Directed by: Fred F. Sears
Written by: Curt Siodmak, George Worthing Yates and Bernard Gordon as Raymond T. Marcus.
Based on Flying Saucers from Outer Space, a 1953 book by Maj. Donald Keyhoe.
Stop-motion animation special effects created by Ray Harryhausen.
With: Hugh Marlowe as Dr. Russell A. Marvin, Joan Taylor as Carol Marvin, Donald Curtis as Major Huglin and Morris Ankrum as Maj. Gen. John Hanley.
It is 1956! World War II is passing into memory, the Korean War armistice is shaky, but Ike occupies the White House and Patton is dead (but Elvis lives, & John Lennon hasn’t met Paul McCartney yet), but those Red commie bastards in the USSR have the bomb; not just the atom bomb, but the Big Daddy of ’em all, yup you guessed it, the hydrogen BOMB!
What is the greatest menace faced by god-fearing citizens of God’s Country? Flying saucers! They are like flies at a picnic, swarming everywhere and no brand of flit can stop them. They buzz our airliners, play tag with the US air force, chase little children out of the park, cause cows to give sour milk. The Pentagon orders them to be shot down like rabid dogs if they attempt to land and ruin property values.
Dr Marvin and ex-secretary now wife (daughter of a general, woo,woo) Carol are on the way to the Sky Hook air force (US) base for a launch of another rocket taking a satellite into orbit. Marvin is in charge (the man with the PhD) and he has a whole bunch up there in orbit with no way to communicate with home base, so they just spin around and try not to run into Sputnik, which would annoy the Ruskies no end.
On the road in to the base Marvin and Carol have their ass run it to a ditch by, as you might have guessed it, flying saucers, or something very much like them. It put me in mind of a narrative dear to my heart:
“. . .” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?” -Raul Duke, Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas
What indeed? Marvin refuses to believe his lying scientist eyes, and vows to run the evidence through his million-dollar Univac punch card computer.
“Wait till you see those goddamn bats.”
In the bunker, Marvin is ’bout to launch another “bird” when he is interrupted by the arrival of Carol’s Dad, the general, just off the plane from Panama.
Carol’s Dad: “You must stop the launch!”
Marvin: “I can’t, I’ve got a schedule to keep.”
Carol’s Dad: “ Oh well, if you’ve got a schedule to keep…”
Later, at a front yard barbecue, Carol’s Dad’s explains someone has been shooting down the “birds” up in orbit. Marvin exclaims no gun ever made can shoot the birds up in orbit. (He has yet to meet weaponeers from the People’s Republic of China, or seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Screenplay).
Up above them, just out of reach, two foo-fighter craft are listening and taking mental notes. (“Could you repeat that, I missed it the first go-round”).
Next day, Marvin is about to launch a bird equipped with a TV camera, when a flying saucer lands just outside the bunker, right in front of Carol’s Dad!
The army, employing their usual protocol of “Shoot First and Lie to Questioners Later” pulled up with one of the big Double 40mm Pom-Pom guns and let fly at the saucer. The ETs laugh at the feeble Earthling assault! The saucers are protected by a forcefield. Three space suited ETs emerge from the saucer in the protection of the forcefield.
A single (not Klaatu) ET foolishly steps out to the protection of the force field and goes looking for Dr. Marvin. He just wants to chat with him, as it was yesterday that they chased his car off the road. Soldiers shoot the dumb trusting bastard.
If there was anything you wanted to say to the crew of the Pom-Pom gun, now is the time to say it. The two remaining ETs use disintegrators to deal with that bunch, and kidnap Carol’s Dad in order to eat his brain later on when they are a bit peckish. (Possible sequel: They Ate the General’s Brain! In 3D!) Don’t forget the horseradish sauce.
A few days later Marvin is contacted via radio and ordered to a meeting on the beach. He is taken aboard a saucer and transported out beyond the orbit of the moon in the blink of an eye. A spooky voice tells him the saucer ETs (who I’ll call Spielberg’s Boyz, or SB) are from a star system that exploded and are looking for a new home. Trading up from nothing, as it were. Not looking to buy or build, but like our European forefathers, intend to occupy. Why Earth? Location, location, location… But lousy schools.
The SB gives earthlings 56 days to get their shit together and get used to the idea, or face life in the smoldering ruins SB will give them. Deal with it, monkey boys. Marvin returns to the Pentagon and confers with the brass. The enemy SB: the can transverse interstellar space quickly, control sunspots, can slow down the passage of time, own a nasty disintegrator to deal with smarty-pants scientists who will not face facts, and Christ knows what else up their sleeves.
“Maybe they have a cure for cancer?” one junior officer asks.
“How would you like a transfer to Alaska?” a general replies. “Snap to it and get with the program.”
“They hold all the face cards and we have the joker,” Marvin offers. He continues, “But those clowns have given us 56 days,and I say we get with the program like the general says, and come in for the big win, not just the pennant, but the whole damn World series. First, we must get to the playoffs”.
So, with luck, pluck and hopes for good fortune, Marvin and the Joints Chiefs put the nose to the grindstone and come up with plans for an electric cannon to splash the saucers. They assemble half a dozen with parts found at Home Depot, Radio Shack, and a flea market Carol likes to shop at.
After the 56 days are up, the SB saucers begin their attack, blowing up public building in DC, but sparing movie theaters, liquor stores, candy shops, and whore houses for use during the SB occupation. Soldiers juice up the cannons and shoot down the saucers. You almost feel sorry for those pathetic homeless SB bastards… Almost.
A few days later congress reauthorizes Sky Hook and appoints Marvin Honcho. What do he and wifey Carol do? They go to Disneyland. Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion animation special effects are the only positive in this mess.
Tarantino fans may like it.
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