Despite its very low ratings from the movie critics the movie “The Space Children” is one of the most thought-provoking motion pictures to come out of Hollywood in the 1950’s in its addressing the dangers of nuclear proliferation and the cause for nuclear disarmament. “The Space Children” ranks right up there with “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, which was released seven years earlier in 1951, in making that very important point crystal clear to the movie going public.
With their dad David Brewster, Dave Williams, working as an electrical technician at the Eagle Point Project young Bud & Ken, Michael Rey & Johnny Crawford, are somehow contacted through mental telepathy by this “Brain” from outer space. The two boys are told by the “Brain” to go to this secluded cave on the beach for farther instructions.
At the cave both Bud and his kid brother Ken find a number of like-wise kids there who’s fathers, like Bud and Ken’s, are involved in the Eagle Point Project. The Eagle Point Project is being fined tuned to send a missile into space that will, after going into orbit around the earth, be able to launch a nuclear weapon anywhere on the planet in case a war breaks out between the US and the Soviet Block including Red China.
The children are instructed to convince their parents working on the project to stop the launch of that missile called “The Thunderer”. The children are told telepathically that if the missile is launched there’ll be dire consequences not only for the country, the US, who launches it but the entire earth as well!
The movie has the children, mostly preteen-agers,try to convince their parents to get the missile launch stopped with only Bud and Ken’s dad David Brewster finally seeing the light. That’s only after David was paralyzed by the “Brain”, that looks like a pipping hot blob of lava, from outer space when he tried, with a bolder, to smash it. Getting his feelings, by his son Bud touching his arm, back David desperately tries to get the missile launch called off but is declared, by those in charge of the launch, either delusional of suffering from burnout. It’s then that David is ordered by the head of Project Eagle Point Lt-Col Manly, Richard Shannon, to be sent to a local military hospital for much needed rest, from the stress of his heavy workload, as well as be put under mental observation.
With the Thunderer scheduled to be launched within the hour the children now on their own, with the “”Brain” directing them, enter totally unnoticed, as if their invisible, by the military sentries the super secure missile site and somehow disarm the Thunderer making it totally useless! It’s during that same time that Dr. Wahrman, Raymond Bailey, one of the top engineers at Eagle Point also realizes that what Bud and his fellow adolescents are saying is the God honest truth! Seeing with his own eyes the kids involved in a number of strange and unexplained incidents leading up to the missile launch Dr. Wahrman came to the conclusion that their being guided from something from outer space with powers beyond his imagination!
The film has a bittersweet ending with Bud and his brother Ken as well as the rest of the children proving, by the “Brain” revealing itself to those in charge of Project Eagle Point, that their right about the dangers of testing Thunderer and the dangers of nuclear testing for strictly military purposes. What leaves the audience and the “Space Children” a bit concerned is will they-the adults running the world-now learn from what they’ve seen and stop nuclear testing. Or will that timely lesson have to implemented on them, with deadly force if necessary, by their space neighbors who are now monitoring them here on earth as well as in the far off and distant universe!
