About six months ago I bought Earth vs. the Flying
Saucers on a wild impulse. I'd picked up an MST3K episode and was looking for
something to go along with it. This was before Christmas, I think. Yeah, it had to be
because, after Christmas, I was trapped inside my house by a snowstorm and spent the whole
time naval gazing.
But that's another story.
So I bought Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and set it down on my bookshelf, next to a stack of books. There's always a stack of books on my shelf, and usually a pretty big stack of movies too. But I remember setting it down and thinking Eh, I'll get to it, eventually.
Three months later I found the tape (still unopened) under a Dean Kootz book. Lightning, I think. I dusted the movie off and put it in my Movie Drawer, thinking Eh, I'll get to it, eventually. Then I started reading.
Three months after that (last night, as a matter of fact) I opened my Movie Drawer and there it was, a still unopened print of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. And, as I stared at it, I came to a conclusion: If I didn't review this sucker now it would sit there between my copy of The Thing and my copy of Bulworth until Doomsday rolled around.
Thus ends my tale of How This Review Came To Be. We now enter into the Review Proper. I'd be a little bit coyer about this, but whenever I try to think of something for a Transition Paragraph I come up empty.
Here's the deal: It's 1956 and Man has yet to touch on Outer Space. Before anybody goes anywhere, the Brass decides to send up a bunch of unmanned satellites to figure out just what's up there. This is Project Skyhook, headed by none other than Dr. Russell A. Marvin (played by none other than Hugh Marlowe of The Day the Earth Stood Still fame).
Now, "Russ" is a pretty happy guy. At the beginning of the flick he's in charge of a great government project, and he's just suckered his hot girlfriend, Carol (Joan Taylor, star of the suggestively named Girls in Prison) into marrying him. His life is good. So, of course, a UFO buzzes his car. Taking it like a scientist, Russ pulls off to the side of the road and tries to keep from hyperventilating. That couldn't have been a real flying saucer, could it?
In the stunned that-didn't-just-happen-did-it? aftermath, Carol discovers that Russ managed to accidentally get the saucer sounds on tape. That's something. At least Russ stops doubting his own sanity. Just in time, too: Skyhook is about to launch another rocket.
Well, the launch goes off without a hitch but, the next day, Carol's father, General Dad (Grandon Rhodes) breaks some unhappy news: all of Project Skyhook's satellites have been shot down by Persons and Powers Unknown. Russ tells General Dad about the flying saucer that tried to play "Chinese chicken" with their car. Dad puts two and two together. "Certainly you can't launch number 12!" Dad warns.
But that's exactly what Russ does. He's the Man in all this, after all. And his hubris bites him in the ass when a saucer lands in the middle of Skyhook's complex. The military comes out in full force and prove to be predictably useless. As a way of saying, "Thank you," the aliens burn Project Skyhook to the ground with their lasers.
Trapped in the wreckage, Russ discovers something while fiddling with his tape recorder: it seems that the alien sound he recorded was actually a message from the saucer people. They requested an audience with Russ at Skyhook and that was why their ship landed in the middle of the complex. Because of the time differential between the alien's time frame inside their ships, the saucerian message sounded like unrecognizable noise to the unaided human ear. So the destruction of Skyhook, and all those hundreds of deaths, are really All Russell's Fault.
He doesn't take this very well, and flips out quite nicely when the Washington bureaucracy refuses to believe his story. Arranging a meeting with the saucerians, Russ manages to get the entire cast abducted into the alien ship.
Inside, everyone has a little pow-wow. Seems the saucerians are the last survivors of a dead solar system, and they didn't come to Earth on any kind of social call. They give Russ orders to arrange a meeting for them in Washington D.C.; a meeting with representatives of every country on Earth. They figure, if we Earthlings will just hand over the planet nicely, then they won't have to vaporize everything into tiny bits.
I got a little play-by-play in the plot synopsis because Earth turned out to be a lot more involved then I originally thought. Seeing its trailer ("Run! Take Cover! Flying Saucers Have Invaded Our Planet!") won't give you the slightest clue to all the stuff that goes on in this flick. Besides the saucers we've got brain drains, Washington bureaucrats, Alien Vision™, Shakespeare quotes, and tons of 1950s anti-alien technology. All of which should keep all but the most jaded sci-fi fan, if not fascinated, the at least moderately entertained for 83 minutes.
Then there's me.
I can safely say that this movie would not be made today. Some argue that it already has been remade as Independence Day but I am not one of them. ID4 was (by it's makers own admission) a brainless popcorn movie. Earth was advertised as a brainless popcorn movie, and yet, it's makers seem to be shooting for something more. Or its makers were schizophrenic. In one scene, the makers seem to be trying to tell an epic story of man's struggle against an alien invasion. War of the Worlds, in other words. But the next scene of the movie feels like a science lecture on How to Beat An Alien Threat.
Oh, yes. In this universe, we can
beat their machines and we can beat them. We don't need Earth's viruses to do our
dirty work, no sir. We can fight these aliens with good old American Know-How. American
Know How that, 9 years later, became Japanese Know How, when Toho Co. recycled this
movie's plot for Godzilla vs. Monster Zero. Bet'cha didn't
know that. Now you do.
You see? This is the stuff I think about because the actual movie, well...it bored me. It's not the actors' fault. They're all quite adequate in their roles. It's just that they never do much of anything except stand around and talk about what they're going to do (until the end, during the strangely drama-free Ray Harryhausen special effects extravaganza). The few times these characters are placed in danger the fact that they'll escape is painfully obvious. No, we can't have our main characters die. That might actually create some dramatic tension. And we can't have dramatic tension. It might distract people from "ooh"-ing at all the spectacular special effects.
Not that we care very much about the characters. They never grow much beyond their archetypes. Hugh Marlowe gets to express a little emotion around the second act when Russ goes all guilt ridden. But, ten minutes later, he's completely absolved of all those deaths. It wasn't really his fault. It was the aliens. Sure, we humans fired first, but it was the aliens.
In many ways, Earth resembles a fairy tale. Evil is vanquished and the Good Guys get to retire to an idyllic beach. Sure, some people die, but that's only to prove how Evil Evil really is. The Good Guys who matter get to frolic, sure in the knowledge that the world is safe for capitalism...oops, did I say "capitalism?" Sorry. There I go, bringing politics into it again. How could I possibly think of these faceless, stiff limbed, mind-sucking aliens as "communists?"
My theory is that writers George Worthing Yates and Bernard Gordon and director Fred F. Sears tried to seek the Middle Path, combining War of the Worlds with that other memorable 50s sci-fi flick, The Day the Earth Stood Still. The result is a bit of a Frankenstein: too talkie to be an action extravaganza, and to shallow to be an epic drama. But if you see only one 1950s alien invasion pic...then see War of the Worlds.
But, if you see two...
