I have just finished watching Steven Spielbergs latest film 'Disclosure Day', which revolves around a government cover-up of alien contact. Whilst it is a total departure from other recent alien films and does actually feature an alien entity, it still managed to leave me a little disappointed, compared to his earlier opus, 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind'. For me, aliens should be, by definition, utterly beyond anything we are used to, rather than appearing to be a a 'version' of humanity. As a child of the sixties, alongside the actual space race and the push for the moon landing, I was acutely aware of the presence of aliens. Not in the real sense of extraterrestrial invasion or interference, but in the media of the day, which, due to the fascination with all things space, included little green men and bug eyed monsters at every available opportunity. For a small boy, this was a dream come true, as alongside all the robot and spaceship toys, there were astronauts and aliens galore, in tv and cartoons, books and comics and in toys and games.
TV shows such as the Outer Limits spawned a set of bubblegum cards, with images of the aliens and creatures in livid colour - when I was given a set of the cards at about age 7, I was utterly terrified of some of the creatures depicted, such as the Chromite and the Glob and yet, revisiting the series today, the special effects look crude and shabby and the aliens appear far from frightening.
By contrast, an early X-rated horror film, the Quatermass Xperiment from 1955, which I was allowed to watch on TV in the early sixties and utterly traumatised me at the time, still has the capacity to unnerve me, some fifty years later, as the alien creature was so far beyond the normal shape and vision of anything which I had experienced before. Richard Wordsworth played a beleagured astronaut who is 'infected' by a space born entity, which gradually transforms him into an amorphous spongiform octopoid. Wordsworth's performance is extremely chilling as he manages to convey a sense of implacable threat, without uttering a single audible word of dialogue throughout the first half of the film. The later scenes, as the alien becomes fully matured were apparently effected by using a live octopus strapped to a board for closeups and a very convincing maquette for the distance shots.
A later sequel, which appeared as a live transmission TV series and as a Hammer film, was Quatermass and the Pit. Nigel Kneale's excellent script and crafty special effects once more left me chilled, as work on an underground tube station leads to the discovery of a crashed martian colony ship.
Both the TV and film versions feature a demonic looking insectoid alien, which terrorises London before being defeated by the good Professor. Although not contemporary with the series, these modern interpretations of the Hammer film martian would have given me nightmares as an 8 year old!
On a less terrifying note, toys and models of space aliens abounded in the sixties, as the 1950's crop of B-Movies had set the scene for giant monsters from outer space and the TV revolution of the sixties had introduced Star Trek, Dr Who and Lost in Space bringing all kinds of weird creatures into the home.
Toys such as the 1968 Miniflex Space Safari, allowed kids to rove distant planets and collect specimens of alien life in special capsules, whilst Remco's Hamilton Invaders series, pitted military might against a rampaging space spider called Horrible Hamilton.
Sweets and candies often included small toys in gumball machines, like this diminutive Man from Mars.
.JPG)
Rubber monsters were extremely popular in the sixties, both as capsule toys and as small inexpensive figures sold from a counter top box. One of my favourite sets were six alien figures that appeared in several different colourways and were made into keyrings, pencil rubbers and small playset figures.
In 1970, Kellogs Sugar Smacks cereals included small plastic space critter in each Star Trek themed box. As Mr Spock looked on, a tiny colourful Crater Critter would tumble out into the bowl.
The modern series of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons and films featured an alien called Kraang, a figure of Kraang apeared in a Lego set and also in a Ferrero Kinder Surprise chocolate egg, both of which sit really well amongst the critters and are very reminiscent of the early sixties B movie creatures.
A series of rubber monsters called 'Teachers Pets' were common in high street stores, sold individually for a few pence. The exotic looking creatures were based on a set of bubblegum cards and stickers, featuring outlandish looking creatures with everyday names like Alvin and Kenneth.
More modern alien creatures tend to favour a more humanoid shape, such as the bendable rubber figures from Independance Day movie tie ins, or these dinosaur riding spacemen from the Britains toy line.
.JPG){kind=link}
