Themes of the Science Fiction formula film:

1. Fear of the future
   • America in the 1950s in the grip a a national emergency - "age of paranoia" - like film noir's theme of human inperfection and fear of the unknown
2. Vast destruction
   • "imagination of disaster" on a scale so vast that man will have no future, will lose control of his destiny and destroy himself - man is his own worst enemy - Klaatu's speech
3. Federal government is agent of salvation
   • alien invasion starts local then grows; help flows national to local - stable institutions restore order (Army, SAC) - Klaatu and Bobby visit the Lincoln Memorial
4. Science is good
   • "rule of reason" by technology and science (Sontag) - coalition of the center - soldiers and scientists - Sam Jaffe as Prof. Barnhardt
5. Us vs. Them
   • people vs. the pods & blobs & big bugs, culture vs. nature, moderates vs. extremists - film polarizes and defines both extremes, dehumanizes the enemy or reveals the enemy within - home is safe while danger is "out there" - sometimes Them are formed by our own creation and represent our own destruction.
6. Consensus solution
   • repressive (weapons destroy the monster from the superego) or therapeutic (consensus heals the monster from the id) - permissivesness and selfishness represent internal threat - need for reaffirmation of traditional values, patriotism, family, discipline, self-sacrifice

References:

• Biskind, Peter.Seeing is Believing; How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties. New York, Pantheon Books, 1983.
• Doherty, Thomas. Teenagers and Teenpics; The Juvenilization of American Movies in the 1950s. Boston, Unwin Hyman, 1988.
• Frazier, Kendrick, et. al. The UFO Invasion: The Roswell Incident, Alien Abductions, and Government Coverups. New York: Prometheus, 1997.
• Klass, Philip J. The Real Roswell Crashed-Saucer Coverup. New York: Prometheus, 1997.
• Sammon, Paul. Future Noir, The Making of Blade Runner. New York, HarperCollins, 1996.
• Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation. New York, Delta Books, 1967.
• Telotte, J. P. Replications, A Robotic History of the Science Fiction Film. University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Other Science Fiction Films:

• Destination Moon (1950) produced by George Pal from the Robert A. Heinlein novel
• When Worlds Collide (1951) produced by George Pal from the Edwin Balmer novel
• The Thing (1951) produced by Howard Hawks
• War of the Worlds (1953) produced by George Pal from the H. G. Wells story
• Them! (1954)
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) by Don Siegel
• Forbidden Planet (1956) by Fred Wilcox
• Day the World Ended (1956) by Roger Corman and Samuel Arkoff's American International Pictures
• War of the Satellites (1958) by Roger Corman, made in 8 weeks after Sputnik of Oct. 4, 1957
• On the Beach (1959) by Stanley Kramer
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Stanley Kubrick from the Arthur C. Clarke novel
• Blade Runner (1982) by Ridley Scott from the Philip Dick novel