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Saturday, November 1, 2014

Not of This Earth and a lone owl



An owl plays its role as the harbinger of doom in Roger Corman's 1957 low-budget thriller Not of This Earth.

The movie begins with a young woman walking on a darkened street. A hooting owl shows up at 4:11 in the time count, there is a brief bit of what is probably stock footage of an owl (barely visible in this youtube video) a few seconds later she is confronted by a human seeming alien. He takes off his glasses and zaps her with his eyes. She passes out and this alien takes her blood.

So, we have an owl showing up in the moments leading up to an alien abduction (of sorts). On one level, this B-movie uses the owl as nothing more than spooky foreshadowing. On another level, it perfectly personifies the UFO/owl mythos.

I have spoke directly to experiencers who say they have heard or seen an owl in the moments leading up to a UFO sighting. I've also heard people tell of hearing owls out there window, and the next moment they have little gray aliens in their bedroom. These reports are eerily consistent, and they point to a deeper aspect within the overall mystery.


The alien in the film is played as the quintessential man in black. He wears a black suit and strange dark sunglasses. He speaks in a halting cadence and drives a big black car. In the first few minutes of the film there is mind-control, penetrating eyes, telepathic communication, and even reference to the Rh factor of human blood. This alien is here on earth, doing creepy medical procedures to unwitting humans, in an effort to save his dying race back on his devastated home planet. All these elements are part of the UFO lore, and virtually unknown to the general public in 1957.

There is a kind of inter-dimensional portal to this alien's home planet, it is set in a closet. Many UFO abduction questionnaires will ask if the reader has a fear of closets.

beautiful text created without a computer

The opening titles use Futura Bold. A foreshadowing of director Wes Anderson's use of this same font. I feel it is obvious that Kubick's use of Futura Bold in the title credits of Eyes Wide Shut can be traced back to Not of This Earth. Also, a big thank-you to Richard who pointed me to the owl in thus movie.
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5 comments:

  1. IvanNovember 3, 2014 at 6:23 PM

    I am a big fan of this film, and after one viewing I started to wonder if the "alien" was not actually from our future. He and the renegade woman talk about the awful radiation wars and how they harvest other races. Corman tried to put at least a smidgen of politics into his flicks, and I wonder if this was a way to criticize First World atomic testing/weaponry and the exploitation/abuse of Third World labor farms.
    Just a thought...
    Thanks for the great work,
    Ivan

    ReplyDelete
  2. TrishNovember 3, 2014 at 9:40 PM

    I remember that film. Watched all of these weirdo movies in my childhood. No wonder I'm warped! I think our worldviews are profoundly affected through entertainment - books, movies, blogs, websites, the internet.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousNovember 4, 2014 at 8:10 AM

    I think it is obvious that the aliens are from another planet. However, the movie Terror from the Year 5000 (which came out a year later) is about a woman from a radioactively contaminated future who arrives in our era and raises a ruckus. There is even a speech at the end about how our actions in the present will determine what kind of future our descendants will have.

    Richard

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  4. C.M. MayoNovember 4, 2014 at 7:33 PM

    Just happened on this amusing owl as spaceship link:

    http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/11/an-owl-flying-straight-into-a-camera-looks-like-a-hovering-spaceship/


    ReplyDelete
  5. PaulaApril 17, 2015 at 5:13 AM

    Late to this party but just wanted to point out tangentially that in the movie poster, the Earth is gold — gold being supposedly the reason aliens ever came here in the first place. Secondly, that the image of the monster holding the Earth hostage is reminiscent of the gnostic "demiurge" concept. That is all.

    ReplyDelete

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