While out in their Arizona desert hideaway, a science aficionado and his wife think the meteor that hit nearby was something more. John Putnam (Richard Carlson) and his wife Ellen (Barbara Rush) find that they are as alien as the creature in small-town America. When people become zomboid in demeanor, one by one, even the sheriff (Charles Drake) must notice that some strange force is at work. Holed up in an abandoned mine shaft and buried under debris, the alien spacecraft has a perfect location to do its work, but Putnam wants to make “contact” and devises a plan to create universal peace with his diplomacy. Government and law forces are inept, and the space alien is ugly, but a reasonable man can always succeed where others fail in “It Came from Outer Space.”