Thursday, June 18, 2020

Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)

A clean cut teen couple, after making out in a car parked on a local farm, accidentally hits a space alien. The cops dismiss the alcohol-soaked kid’s story and the Air Force tries to cover up the flying “saucer”.

Initially intended as a straight sci-fi, they added comedic music and cool daddy-o dialog in an attempt to garner the ha-ha’s as well. This worked out about as well as expected. It’s a problem that we never get a good look at the Morbo-inspired aliens and the so-called saucer better resembles the bat mobile. Speaking of which, Frank Gorshin of Riddler fame plays a drifter trying to profit off of the LGMs. He may have been the best part of the film.

These low-budget, straight to drive-in films are a guilty pleasure of mine. I gave sub-3 scores to a couple I watched recently but truth be told, I enjoyed them. They are dumb, poorly acted, and sometimes racist, but I love them. The problem here is that the attempt at humor undercut any tension making the film pretty much pointless. There is little story outside of “Look! Aliens!” and they spent time introducing the Air Force characters to only stick in front of the ship with the direction “Act silly”. This doesn’t work.

I’m giving this thing only a half point lower than the others, but the difference in enjoyment is vast. The comedy isn’t funny, the aliens aren’t scary, and most damningly, the movie isn’t interesting. AMRU 2.

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