Earth vs. the Flying Saucers

U.S.A. / 1956 Directed by Fred F. Sears Starring Hugh Marlowe Joan Taylor Morris Ankrum B&W / 83 Minutes / Not Rated Format: DVD  (R1 - NTSC) Columbia-TriStar Home Video

Hold your mouse pointer over an image for a pop-up caption

2008 Special Edition

		Review by Brian Lindsey

6     7   10 = Highest Rating

This early Ray Harryhausen pic, which certainly served as direct inspiration for Independence Day and Mars Attacks!, was no doubt pretty spectacular for its time. Terribly dated now, it falls prey to all the faux pas common to sci-fi cinema of the '50s, yet remains an essential — and thoroughly entertaining — representative of genre flicks of that bygone era. Anyone pushing 40 (or older) who saw this on TV as a kid will never forget the film's slam-bang climax, which features alien spacecraft reducing Washington D.C.'s most famous landmarks to rubble. Mankind needn't have worried, though... An Earth victory was pretty much a given. After all, how could humanity be defeated by a race of beings without elbows? Just like the knee-less mechanical monster in Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy, the bad guys here ultimately don't stand a chance. They do manage to thoroughly trash the place, however.     The bland and wooden Hugh Marlowe stars as Dr. Russell Marvin, a top scientist in America's space program. (I'd have loved to have seen Peter Graves in this role.) He's in charge of Project Skyhook, an operation launching a series of satellites into Earth orbit. He and his new bride Carol (20 Million Miles to Earth's Joan Taylor) are still basking in the afterglow of their honeymoon as they drive back to the Skyhook base in the California desert, when their car is buzzed by a huge, low-flying UFO. Only later does Marvin realize that the aliens were trying to give him a message, warning of an imminent attack on our world unless global leaders meet to parley with the E.T.s. By then it's too late — the Skyhook base is destroyed by a death ray-equipped saucer; Carol's dad, an important Army general (Beginning of the End's Morris Ankrum), is captured by aliens dressed in some kind of weird armor. Marvin and his wife are the only survivors of the catastrophe.     The government assembles a crack team of scientists under Marvin to find some kind of countermeasure to the invaders' superior technology. They're close to an answer when the aliens (unforgettably voiced by Paul Frees) announce to the world that they're here and mean business. Soon a full-scale saucer assault is underway... Conventional military forces are virtually helpless against them. Can Marvin's team develop a weapon powerful enough to save humanity from extraterrestrial enslavement?     Earth vs. the Flying Saucers is enjoyable, old-fashioned hokum in the best sense of the word. You definitely know you're in for a fun time - whether or not the movie's actually any good — if it's a black and white sci-fi pic with both Morris Ankrum and Thomas B. Henry (also in Beginning of the End) playing military types. Harryhausen's saucers provide plenty of action, particularly in the third act, via special effects that are still pretty cool nearly 50 years on. The film's main problems are its dull, boring leads and the occasionally poor matching of stock footage, issues it shares with a lot of genre pics of the era. (The movie opens with air force footage of a fighter jet in flight — using the sound effect of a propeller-driven plane; I was amused when a B-29 Superfortress bomber magically morphed into a B-17 as it's shot down by an enemy saucer.)     Quibbles aside, one can still enjoy the interesting designs of the alien ships and technology, notably the cavernous saucer interior set and the armored suits worn by the E.T.s (even if they do lack elbows). Harryhausen's stop-motion flying saucers certainly exhibit more animation than the actors. The devastating attack on Washington D.C. during the climax is genuinely exciting. It's a significant achievement, really, considering the film's extremely low budget. Thanks to Harryhausen's optical wizardry, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers holds up surprisingly well in comparison to that all-time classic of '50s alien invasion, George Pal's much more expensive War of the Worlds.

As far as A/V quality, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers doesn't fare as well as the other recent additions to Columbia's Ray Harryhausen Signature Collection, 20 Million Miles to Earth and First Men in the Moon. The DVD still looks and sounds markedly superior to previous VHS editions. Those who've already purchased earlier Columbia-Harryhausen DVDs will be disappointed with the extras provided. The same documentary featured on a number of them, The Harryhausen Chronicles, is offered here. Narrated by Leonard Nimoy, it's a worthwhile retrospective of the effects maestro's career, but I've already seen it before — a bunch of times. Ditto for the This Is Dynamation featurette, a short promo reel for 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Three theatrical trailers are also included: one for the main feature, along with First Men in the Moon and The 3 Worlds of Gulliver. Particular to this disc is a step-through photo gallery of promotional stills/poster art and an on-camera interview of Ray Harryhausen by director Joe Dante (The Howling), which looks like it took place sometime in the late '80s or early '90s. The discussion's fairly interesting; Dante is obviously a big fan of the movie. (EC's DVD rating of '7' for the disc is conditional on not owning any of the other Harryhausen DVDs from Columbia-TriStar. It shortchange collectors to keep recycling the same old extras.) 10/07/02

UPDATE On January 15, 2008 Columbia is releasing a 2-disc special edition of EVTFS, which features both B&W and colorized versions of the film plus new bonus features (including an audio commentary with Harryhausen, featurettes, and more).

HOME | REVIEWS | TOP