Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers by Fred F. Sears (1956)
25 August 2006A classic 1950’s Science Fiction film with the spectacular effects of the amazing Ray Harryhausen. Sure the Aliens themselves don’t seem too scary (damn are they short), and seem to fall easily to small arms fire, but it is their Saucers using alien Magnetic technology that are the real threat and the thing that makes this film so spectacular. The effects are top notch, even if there is too much rear projection going on. The Saucers become the real character, and the animation of them, and then of the destruction they unleash on Washington, D.C. at the end is amazing. Too think that all this was done stop motion, it must have taken so long. Not only that but this disc has interviews with Harryhausen himself on him doing the film and how it happened and how they pulled it off, which makes this film even more worthwhile.
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…
Flying Saucers have plagued Earth so that the army has set an order to shoot when they don’t know what it is. Then a rocket scientist Dr. Russell A. Marvin (Hugh Marlowe) who with his assistant and new wife Carol Marvin (the beautiful Joan Taylor) while on the way to the rocket launch are buzzed by a Flying Saucer and his recorder records it’s sound. As the launch of their rocket which is the 11th sending satellites to study the earth and space, Carol’s father Brigadier General John Hanley (Morris Ankrum) shows up to try and stop the launch. The general tells them that he has discovered that the other 11 satellites have crashed. Dr. Marvin is determined to launch again the next day, and try to film it, but the saucers show up, and when they are attacked fight back destroying the facility, and trapping Marvin and his wife, but as the power goes down they play back the aliens message and realize that the sound was a message to meet with the aliens, and a message on how to contact them. The doctor talks to the government, but they don’t want to contact the aliens yet so he does it on his own, and is taken along with Carol a Major Huglin (Donald Curtis) and a Motocycle Cop (Larry J. Blake). They learn that the aliens want to meet with all the leaders of Earth in Washington and are planning on taking over the Earth, and want the Earth to quickly hand itself over, and they find out that the Aliens use a magnetic power to fly and audio beams to destroy things.
The doctor talks to the government and starts to work on the sonic beam, but it isn’t powerful enough, so he works on an idea by Professor Kanter (John Zaremba) which is to create a beam that distrupts the magnatism, and makes them crash, and they have to run from the Aliens and escape to Washington to try and save the Earth. They get their plans to the army and make a bunch of the devices and fight off the aliens who crash and destroy the monuments around Washington, D.C. as the earth fights off the evil aliens, and win.
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An amazing and spectacular film with amazing effects, not only putting Saucers with crashing footage of actual airplanes, but with complete stop motion attacks of Washington monuments and buildings.
The film story was suggested by a nonfiction book by retired Marine Corps Major Donald E. Keyhoe called Flying Saucers from Outer Space about ariel phenomena being interplanetary in origin. Not of course on actual events.
And it also contains a 7 minute interview with Ray Harryhausen on this film itself by Joe Dante and a 60 minute documentary on Ray Harryhausen on his entire career, with so much old spectacular footage, including interviews with Ray Bradbury and with a voice over by Leonard Nemoy.
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