Unearthly Stranger (1963)

• Year: 1963
• Released: 01 Apr 1964
• Country: United Kingdom
• Adwords: N/A
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057623/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/unearthly_stranger
• Metacritics:
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: N/A
• Genre: Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi
• Runtime: 78 min
• Writer: Rex Carlton, Jeffrey Stone
• Director: John Krish
• Cast: John Neville, Philip Stone, Gabriella Licudi
• Keywords: scientist, sleeping with eyes open,

	6.4/10
	50% – Critics
	50% – Audience

Unearthly Stranger Storyline

Dr. Mark Davidson, government scientist, meets a mysterious woman and is married quickly. He knows little of her past. His government superiors want to know more about his wife, especially certain strange attributes that suggest she may be more than she appears. When it turns out she actually does love her husband, they both become targets.—Alan G.; Edited by Peter Victor

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Unearthly Stranger Movie Reviews

“B” budget delivers “A”-plus thrills

Despite its current unavailability, Unearthly Stranger enjoys a considerable cult following among dedicated sci-fi fans—and no wonder! Admittedly very low budget, but nonetheless highly entertaining, this movie represents science fiction horror at its very best. True, the basic idea seems at first a trifle ridiculous, but it’s developed with such logic, precision and acumen employing sharply dramatic dialogue and intriguing situations, it quickly becomes both meaningful and acceptable. In fact the suspense was so electrifying, my palms were sweating, my hair prickling. I wanted to get up and turn the lights on, but I couldn’t move. My eyes were riveted to the screen.

The cast is small, but this concentration enhances rather than dispels atmosphere. All the acting comes across as uniformly excellent, with every performer contributing outstanding work.

Director Krish is obviously a television graduate, yet here the close-ups are not only strikingly handled and dramatically most effective but used with both imagination and economy. Krish actually knows when to use close-ups and when to fall back on long shots and medium angles. Believe me, this is a rare quality among television men!

Growing Up With The Twilight Zone & The Outer Limits Primes One For This

If you grew up on The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, and you liked these, it’s not a stretch that you’ll find Unearthly Stranger to your liking.

This is a Brit B-Movie of the times, the early sixties when the actual talk of UFOs and possible aliens, more or less, began permeating pop culture. By keeping the story compact, using a cast that plays it serious with a bit of intelligence no matter how slightly bare bones the story…it mostly works in it’s modest scope.

There are some elements to this film that at the time must have seemed tremendously far- fetched, quite unbelievable? It’s interesting that many of these elements became more accepted, in fact they’ve only expanded with time. One of is the element of remote viewing which is alluded as his having something to do with the secret project being studied. The others would be hybrid aliens and some kind of extraterrestrial shut-down of electrically controlled things. Anyone who has read up on more modern UFOs know of cars being disabled, nuclear weapon systems being taken mysteriously off line, and even mysterious unexplainable sounds in whole communities. All of that is already in this movie strangely enough. I’d say it’s out there without being too out there at all. At the time I imagine it seemed quite weird. Pretty good in hindsight.

UNEARTHLY STRANGER (John Krish, 1963) ***1/2

This film’s basic premise isn’t dissimilar to that for I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE (1958), so that I deliberately watched them on consecutive days. However, while I liked the latter well enough, UNEARTHLY STRANGER proved something else entirely; it also stands as a testament to how different American and British film-makers treat the same theme – the former usually take a common man’s view of things, while the former tend to adopt an intellectual (and, therefore, more intriguing) approach.

Anyway, I knew beforehand of the film’s reputation as a minor classic of sci-fi cinema – which is why I decided to acquire it in the first place (though I almost had to make do without it, as it took quite a while to get the DivX copy to work properly!), but I was genuinely surprised by the result. This, in fact, has to be the most satisfying ‘B’ movie I’ve watched in a long time! Above all, it’s marked by a literate and intelligent script, imaginative monochrome photography (by NIGHT OF THE EAGLE [1962]’s Reg Wyer) and a splendid second-tier cast. John Neville – perhaps best-known for his starring role much later in Terry Gilliam’s THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN (1989) – is an atypical hero, character actor Philip Stone surely has his most significant role – otherwise some might remember him as Malcolm McDowell’s meek father in Stanley Kubrick’s A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971), Gabriella Licudi – whose mix of exotic looks and sweet-natured countenance suggest the inherent ambiguity of her character and, playing other key figures, Patrick Newell and Jean Marsh.

The story is told in flashback and bookended by the violent deaths of two officials involved in a space program – which immediately draws one into the proceedings; in retrospect, though I was aware of the identity of the titular figure, it was interesting that the director opted to reveal it in the character’s very first appearance! The unexpected denouement, too, was a brilliant touch – taking care to provide one more devastating and downbeat twist to a tale which had already reached a satisfactory climax (the idea that aliens are already among us and in large numbers was rarely this chillingly presented, though it could well be a case of collective hysteria on the part of an understandably distraught Neville and Stone!). The earlier scene, then, in which Licudi herself displays a similar sensation of confusion and loneliness (through her own weird effect upon a group of schoolchildren) probably constitutes one of the more sublimely mysterious passages in all of sci-fi cinema! Even if the production’s low-budget is betrayed by the fact that the aliens’ true selves are never shown (being restricted merely to subtle indicators of flaws in their human ‘form’, which then simply disintegrates in death!), it’s not much of a liability – since such appearances are usually disappointing anyway. That said, the ruse of having a swishing sound (“like telephone wires in the wind”) anticipate their presence while on the prowl is a clever and more-than-adequate substitute.

In the end, considering the fuzzy video quality and the constantly distorted soundtrack of the print I watched, UNEARTHLY STRANGER’s unavailability on an official DVD (though, being an independent feature, I concede that its rights may not be so clear-cut after all this time) is not merely baffling but criminal – given that fans of the genre are being deprived from enjoying a veritable gem!