As dead serious about its interplanetary menace as It Came from Beneath the Sea was about a mighty mollusk from the deep, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers was a matinee goldmine whose title told all. It didn't take long for word of mouth to let the kids know that this one was a keeper: nervously spinning saucers with their sawblade sound effects and jazzy disintegration rays were all over this picture, blasting planes out of the sky, kidnapping Earthmen, and making good on their threats in scenes of aerial combat and mass destruction. In sheer scale and screen time, this programmer outdid the much more lavish, Technicolor War of the Worlds.

For Ray Harryhausen's part, he was still on the sci-fi treadmill, establishing his market credentials with producing partner Charles H. Schneer, here still under the schlocky guidance of Columbia cheapskate Sam Katzman. Harryhausen's greater ambitions were in larger-scale fantasy films with mythological beasts, but as outer space and atomic monsters were the rage in 1956, his fine animation skills were used to give life and personality to flying machines, mechanical contraptions with a different set of technical challenges. His saucers scream as they accelerate. A part of their outer rim spins madly, a troublesome animation chore that lends a nervousness to their mechanical menace, and imparts a gyroscopic, frisbee kind of visual logic to their levitation.

By carefully choosing stock footage, Harryhausen was able to create some pretty amazing illusions, with test rockets exploding harmlessly into the saucers, and real footage of airplanes (drones?) disintegrating when hit by animated saucer rays. Of course, destroying identifiable landmarks was as necessary for movie monsters as it was for Alfred Hitchcock, and several highly-detailed models of Washington, D.C. buildings and monuments were used for the eye-popping finale. Kids accustomed to getting one or two 'neato' effects per matinee were shown a veritable smorgasbord of destruction, as marble columns and hallowed domes crumbled onto helpless citizens.

The key compliment to Harryhausen's visualization is that it is his saucers, not The Day the Earth Stood Still's glowing pie plate, nor The Mysterians' nifty flying eyes, that have persisted as the iconic Unidentified Flying Objects of the '50s. When Tim Burton unleashed his invasion comedy spectacle Mars Attacks, he copied these saucers and even parodied Harryhausen's great setpieces, like the spectacle of the Washington Monument crashing down on terrorized victims.

I don't know how kids or adults who catch up with Earth vs. the Flying Saucers at this late date will react to it. Digital effects do the kinds of tricks seen here so much better, that maybe what was once awe-inspiring is now just silly. But digital effects don't guarantee perfection; the occasional mismatched perspectives or jarring jumps in apparent scale seen here, also can be found in many prestigious new films. Harryhausen fans don't need lectures, but others might be more appreciative if they understand that Ray worked practically alone with found materials, and that his zowie effects probably cost no more than the utter garbage seen in a turkey like The Giant Claw. His resourcefulness helped too, when Harryhausen recycled old Republic stockshots of exploding miniature buildings, struck by his sizzling saucer rays.

Storywise, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers gets an "A" action and a "D" for detail. The authorities are slow to understand the significance of the saucers' evil intentions (there's not much effort at negotiation here!) and are soon standing with their hands in their pockets, egging on the resourceful Dr. Marvin (or, "Do-oc-k-t-e-r-r Ma-ahr-r-r-v-i-i-n, as spoken by Paul Frees' warbling alien voice). In response, Marvin comes up with anti-saucer weapons faster than a magician can pull rabbits out of a hat. Chief of Staff Thomas Browne Henry notes they only have 9 days to save the world, and circles the number '9' on a cheap printed stationary pad that reads, 'From the Desk of ... Chief of Staff!" The action is rushed, with lines and situations lifted practically verbatim from This Island Earth: "What beautiful planet. / Thank God it's still here."

Hugh Marlowe is a strange choice of hero, considering his earlier role as the hissable villain of The Day the Earth Stood Still. He has a flat delivery and a perpetual grump act going, and is the least imaginative, most military-minded sci fi scientist of the 50s. Of course, we could have had Richard Carlson babbling wondrous Ray Bradbury-like happy-speak about the aliens ... After their honeymoon in the entrails of the rocket plant boiler room is spoiled, Marvin doggedly makes contact with the alien pirates on a lonely beach (nice scene) and soon relocates his lab to a mountain retreat.

Joan Taylor (soon to come back for more humiliation in 20 Million Miles to Earth) lends the show a fair amount of tension, and good old Morris Ankrum has a nice bit as the general given a plexiglass skull by the nefarious saucermen. Where the picture breaks down somewhat, is in the live action filming of dullsville director Fred F. Sears, who manages to rob the scenes with the helmeted saucermen of their potential thrills. In stills, especially posed ones as in the lobby cards (pictured here), the bulbous, silver saucer dudes look great. They have ray guns in place of hands, and go about their business in sinister little groups.

There's a heap of stock footage in this show - from The Day the Earth Stood Still come textless title shots of planets and stars in space, outtakes of people running from the baseball field, and even a shot of the collected scientists from the famous conclusion. War of the Worlds is represented by shots of pileups on freeways, and the famous angle of L.A. City Hall being blown to bits. Sam Katzman was an equal-opportunity stock library pillager.

The second unit work at the end is a real let-down, where limited location angles are padded with shots of the same rather pitiful-looking 'interference ray' trucks driving through what look like Hollywood residential backlots. The juxtaposition of the truck-mounted rays with the saucers going haywire works nicely, but the editor in Savant still wants to cut the sequence down to its thrilling essentials. When the heroes climb under a truck for the last, big explosion, they really seem unconnected to the main action.

But the main action knocked 'em dead in 1956, and is still a heap of fun now.

Columbia Tristar's DVD of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers is a pretty-good looking disc. There's only one format encoded, a matted 16:9 widescreen version that is appropriate to what was shown on 1956 screens. Since many fans are used to seeing the film unmatted, they might be alarmed to see the extreme tops and bottoms of shots cropped away. The framing is a bit suspect, as the titles are so far off center as to make the left extreme of some of the credits go offscreen. Otherwise, the show looks good: sharp, reasonably clean. The only detriment is some riding at splice points, that is probably the result of old splices going through the telecine.

Columbia has added yet again the Richard Shickel documentary, which is fine but rather overexposed by now, along with the This is Dynamation! short trailer. But making up for the repetition is the inclusion of a nifty Ray Harryhausen interview conducted by the amiable Joe Dante. Ray looks in fine fettle and together they handle a saucer animation model (it's pretty darn small!) and discuss the finer points of flying saucer movies - such as the fact that producer Schneer found a part of his flying saucer sound effect, when he heard the sound of effluent (polite word) being pumped through the giant pipes in the sewage treatment plant that serves as the Rocket Base set in the movie.

The attractively-designed package tries but doesn't best the original poster artwork; the menu also has a gallery of stills and posters for the popular picture.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers rates:
Movie: Good
Video: Good
Sound: Good
Supplements: Harryhausen interview, Shickel Documentary, This is Dynamation! Short subject, trailers, still gallery
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: September 26, 2002