EARTH vs THE FLYING SAUCERS,1956

Directed By...Fred F. Sears

Special Effects By...Ray Harryhausen

Starring....Hugh Marlow...Dr. Marvin

Joan Taylor...Mrs. Carol Marvin

Donald Curtis...Major Huglin

Morris Ankrum...General Hanley

With...John Zaremba...Thomas Browne Henry...Grandon Rhodes...Larry J. Blake

Scientist Russell Marvin and his brand new wife Carol are cruising back to Operation Skyhook, the rocket launching site where they work...Marvin is making notes on a tape recorder as they are driving down a back road... Suddenly they are buzzed from the sky by a flying saucer that emits a strange sound...After the initial shock they continue their drive and later realize that the tape recorder has the sound of the saucer on it, but it's just a high pitched noise that makes no sense...

The rocket project has been sending up satellites only to have them destroyed in space by some mysterious force...General John Hanley, who is Carols father, arrives at the project and tries to halt the launch of rocket eleven, without success...He later tells Marvin that all the other satellites have been downed...Later during the launch of rocket twelve the project is attacked by the aliens and is totally destroyed...The aliens however capture General Hanley...They question the general but he won't talk, so the contents of his mind are placed into "The Infinitely Indexed Memory Bank"...

Dr. Marvin and Carol are trapped in the wreckage of their lab for a few days, leaving them as the only two survivors of the entire project...As the batteries of the tape recorder go dead, the sound becomes understandable...It was a speeded up message for Dr. Marvin to meet the saucer at the project at a certain time......This was the reason for the landing at Operation Skyhook, however since the message had not been understood the military took the landing as a hostile event and attacked the aliens...Since Marvin and Carol were underground during the attack and all other project workers were killed, nobody actually knew what had destroyed the project...

Marvin and Carol play the taped message for the military bigwigs and tells them he wants to contact the aliens by radio but his request is refused...The military doesn't necessarily believe the story and put Major Huglin in charge of watching Dr. Marvin...Marvin has already put a radio in his hotel room and contacts the aliens by radio who tell him to meet them at a deserted beach...He gets away and speeds out to the beach with Major Huglin and Carol in hot pursuit and picking up a traffic cop along the way...They all arrive at the beach and enter the saucer...The cop fires a shot in the ship and is zombiefied by the Memory Machine...The aliens explain that their solar system has disintegrated and they have chosen Earth as their new home...They then destroy a warship at sea and give the location to Marvin to prove to the military that the do truly exist...

Marvin and other scientists around the world then begin to develop a sonic gun that can down the saucers...Dr. Marvin develops a prototype weapon and is leaving his lab when a saucer shows up so they test it...It disturbs the landed saucer so much that it takes off, leaving one of the aliens behind...The saucer then desroys the lab and throws out the dead bodies of the cop and General Hanley...The remaining alien kills a scientist and is then himself killed...Marvin removes the helmet and the dead alien dissolves into thin air, so they keep the helmet for study...The helmet turns out to be made of "Solidified Electricity"...It also has a translator and amplified sight and sound devices in it...This leads the scientists to believe that the aliens are not a sturdy lot...

As the ultimate showdown happens Dr. Marvin and the army go around Washington D.C. shooting down flying saucers causing them to crash into all those beautiful historic buildings...Washington lays in ruins but the Earth is saved...

We are now transported to a beautiful sandy beach where Marvin and Carol are vacationing...Carol is reading a newspaper and tells Dr. Marvin that he has been awarded a "Gold Medal" by the United Nations for saving the world... Hey, I'd be glad to save the world anytime for a gold medal...

The special effects by Ray Harryhausen are really pretty good...Too bad he didn't have a bit more money to play with...