Flying Saucers Invade My DVD Player!

I got a little sidetracked by the whole Democratic primary thing and didn't have a chance to post a review, but over the weekend I had the opportunity to enjoy another retro sci-fi classic via Netflix in 'Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers'. Between the film being in glorious black and white, the mega-cheesy acting/dialogue and some of the dated FX...it was good old fashioned fun, in a 'Saturday afternoon TV movie' sort of way.

It's 1956, a year before the first satellite (Sputnik I) went into orbit and 'Project Skyhook', a U.S. effort to launch a dozen satellites (not Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), is visited by a flying saucer. Akin to those AT&T cellphone commericals, the head scientist (Hugh Marlowe) misses the aliens intergalactic booty-call about hooking up to trade science stuff and casserole recipes. Not quite missing out on Motorhead tickets, but it does lead to the visitors arriving unannounced and promptly being introduced to 50's flavored 'shock and awe'.

As expected, the visitors respond in kind by immediately attacking in retaliation with some bad ass disintegration rays. Events quickly spiral out of control (he said, it said) and leads to a full scale invasion on Washington, DC, Paris, London and Moscow. In the end, not to ruin it for you or anything, the alien saucers are defeated over the skies of Washington by a device using 'high-power sound coupled with an electric field' that stops the saucers' propulsion systems and crash into things like an old lady that can't see over the dashboard.

Fun stuff. Even though I earlier called the FX 'dated', the best characters in the flick end up being the Saucers themselves...brought to life by the legendary Ray Harryhausen ('Mighty Joe Young', 'Seven Voyages of Sinbad', 'Jason and the Argonauts'). While the stop-motion animation he made famous has been rendered obsolete by today's technology, it does a pretty admirable job of fucking up the White House years before Bill Pullman would be elected President.

Maybe i'm just a sucker for the retro-charm of it all, but I dare you take a look for yourself via the trailer below and not fall in love w/ those whirling, national-monument-destroying bastards. WATCH THE SKIES, BITCHES!