Space scientist Dr. Russell A. Marvin (Hugh Marlowe) and his new wife Carol (Joan Taylor) see a flying saucer on their way to a rocket test facility. They say nothing, lacking proof, but soon another saucer appears, destroying the compound. Unable to convince the military of the danger, Marvin contacts the aliens, and finds he has two “moon cycles” to invent a way to destroy the extraterrestrials, or the Earth is doomed.
As a fan of science fiction, and an avid read of the masters of the genre in my long lost youth, I’ve spent many evenings debating that it is an intelligent and artistic way of expressing philosophical concepts. Then Earth vs the Flying Saucers appears and quashes all my arguments. This is the kind of film that makes it easy for the mainstream to ridicule science fiction.
Much acclaimed for its “groundbreaking special effects,” by stop motion wizard Ray Harryhausen, Earth vs the Flying Saucers spends most of its time with Marvin, his wife, and random military or police officials standing in close groups chatting. Most of what they have to say is scientific gibberish (oh yes, the “science” is painful to anyone who’s studied beyond grammar school), but sometimes it’s military gibberish and occasionally vague speculation…well, gibberish again. The camera rarely moves during these dialogs, giving the scenes the excitement of a magazine ad.
Considering the nonsense they have to utter, the actors acquit themselves well. Marlowe has the toughest job, as Dr. Marvin must suffer from a form of multiple personality disorder; his actions and statements often have no connection to previous scenes. Taylor has the best gig as she’s the only one in the film given good lines, filled with innuendo which must have been pretty racy at the time.
The plot is exactly what you’d expect, provided you weren’t expecting anything intelligent: aliens arrive, giving the Earth a set amount of time before they take over; a brilliant scientist comes up with a new ultimate weapon in a few days, and the world is saved. I’d love to see a sequel where the U.S. uses this new weapon to enslave the Earth. Hey, it’s not like we’re going to toss it once the extraterrestrials are gone.
The studio put few resources into the film (and that shows, particularly in the repeated use of stock footage). The plan was for Harryhausen’s effects to save the day, and to a limited extent, they do. The flying saucers were hardly overwhelming in their day and are laughable now, but scenes of spaceships crashing into the Washington Monument and the Capitol dome are always a kick. Harryhausen ranks this as the worst film he worked on, and he’s probably right. Still, if you don’t want to sit through the whole movie, you should catch the last fifteen minutes for the climatic battle and its destruction of Washington D.C. structures.
1996 saw two unofficial remakes: Independence Day, which updates it with state-of-the-art effects, and Mars Attackcs!, which parodies it.