Not of This Earth

Not of This Earth (1957)

Somewhere in this world stalks a thing that is...

An alien from planet Davanna, whose population has developed a terminal blood disease caused by nuclear radiation, is sent to Earth to acquire fresh human blood for his people.

Date of release
1957-02-10
TMDB
5.7 / 10 (74)
Runtime
1h 7m
Genres
Science Fiction, Horror
Director
Roger Corman

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: $100K

Not of This Earth is an independently made 1957 American black-and-white science fiction film produced and directed by Roger Corman, that stars Paul Birch, Beverly Garland, Morgan Jones, William Roerick, and Anna Lee Carroll. The film was written by Charles B. Griffith and Mark Hanna and was distributed by Allied Artists Pictures Corporation as a double feature with Attack of the Crab Monsters. Its theatrical release had a running time of 67 minutes, that was expanded to 70 minutes in 1962 for TV syndication.

Production

Griffith said that after he and Corman had collaborated on the film Gunslinger, he suggested they make a science fiction film and Corman agreed; Not of This Earth was the result. He also said he originally wrote the part of the vacuum cleaner salesman for himself.

Griffth said the film "started all this X-ray eye business. Most of Roger's themes got established right in the beginning. Whatever worked, he'd come and take again, and a lot of things got used over and over. During the production of Not of This Earth, I was married to a nurse, and she helped me do a lot of medical research. I remember how we cured cancer in that script. Somehow the film was a mess when it was finished".

Paul Birch complained bitterly about having to wear the white contact lenses for so many hours during filming. Corman wanted him ready to roll on a moment's notice, so he asked him to leave the contact lenses in his eyes all day long, which caused Birch extreme discomfort. Birch and Corman wound up getting into a shoving match on the set, and Birch walked out on the production before it was finished.

Special effects expert Paul Blaisdell worked on the film in an uncredited capacity.

Griffith said, "Paul Birch was supposed to wear wraparound glasses, so you couldn't see the sides of his eyes. They stuck gaffer's tape on the sides of his glasses. You can see it if you look. In that film, I was in the scene at the newsstand at Las Palmas".

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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