The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), still playing in cinema revivals in the 1990s, at outdoor summer festivals, and regularly on cable channels, was at the forefront of the science fiction film explosion of the 1950s. A number of its basic elements, from its moralizing to its music, from its fear of apocalypse to its menacing robot, are aspects of the genre which remain today. Though the film did not bring all these elements to science fiction for the first time, the film's strong and sophisticated visual and aural style was to have a lasting impact on how the scenario of alien visitation has subsequently been presented. The Day the Earth Stood Still outlined creatively, some might even say factually, the images of alien visitation that have fascinated increasing numbers of people in the second half of the...