This dog-simple UFO story that wowed the 1950s Saturday matinee crowd is less suspenseful today, but it remains worth watching because it’s so iconic you could piss your pants. It’s a film that helped make the cliches, from the desert setting to the weird aliens to the man who knows the truth about an otherworldly crash landing while no one believes him. Director Jack Arnold tells the tale in pure pulp style. It’s simple, but rich in imagery. Arnold drops you square into the middle of Nowhere, Arizona (actually shot in California in the Mojave desert). The backgrounds are all sky and dirt and rock formations. Arnold cares about the details. His camera hangs back and fills in the dream. With no big stars to pacify with close-ups, the wind-blown setting becomes its own character—and it gives a great performance, even in the instances when it’s clearly a studio set. The story originated with Ray Bradbury and his idea is only partly about an alien landing and more about how those aliens might not be so bad once we get to know them, even if they scare us at first.