's a very slow go.

I recall back in the seventies when THE COSMIC MAN seemed to be a lost film, a friend of mine, a die-hard science fiction fan, was determined to track down a copy. He finally got his opportunity when the film suddenly became available on home video. Even he gave it a big Thumbs Down.

"The Cosmic Man" is about an alien craft that arrives on Earth. While the humans involved argue over how to deal with the situation, the Cosmic Man himself (John Carradine) materializes. But it's not certain just what his presence means; the Cosmic Man is interested more in observing human behaviour.

This little film may test the patience of some viewers because it's much more dialogue driven than action driven. There's a lot of information to digest here, but the script by Arthur C. Pierce is intelligent, and touches upon still common ideas. For example, the conflict between a scientists' methods and the military way of thinking. Our hero scientist, Karl Sorenson (Bruce Bennett), is regarded as being somewhat dubious by people such as jut jawed Colonel Matthews (Paul Langton).

Director Herbert S. Greene goes for a rather sedate pace, but he creates some undeniable suspense and creepiness. Before the Cosmic Man appears in the form of Carradine, he's very wraith like. (The special effects are actually pretty decent.) One might also wish that Carradine had more to do, as he doesn't turn up on camera until well into the film. But it's a treat to hear him spouting exposition in that unmistakable voice of his.

The rest of the cast is solid. Bennett is a likable co-lead, and Angela Greene is similarly engaging as the love interest, Kathy Grant. Scotty Morrow is very appealing as Kathy's disabled son.

One does see examples of the kind of unfortunate thinking which The Cosmic Man criticizes. This would make an interesting B feature to play along with "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951).

Seven out of 10.

A strange orb appears near a California research institute, intriguing the scientists and worrying the military. Soon it is apparent that someone or something has emerged from the floating sphere as local labs are infiltrated and disrupted; meanwhile, an unusual stranger appears and befriends a crippled lad. Best known as a thread-bare knockoff of the iconic 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' (1951), 'The Cosmic Man' doesn't have much to offer. As the titular being, ubiquitous B-horror thesp John Carradine delivers his lines in the classic stilted alien-monotone (why can so few aliens master both vocabularies and intonation?), and the scenes where he is shown in his (presumably) native form (some kind of a semi-translucent, anti-matter wraith) just look like badly done matte shots. There's is lots of pseudo-science offered up by sage Dr. Karl Sorenson (Bruce Bennett) sprinkled with the occasional fact such as the speed of light but at least his observation that the alien could be completely different from us is a welcome change from the genre's usual expectations. The pacifist message is heavy-handed and the military is represented by a strawman-character, the supercilious Col. Matthews (Paul Langton), who is intent on exploiting the alien technology in the Cold War and fearful about the Reds beating him to it. In case the dangers posed by the ignorant are not sufficiently obvious, Sorenson opines how "Everyone is afraid of scientists", suggesting that fear of knowledge is the real problem. There is an awful proto-romance scene involving war-widow Kathy Grant (Angele Greeene) and the Colonel, and Grant's son, crippled and doomed by some mysterious disease, is an unnecessary intrusion into the story that just sets up a predictable and saccharine event at the climax. The only novel thing in the production is the white sphere floating in the desert (not surprisingly, in Bronson Canyon). The effect is clever and quite well done, especially the scene in which the army engineers futilely try to move the alien artifact. By 1958, the 'alien saviour' storyline had been tapped numerous times (1951's 'The Day the Earth Stood Still', 1954's 'Stranger from Venus', even 1958's abysmal 'The Astounding She-monster') and 'The Cosmic Man' doesn't offer anything new or interesting to the canon. Recommended only to genre-aficionados or fans of the gaunt star.

An unidentified object is tracked going at extreme speeds around the globe. A mysterious object is found in Bronson Canyon (a real location used in the filming of "Robot Monster" 1953). Naturally, the military is antsy and requests a top scientist Dr. Karl Sorenson (Bruce Bennett) investigate.

All the elements are there with the three-way love interest between the widowed mother Kathy Grant (Angela Greene) of a crippled kid Ken (Scotty Morrow), scientist Dr. Sorenson and military Col. Matthews (Paul Langton.) They must speculate on the good bad and ugly of their mysterious invader (John Carradine).

An added plus is the fun of seeing the technology of the time this film was made. And a vintage look at the Griffith Park Observatory. Too bad they did not show the inside as there is a nifty pendulum that swings with the rotation of the earth.

We are in luck as we get two space speeches before the conclusion. Will we heed the warning or is this the end?

Earnest but boring 50s sci-fi for John Carradine completists only. Borrowing ideas from DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL this film has ideas but forgets to add thrills to the mix. Carradine is only in the movie for maybe 5 minutes, and even then he's sometimes a black shadow giving lectures on the follies of man going into outer space. The film is an OK time-waster.

Not expecting much at all, I was a little surprised at how much I enjoyed this very small budget take on Day the Earth Stood Still. For all the plodding along and pretty miserable effects, the story is quite literate and even has some elements of HG Wells First Men In the Moon, that being the idea of space travel via an "gravity" repelling shutter device. The lead scientist does his part well, in a role that would have been Peter Graves' had he not been busy on Beginning of the End. He has a certain combination of ease and comfort in his role and it comes across as very realistic, the best of the cast, and livens up all the scenes which he is in. John Carradine puts in a typical decent performance but has to do double-duty since there is no Gort available here. Unfortunately, this weakens the film, and we wish there were more of a menace on his part, or more of some kind of ultimatum, but then that's why we return to view Day the Earth Stood Still again and again. Yet you can watch this "version" at least one time and not feel disappointed.

For once Maltin has reviewed something correctly: The Cosmic Man is a sad Day the Earth Stood Still rip-off. We have the alien representative who disguises himself as a human and befriends an intelligent, open minded scientist and a single mother and her child, we have the closed minded military men who want to capture and question the alien to gain his knowledge, and we have the "fantastic" special effects. Only the acting, fx, and dialogue don't quite measure up to The Day the Earth Stood Still. A key example of this is the kid in this: apparently being a child wasn't enough, but instead they had to make him a cripple to heighten the messianic qualities of the alien. I say watch "The Day the Earth Stood Still" instead, and all you'll miss is a standard Carradine performance.

Very boring sci-fi involving an alien visitor (John Carradine) coming to earth in a spherical UFO ostensibly to play chess with a boy stricken with polio (Jeff Morrow). No plot detectable in this outing. The military wants to capture the alien to force him to tell them the basis of his technology. Bruce Bennent is the local scientist called in for advice which is quickly discarded when it's determined that he's too interested in proceeding intelligently. Everybody takes the discovery of a ship and visitor from outer space matter-of-factly. Bad script, acting (with the exception of Bennent), and storyline add up to a waste of time.

Steering clear of the horror genre for much of the 50s, financial necessity finally beckoned John Carradine in 1956 with "The Black Sleep," "The Incredible Petrified World," and "The Unearthly." His tremendous output combining both movies and television nearly reached 500 credits, but his identification as a horror star didn't truly take hold until the mid-60s, after which he received fewer parts in straight films. As a starring vehicle 1958's "The Cosmic Man"" hardly taxes his considerable abilities, little screen time as a micro budget Klaatu, his rather small spherical spaceship sitting in Bronson Canyon as his mostly invisible presence is occasionally seen in dark silhouette peeking through windows or solving complex scientific equations for the benefit of Bruce Bennett's insufferable scientist. Finally appearing in corporeal form he takes a room at a small inn, befriends the crippled son of the widowed owner, and in doing so somehow cures the boy of his terminal illness. This sadly does not exempt him from being a target for the unthinking military, yet he and his ship disappear into the ether even as Bennett assures us he'll be back some day. Viewers familiar with 1951's "The Day the Earth Stood Still" would find this a rather difficult sit, the central character off screen most of the running time, so Carradine wasn't granted the opportunities that made Michael Rennie's visitor such an engaging, sympathetic figure. And boy does this cloying kid make one miss Billy Gray! This was the first screenplay cranked out by Arthur C. Pierce, who followed on with more low budget efforts like "Beyond the Time Barrier," "Women of the Prehistoric Planet," "Dimension 5," Michael Rennie's "Cyborg 2087," and even Carradine's Jerry Warren fiasco "Invasion of the Animal People."

The basic plot of this movie is similar to several others made in the 1950s and early 1960s, but is somewhat different in the details and the sequence of events.

The screenwriter's dialogue is generally well-written. John Carradine is one of the best actors of the 1940s and 1950s and played his role very well. Scotty Morrow does an excellent job of playing the crippled boy Ken Grant. The rest of the cast are fine as well.

There is no vulgar language or extreme violence so this movie is suitable for all ages.

Although somewhat predictable, overall the story is fairly entertaining. The film deserves a somewhat better rating.

Herbert S. Greene directed only two films, this one and "Outlaw Queen"(1957). In this second one, the actors are all convincing, but the story is not at all. Although trying to look very well scientifically grounded, everything is puerile.

15 April 2011. If THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951) had incorporated an even stronger and prolonged philosophical discussion and a more balanced authenticity to human nature, THE COSMIC MAN could have been a stellar, sci fi heavy weight. However, with an apparently low-budget and stilted acting, the surprisingly powerful script from Aurther C. Pierce contains some of the most thoughtful and serious attempt at a balanced look at a CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1997). Perhaps an even closer, contemporary version would be the hard to find WAVELENGTH (1983) without the gorgeous music. Nevertheless even with the stock performances there is a sincere attempt in this message-movie to avoid strong stereotypes and present a substantive sci fi movie with an emotive underpinning rarely experienced in many sci fi movies in the past or even today. A consistent script, logical and emotionally potent in its concept as well as some fancy jargon that attempts to present out of the box, imaginative thinking as with SPHERE (1998).