Earth Vs the Flying Saucers **½ (1956, Hugh Marlowe, Joan Taylor, Donald Curtis) – Classic Movie Review 2,499

Warning! Take Cover! Flying Saucers Invade Our Planet! Director Fred F Sears’s 1956 sci-fi thriller film Earth Vs the Flying Saucers is an effective humans-against-the-aliens movie, with decent Ray Harryhausen effects.

Warning! Take Cover! Flying Saucers Invade Our Planet! Director Fred F Sears’s 1956 sci-fi thriller film Earth Vs the Flying Saucers is an effective humans-against-the-aliens movie, with decent Ray Harryhausen stop-motion animation effects (for their day) that include the excellent spinning space-saucers and the destroying of Washington landmarks.

Hugh Marlowe stars as scientist Dr Russell Marvin, who is contacted by extra-terrestrials flying in high-tech flying saucers as part of a plan to enslave the inhabitants of Earth. Dr Marvin invents and develops an anti-magnetic weapon and saves the Earth with this anti-saucer device, and hitches a ride on a spaceship with ‘suits of solidified electricity’. Joan Taylor co-stars as the scientist’s wife Carol Marvin.

Obviously it is all too cheaply made, with not enough spent on it by Clover Productions and Columbia Pictures, and now it seems naïve too, but it is still quite a lot of fun to watch. Sad to say, though, Harryhausen stated in his biography that this is his least favourite of his films.

It is written by Curt Siodmak, George Worthing Yates and Bernard Gordon (as Raymond T Marcus), based on the bestselling 1953 non-fiction book Flying Saucers from Outer Space by Major Donald Keyhoe. The film’s iconic flying saucer design of a stationary central cabin encircled by a rotating outer ring with slotted vanes in it matches the purported eyewitness descriptions recorded by Keyhoe in his book. Harryhausen said he found the well-known 1950s UFO contactee George Adamski quite paranoid when he consulted him for the depiction of the flying saucers.

Harryhausen used his trademark stop-motion animation to create the scenes of the flying spacecraft, as well as animated falling masonry for the scenes depicting saucers crashing into monuments and government buildings, and used animation of figures to show the aliens emerging from the saucers. But there is also much stock footage, including the shots of a missile launch and of batteries of 90 mm M3 guns firing during the invasion. 

It is shot in black and white by Fred Jackman Jr, but a colorised version is available on  the Internet.

It is also known as Invasion of the Flying Saucers.

Also in the cast are Donald Curtis, Morris Ankrum, John Zaremba, Thomas [Tom] Browne Henry, Grandon Rhodes, Harry Lauter, Frank Wilcox, Larry J Blake, Charles Evans, Clark Howat and Alan Reynolds.

Running time: 84 minutes.

Release date: June 13, 1956 (Los Angeles).

It was released in a double bill with Sears’s The Werewolf (1956).

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The cast

The cast are Hugh Marlowe as Dr Russell A Marvin, Joan Taylor as Carol Marvin, Donald Curtis as Major Huglin, Morris Ankrum as Major General John Hanley, John Zaremba as Professor Kanter, Thomas Browne Henry as Vice-Admiral Enright, Grandon Rhodes as General Edmunds, Larry J Blake as the motorcycle policeman, Charles Evans as Dr Alberts, Harry Lauter as Cutting, Frank Wilcox, Clark Howat and Alan Reynolds, plus Paul Frees as Aliens (uncredited voice).

The voice of the aliens was produced by recording Paul Frees on reel-to-reel audio tape. The speed control was rapidly turned up and down by hand while the tape was played back, causing Frees’s voice to waver in pitch and speed.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,499

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