Subject: Retrospective: Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)

From: Dennis Schwartz <[email-masked]>
Date: 13 Jan 2000 07:18:15 GMT

INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN(director: Edward L. Cahn; screenply: Al
Martin Gurney, Jr./Robert J. Gurney, Jr./Al Martin/from book by Paul W.
Fairman, "The Cosmic Frame"; cinematographer: Frederick E. West; cast:
Steve Terrell (Johnny), Gloria Castillo (Joan), Frank Gorshin (Joe
Gruen), Lyn Osborn (Art Burns), Don Shelton (Mr. Hayden), Sam Buffington
(Colonel), Douglas Henderson (Lt. Wilkins), Raymond Hatton (Larkin),
Jason Johnson (Detective), 1957)

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

A teenage couple making out in lover's lane accidentally runs over a
little green alien. The aliens in retaliation kill a drunken opportunist
who was looking to cash in on finding aliens, Joe Gruen (Gorshin); and,
they will substitute his body for the alien's. The teen couple are not
believed by the police when they try to explain to them what happened
and are charged with killing Joe; the kids say that an adult would not
have had the same problem being believed by the police.

This is an excellent example of a classic bad movie coming out of the
'50s sci-fi genre, one that is funny without intending to be funny.

The plot centers around a space ship that lands in Hicksburg (Middle
America) and is about to attack the town for no reason. That the army
has a secret unit, which happens to be stationed where the space craft
lands, and they react to the alien sighting by blowing up the ship but
telling the police and the public that it was a jet plane that crashed,
leaving no evidence behind that an alien ship ever landed, is a subplot
that remains undeveloped. But it should feed the government cover-up
advocates and the conspiracy theory junkies with some ammo to make their
case that the government is always lying when it says there is no such a
thing as flying saucers.

The aliens do their killing by injecting a person with alcohol, but you
only die if you had a few drinks in you. That is why Joe died. This has
to be one of the stupidest ways ever thought up of how aliens kill
people. These slow-moving, goofy looking creatures, who can't be shot,
are finally squashed by the lover's lane teens, who take a brief respite
from making out to shine their headlights on these creatures, as the
strong light makes them evaporate. The assumption is, even though they
saved the town, no one will believe them because there are no traces of
the aliens left and because no one believes teenagers anyway. This
brings out some great paranoia stuff that goes on between the older and
younger generations.

The story shifts from the teen couple back to the two drifters who have
been in town for a month. Joe, who has been heavily drinking and is
frustrated over no job and not having a date on Saturday night, goes
riding by himself out in the woods and discovers the dead creature. When
he phones his pal, Art (Lyn), who is the narrator of this tale, Art
doesn't believe him and goes back to sleep. Art, who will be needed by
the teen couple, later on, to clear their name, and he will be taken by
them to the woods where the aliens are and will survive an alien attack
after he is left in a drunken state. From this experience, he will write
a book, complete with photographs of the aliens he took pictures of.

Edward L. Cahn, a master in low-budget schlock, splurges on papier-mache
heads for his creatures, and features a disembodied hand that grosses
out the young couple who are about to get married without their parents'
approval. Johnny (Terrell) works in a garage, while his girlfriend Joan
(Castillo), is the daughter of the city attorney (Shelton). He opposes
the two dating because he considers Johnny not good enough for his
daughter. This little subplot never gets resolved, but adds to the
confusion of the story. The story was so confusing, that the film could
have been seen in any of the following ways: as a typical teen dating
flick, a sci-fi movie, or a comedy spoof of the horror genre. Cahn
raises no serious questions about anything- he seems to have a money and
brain outage when he made this one. He could have certainly used a much
tighter script, better actors, and had more imagination.

There's also some farmer (Hatton ) in this story, who has a shot gun and
is running around threatening to shoot everyone who is on his property,
as his property is where lover's lane is. He also has a bull that the
teens love to get drunk by leaving their beer cans in the meadow. The
bull gets so drunk that he gores an alien to death.

Somehow, I got a few laughs out of this flick, and that's good enough
for a film that can never go out of style because it is so bad that it
never was in style in the first place... This film was originally
released on a double bill with "I Was a Teenage Werewolf."

REVIEWED ON 12/30/99      GRADE: C-

Dennis Schwartz: " Ozus' World Movie Reviews"

http://www.sover.net/~ozus

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