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film summary
Space scientist Dr. Russell
Marvin (Hugh Marlowe) and his wife Carol (Joan Taylor)
are working on a secret missile project, but every time
their rockets are launched, they are intercepted and
destroyed by the more advanced technology of mysterious
flying saucers hovering near the Earth. The alien race
has completely surrounded the planet, giving Earth the
sixty days to surrender. The enemy spacecraft appear
indestructible, and Marvin sets out to find a weapon
that can defeat them. The special effects of stop-motion
animator Ray Harryhausen are legendary, most notably
in the scene in which flying saucers attack the Capitol
building in Washington, D.C.
"Peo-pulll of Err-uth … atten-shun. Peo-pulll
of Err-uth … atten-shun!"
So bleats the "voice speaking to you from thousands
of miles beyond your planet", heralding the inevitable
global invasion to come in this cataclysmic battle of
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. This was the second outing
by the now-legendary stop-motion effects artisan, Ray
Harryhausen, and now another installment in Columbia
Pictures "Ray Harryhausen Signature Collection"
series of DVDs. After having laid waste to much of San
Francisco with his mammoth octopus in It Came From Beneath
the Sea, Harryhausen and producer Charles H. Schneer
looked to the skies for what would become the picture
that, in the midst of the flying saucer craze of the
1950s, would visually epitomize the look of invading
airships from another world.
In the nation’s capital, newspaper headlines relay
the anxious unrest attributed to increased sightings
of Unidentified Flying Objects. Doctor Russell A. Marvin
and his wife Carol are speeding to a military base that
serves as home to Project Skyhook, a program chartered
to send unmanned rockets into space to gather information
for future exploration. Along the way, they encounter
an actual UFO that buzzes and bobs around their car.
Upon arrival to the base, Dr. Marvin learns the fate
of the test rockets, all of which have been destroyed
in their orbit or have crashed to the Earth. Carol realizes
here reel-to-reel recorder had captured the encoded
sounds of the saucer they previously encountered and,
upon analysis, they find it contains and encrypted message
from the aliens that warns of an imminent invasion.
The Earth’s only hope is to find a way to disrupt
the alien saucers and their seemingly unstoppable death
rays before all of mankind is annihilated.
This is classic Saturday matinee gold and makes for
a still-entertaining adventure. Granted, the stop-motion
effects are unlikely to impress today’s CGI-spoiled
audiences yet, unlike modern cinematic achievements,
Harryhausen had achieved the potentially impossible:
to instill a sense of character and being into a mechanized
saucer. His decision to manually animate the saucer
hulls results in the crafts depicting an unsteady and
unsettling – even foreboding – presence. Then,
by carefully integrating his stop-motion footage with
stock military footage of aircraft and spacecraft demolition,
the result is a visually pleasing and nearly believable
display of alien aggression run amok. To the audiences
of the 50s, it was their wildest fears brought to life
as the interplanetary marauders effortlessly laid waste
to people and landmarks of Washington D.C. Even today,
the images of saucers crashing into and through the
Capitol building and Washington Monument are clever
in their execution and make a lasting impression regardless
of their now dated method.
The characters are right out of 50s pulp fiction, from
the brooding yet determined astrophysicist to the hardened
military brass that refuses to believe until it’s
nearly too late. Hugh Marlowe isn’t particularly
stellar in the role of Dr. Marvin yet he embodies the
gutty determination of a scientist unshakable in his
beliefs and abilities. Joan Taylor (who would later
appear in the Harryhausen effects pic, 20 Million Miles
to Earth) shows the sort of plucky grit 1950s women
admired, a professional woman who stands by her man
through thick and thin. Most fun in the lot is Morris
Ankrum who portrays General Hanley (Carol’s father,
incidentally) who simply overflows of the square-jawed
feistiness of Cold War military brass and who offers
us a look into the mind (literally) of the U.S. war
machine.
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